Aboriginal History V35

ABORIGINAL HISTORY
Volume 35, 2011
ABORIGINAL HISTORY
Volume 35, 2011
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
E PRESS
Published by ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated

Aboriginal History 35
This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au

Aboriginal History Incorporated
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Views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily shared by Board members.
The Committee of Management and the Editorial Board
Peter Read (Chair), Rani Kerin (Monographs Editor), Maria Nugent and Shino Konishi (Journal Editors),
Robert Paton (Treasurer and Public Officer), Ann McGrath (Deputy Chair), Isabel McBryde, Niel Gunson,
Luise Hercus, Harold Koch, Tikka Wilson, Geoff Gray, Dave Johnson, Ingereth Macfarlane, Brian Egloff,
Lorena Kanellopoulos, Richard Baker, Peter Radoll.
Copy Editor Geoff Hunt, Book Review Editor Luise Hercus.
About Aboriginal History
Aboriginal History is a refereed journal that presents articles and information in Australian ethnohistory
and contact and post-contact history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Historical studies
based on anthropological, archaeological, linguistic and sociological research, including comparative studies
of other ethnic groups such as Pacific Islanders in Australia, are welcomed. Subjects include recorded
oral traditions and biographies, narratives in local languages with translations, previously unpublished
manuscript accounts, archival and bibliographic articles, and book reviews.
WARNING: Readers are notified that this publication may contain names or images of deceased persons.
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Cover image: Islander track-layers positioning the 360 foot rail over sleepers on the standard-gauge railway
line, Upper Swan, Western Australia, February 1965, The West Australian.
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This edition 2011 ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Inc
ISSN 0314-8769 (print)
ISSN 1837-9389 (electronic edition)
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii
Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal men and clothing in
early New South Wales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Grace Karskens
Making history: Torres Strait Islander railway workers and the 1968
Mt Newman track-laying record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Leah Lui-Chivizhe
The stolen veteran: institutionalisation, military service, and the
Stolen Generations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Noah Riseman
The Convincing Ground Aboriginal massacre at Portland Bay,
Victoria: fact or fiction? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Ian D Clark
Special section: Indigenous Australian and Asian histories
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Peta Stephenson and Christine Choo
The view from Marege: Australian knowledge of Makassar
and the impact of the trepang industry across two centuries . . . . . . . 121
Campbell Macknight
The privilege of employing natives: the Quan Sing affair and
Chinese-Aboriginal employment in Western Australia, 18891934 . . . 145
Victoria Haskins
A double exile: Filipino settlers in the outer Torres Strait islands,
1870s1940s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Anna Shnukal
Indigenous Australian-Indonesian intermarriage: negotiating
citizenship rights in twentieth-century Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Julia Martnez
Book Reviews
Digging up a Past by John Mulvaney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
An Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal
Australia edited by Melinda Hinkson and Jeremy Beckett . . . . . . . . . . 203
The Many Worlds of RH Mathews: In Search of an Australian
Anthropologist by Martin Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Aboriginal Darwin, A Guide to Exploring Important Sites of
the Past and Present by Toni Bauman and Aboriginal Sydney:
A Guide to Important Places of the Past and Present
by Melinda Hinkson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in
19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities by Penelope Edmonds . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Singing Saltwater Country: Journey to the Songlines of
Carpentaria by John Bradley with Yanyuwa families . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Mari Nawi: Aboriginal Odysseys by Keith Vincent Smith . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Singing the Coast by Margaret Somerville and Tony Perkins . . . . . . . . 221
Coming to Terms: Aboriginal Title in South Australia
edited by Shaun Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies: Historical
and Anthropological Perspectives edited by Ian Keen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Aboriginal Family and the State: The Conditions of History
by Sally Babidge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
The Secret War: A True History of Queenslands Native Police
by Jonathan Richards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina by Peter Beveridge . . . . . . . . . 239
Great Central State: The Foundation of the Northern Territory
by Jack Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Nharangga Wargunni Bugi-Buggillu: A Journey Through Narungga
History by Skye Krichauff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colonial Encounter
edited by Alison Holland and Barbara Brookes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Information for authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
vi
Aboriginal History Monograph Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Preface
We are pleased to present Volume 35 of Aboriginal History.
Since becoming editors last year, Shino Konishi and I have had reason to reflect
on the history of the journal and its relationship to the broader field of Indigenous
history in Australia. Earlier this year, my thoughts on this were further fuelled
when I attended a conference here at the Australian National University (ANU)
marking 30 years of Subaltern Studies, a field that in many ways parallels the
development of Australian Aboriginal History. Indeed, both began to develop
around the same time and in the same place. In his paper for the conference,
which traced interconnections between Subaltern Studies and Aboriginal
History, Bain Attwood noted that the names Aboriginal History and Subaltern
Studies had initially referred to publications more so than schools. The journal
Aboriginal History and the series Subaltern Studies, both of which are still in press,
were established within a few years of each other. Aboriginal History published its
first volume in 1977; the first volume of Subaltern Studies appeared in 1982. Both
were based at ANU, and in particular closely associated with its Research School
of Pacific and Asian Studies (now the College of Asia and the Pacific). In each
case, these publishing ventures were foundational to the development of the
fields that go by these names. A generation on, Aboriginal History and Subaltern
Studies can publish only a small sample of the large and ever-expanding body
of scholarship produced in their respective fields. Importantly, though, each
publishes work that not only reflects elements of the original, and to some extent
shared, visions for these fields, but which also continues to stretch interpretive
possibilities, subjects and themes, and methodological approaches. In their
different ways, as Attwood noted, the fields of Aboriginal History and Subaltern
Studies expanded the horizons of historical scholarship and writing to represent
the perspectives and experiences of people hitherto excluded from conventional,
national histories. In both instances, this involved adopting a multidisciplinary
approach, as well as drawing on a wide range of sources, including oral testimony,
visual images, and vernacular writings. This volume of Aboriginal History, now
in its 35th year, demonstrates the ways in which this vision for an expanded
horizon of history continues to furnish new insights into and interpretations of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experiences, while sometimes also
continuing to push the limits of history-writing.
In her article, Grace Karskens extends her cross-cultural research on early colonial
New South Wales by focusing on the uses of European clothing by Aboriginal
men. Using methods drawn from visual analysis, material culture studies, and
ethnographic history, she teases out possible meanings that Aboriginal men
ascribed to clothes, especially military coats. In the process, her study reveals
a dense and complex social world of relations shaped by exchange and trade,
diplomacy and hierarchy.
vii
ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35
In their contributions, Leah Lui-Chivizhe and Noah Riseman use oral testimony
to tell important new histories. Lui-Chivizhe describes the participation of Torres
Strait Islander men in railway construction work in Western Australia. Riseman
focuses on the life of one man to explore intersections between the experience of
institutionalisation as a member of the Stolen Generations and later as a member
of the Australian armed forces. Both articles are distinguished by their critical
reflections on the nature of personal and collective remembrance, the ethics of
using oral testimony in writing Indigenous history, and the relationship between
oral and archival evidence.
Ian D Clarks article reminds us of the importance of meticulous and careful
archival research, especially when it comes to histories of frontier violence. In
an article that answers Michael Connors refutation of the Convincing Ground
massacre, Clark not only exposes flaws in Connors own reading of the archival
evidence but also has something to say about his methods as a massacre denier.
At the same time, Clark further contextualises and explains the evidence upon
which his own interpretations and conclusions about the Convincing Ground
massacre are based.
In this 35th volume, we mark yet another milestone in the history of the journal.
Early on in the journals life, Isabel McBryde, who remains an active member
of the Aboriginal History Board, suggested that occasionally the journal might
produce issues devoted to a particular theme. James Urry responded to the
suggestion by proposing a volume devoted to Aboriginal-Asian contact history,
which was published as Volume 5 in 1981. Thirty years later, Christine Choo and
Peta Stephenson, leaders in the field of research into Aboriginal-Asian relations,
have edited a special section on the same theme. The four papers included revisit
old topics and address new ones.
Campbell Macknight published a piece in the 1981 volume on his research into
contact between Macassans and Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land; in this
volume in 2011 he reflects with insight on the development of his own scholarship
and on research in this area more generally. What he offers, then, is a doublelayered history. Anna Shnukal did not contribute a piece to the 1981 volume, but
in 1985 (Volume 9) she published her first piece in Aboriginal History, which was
on Torres Strait Islander creole. Her contribution this time focuses on Filipinos in
the outer Torres Strait islands and the families they established with Indigenous
women. Marriage is also the theme in Julia Martnez article. She explores
marriages between Indonesian men and Indigenous Australian women, which
provides new perspectives not only on the history of Indonesians in Australia
but also the White Australia policy and its effects. Victoria Haskins provides a
fascinating story drawn from the colonial archives that documents one Chinese
familys efforts to be allowed to employ Aboriginal workers. She uses this case to
explore how local politics of race played out on the frontiers of white Australia in
the early twentieth century. As Stephenson and Choo note in their introduction
to the special section, the four papers together retrieve pre-colonial and colonial
viii
PREFACE
relationships that place white settler narratives of Australias social development

in a wider perspective. In the process they challenge the ideological foreclosures
and sometimes methodological timidity of mainstream nationalist histories.
In commending this volume of Aboriginal History to you, we wish to express our
gratitude to the many people who assist with its production. We especially thank
Geoff Hunt, copyeditor, Tikka Wilson, production manager, and Luise Hercus,
reviews editor, as well as the entire Aboriginal History Board. We also wish to
thank Shannyn Palmer and Julia Torpey who provided much needed editorial
assistance. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Professor Angela Woollacott,
Head of the School of History in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at ANU,
where the journal is currently based, for her continuing support.
Maria Nugent
ix
Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal

men and clothing in early New South Wales1
Grace Karskens
In 1819 a group of Aboriginal men from the Nepean River and the Blue Mountains
came to Sydney, where they met some of the Frenchmen from the corvette Uranie.
The French visitors were on a voyage of scientific discovery, and had planned a
journey across the Blue Mountains. Most likely the Aboriginal men had agreed
to act as their guides. Artist Alphonse Pellion sketched them at their camp on
the edge of Sydney, and his drawings show that they were all wearing jackets or
coats. Tara and Peroa, from the Nepean River, were not wearing trousers. Neither,
probably, were the others the engravings made from Pellions sketches show
them only from the waist up, and the Frenchmen noted with some shock that this
was the usual manner of dress for the Aboriginal men in Sydney.2
Images of Aboriginal men wearing jackets or coats without trousers are common
in colonial paintings from the late 1810s and in the 1820s. Whether the warriors in
these pictures stand resplendent in silver braided scarlet, or slouch insouciant in
torn, ill-fitting coats, most historians have interpreted the garments as sure signs
of the low status of Aboriginal people in settler society. The jackets are indicative
of a people reduced to beggary and drunkenness, of cultural annihilation, of
a people without hope. These interpretations reach unbroken back to the
responses of new or visiting colonists of the 1820s and 1830s (older colonists
knew better). Around 1838 an anonymous rhymester probably Baptist Minister
and temperance advocate John Saunders scribbled a poem at the bottom of
an ugly caricature of Aboriginal people drinking and fighting. The third verse
directly links the jackets with alcohol, violence and degeneration:
Now we see the end, these sans culottes
Decked with white mans cast off coats
Display their love in blows
One Gin with rum is stupefied
The second sups the infernal tide
Till basest passion glows3
1
2
3
Thanks to Tim Rowse and Brad Manera and two anonymous readers for their invaluable advice
on this paper.
de Freycinet 2001[1824]: 123124, 306; Quoy et al 1950[1819]: 712; Pellion 1819a, Sauvages
de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud (dapre nature dans leur Camp pres de Sidney (20 dec. 1819),
watercolour, Mitchell Library.
Saunders Rev John (attrib) c1838, poem accompanying Real Life in Sydney, lithograph, with
letterbook 18341847, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
1
Fig 1. Alphonse Pellion (attrib), Sauvages de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud [Tara

et Peroa], watercolour, 1819.
Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, SV/118.
No doubt the term sans culottes raised a smile among those who could
remember the French Revolution. These tattered, motley urban Aborigines
were without even the rough trousers of the Parisian militants they were
sans anything. Especially amusing and popular were the world-upside-down
2
RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN
cameos of key figures such as Bungaree, the famous leader and spokesperson
of the Sydney Tribe, whose European finery contrasted ludicrously with his
grotesque face and bare feet.4
Fig 2. Artist unknown, Real life in Sydney, lithograph, c1838.

Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, B1106, with handwritten poem, very
likely by Rev John Saunders.
Historians have used this contrast too, though here the purpose is not comedy
but the revelation of dispossession and pauperisation. In his seminal White
on Black, the first sustained study of white artists depictions of Aborigines,
Geoffrey Dutton wrote of Bungaree as beggar, mimic and drunk: When he wore
the braided jacket and cocked hat given him by various governors, he had only
to look down at his bare feet to know where he really stood.5 Writing in the
aftermath of WEH Stanners clarion call for historians to break the silence on
Aboriginal dispossession, Dutton saw the fine red jacket as a sham, a bad joke.
The bare feet tell us what is really going on.
Duttons poignant words, like his chapter title, Instant Degeneration, set the
tone and the conceptual approach for much of the commentary on Aborigines
4
5
Hansen 2007: 2732.

Dutton 1974: 29.
3
wearing European clothing. Art historian Michael Rosenthal concluded of the

jacket-wearing Aboriginal man in Augustus Earles Native Family Sitting
Down on an English Settlers Farm (c1826) that his carelessly-worn European
attire and pipe smoking exemplify the radical incompatibility between the two
cultures.6 In her pioneering history of dress in Australia, Margaret Maynard
applied a hegemonic model in which the dominant settler culture utterly
supplanted the Aboriginal one. Here clothing was a weapon of coercion in the
colonising process, forced upon naked Aboriginal people in order to civilise and
subdue them. Maynard suggested an inverse relationship between European
clothing and Aboriginal well-being: The adoption of European dress is likely to
have aided in the destruction of Aboriginal culture through the undermining of
self-esteem and erosion of health. Those who chose to wear clothes did so only
for expedience, a desire to please, or merely as imitation, and were savagely
lampooned by whites for their trouble. So clothing could have no real meaning
from an Aboriginal perspective.7
Keith Vincent Smiths sympathetic biography of Bungaree explored his
extensive wardrobe of coats and hats in detail, as well as the way he wore
them, his dignified demeanour and extravagant gestures. But in the end, Smith
concurs with Dutton, and cites him: Bungaree, realising the hopelessness of his
position and the loss of his heritage was determined to play it for laughs.8
More recently, Craig Wilcox, in his lyrical cultural history of the British army in
Australia, also meditated upon Bungaree and his coats. Most famous of course
is the fine scarlet coat he wore, together with the great cocked hat, the crimson
sash, gleaming gorget, in Augustus Earles 1826 oil portrait. Here, argues Wilcox,
is evidence for Aboriginal aesthetics and ambitions too. Yet he does not pursue
this promising idea. Once more, the finery contrasts with Bungarees expression,
somewhere between regret and resignation (in fact Bungaree smiles gently in
this portrait). Other pictures reveal rapid decline, due not to advancing years
but heavy drinking. So jacket-wearing remains empty mimesis: Aborigines were
merely mimicking the red-coated soldiers, a rather pathetic appropriation of a
key British symbol of power by people who now found themselves powerless.9
But look more closely at the paintings and sketches, especially those that were
done on the spot. The men in them do not play the part of abject beggars or
pathetic mimics. Jules-Louis Le Jeunes 1824 informal pen and ink sketch of
Bungaree shows him wearing a long greatcoat and standing at the helm of
his fishing boat, arm outstretched over the waves. His friends, either jacketed
or naked, stand with their spears or pull at the oars of the boat.10 The men in
Pellions watercolours, Tara and Peroa, do not look like beaten refugees either.
They stand relaxed, hands in the pockets of their oversized jackets, and meet the
viewers gaze full on, or casually look away.
6
7
8
9
10
4
Rosenthal 2000: 39.

Maynard 1994: chapter 4, 59, 70. See also Watson 1998.
Smith 1992: loc cit, quote 158.
Wilcox 2009: chapter 2, quotes 12, 13, 15, 123.
Le Jeune 1824.
Fig 3. Augustus Earle, A native family of New South Wales sitting down on
English settlers farm, c1826.
Source: National Library of Australia NK12/45.
Augustus Earles watercolour of an Aboriginal family camped in front of a

settlers house depicts the jacketed, trouserless man sitting cross-legged on a
blanket on the ground with his back to the artist and the viewer, smoking a
clay pipe, seemingly intent on his own business or thoughts, and uninterested
in the white people around him.11 Earles lithograph Natives of N. S. Wales as
seen on the streets of Sydney (which, like his other negative portrayals, appears
to have been created later in England from earlier separate sketches) reveals a
seemingly damning scene of degraded Aboriginal people drinking in the street.
Yet even here, only two of the jacket-wearing men are drinking rum-and-water
bull from the bucket. The other jacketed man stands watching, and carries a
traditional club. The women do not drink, and one carries a large fish, suggesting
the continuance of womens traditional fishing.12
Perhaps Earle was responding to the growing taste for ugly caricatures of
Indigenous people in this period. We can see this in the popular silhouette prints
of the 1830s, where the ragged jackets were ever more closely associated with the
corrosive effect of alcohol and dependence.13 By the 1840s, Aboriginal people
11
Earle c1826, A native family of New South Wales sitting down on English settlers farm,
watercolour, National Library of Australia.
12 Earle c1830, Natives of N. S. Wales as seen in the streets of Sydney, lithograph, National Library
of Australia.
13 Thomas 1999: 58; Fernyhough c1836, A series of twelve profile portraits of Aborigines of New
South Wales, drawn from life and on stone, silhouettes, 1840, Natives of NSW drinking Bull,
5
were depicted wearing other articles of clothing as well shirts, dresses and ragged
trousers. But the image of the jacket worn without trousers recurred occasionally
in art. Perhaps it was literal in Walter G Masons picture of a public meeting in
Sydney during elections in 1857, which includes a group of Aboriginal people
listening to the speakers on the hustings. It made a vestigial appearance in ST
Gills 1866 caricature Native Dignity, which parodies Aboriginal appropriation
of European finery, as well as the pretensions of the disconcerted respectable
white couple in the background.14
Fig 4. Walter G Mason, Public meeting at Macquarie Place, Sydney, during the
election, print, wood engraving.
Source: National Library of Australia, PIC S1266.
silhouette, National Library of Australia; Nicholas 184042, Profiles of the Aborigines of New
South Wales 18401842, silhouettes, National Library of Australia; Carmichael 1826, King of
Black Natives, watercolour and ink, Mitchell Library; Phelps 1840, Native Scenes, pen and ink
drawings, Mitchell Library.
14 Mason 1857, Public meeting at Macquarie Place, Sydney, during the election, print, wood
engraving, National Library of Australia; Gill 1866, Native Dignity, lithograph, National
Gallery of Australia.
6
Fig 5. ST Gill, Native Dignity.

Source: NK2459/6.
Given the long silence over Aboriginal history, and given the parlous state of
many Aboriginal people in terms of life expectancy, standards of living and
economic opportunities, it is not surprising that historians have seen these
paintings and descriptions as damning evidence of a long, unbroken history of
Aboriginal material and cultural impoverishment. But did Aboriginal warriors
7
in the early colonial period consider themselves as degraded, culturally lost

or outcast people? The pictures and the glimpses we have of them suggest
something else, something more. In any case, does putting on a jacket, or
wrapping oneself in a blanket, indicate instant degeneration and culture loss,
or at best a black sort of humour? If bare feet, and sitting down together on the
ground, were customary among Aboriginal people, do they reveal only poverty
and deprivation? Is mimicry always meaningless, merely reinforcing the power
of the invaders? What if we track and reconsider this practice of jacket-wearing
as a way of exploring the Aboriginal world, and the ways Aboriginal men in
particular responded to the invasion of 1788?
*
Clothing and appearance signify boundaries and identity, as Maynard points
out, but they are also instant visual codes triggering underlying assumptions
about race and culture.15 Tim Rowse has written of such unsettling moments, as
a crisis of the conventions of perception. But he argues that such moments are
also a way to explore others imaginations and ways of life as well as our own.
The things we do not understand, things that unsettle us, are precisely those
which reveal most clearly the interfering glosses through which we look.16
Rowse opens his study of Aboriginal men and clothing by recounting the visit
of two eminent judges, John Kerr QC and Justice Richard Kirby, to a cattle
station in Arrernte country near Alice Springs in 1965. They were there as part
of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commissions inquiry
into whether Aboriginal pastoral workers were to be included in the Northern
Territory Cattle Industry Award. Kirby was head of the Commonwealth
Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, and Kerr was representing the
pastoralists, who argued that the increased wages were unjustified. Expecting
to find the Aboriginal workers living in the bucolic contentment that white
pastoralists had described, Kirby and Kerr were taken aback to find the people
poorly dressed, in dreadful sort of half-world clothes such as old army
jackets, which make them half white man and half native. Rowse points out that
the white men turned away from this unsettling evidence, retreating instead into
romantic representations of Aboriginal workers in handsome cowboy clothes,
such as the works of Darryl Lindsay and Russell Drysdale, which retained their
masculine dignity within colonial pastoralism.17
Rowses analysis of the uses and meanings of cowboy clothing offers some key
insights into the way Aboriginal men and clothing might be explored. First,
Kerr and Kirby appear to have experienced something of the same disquiet as
observers in Sydney in the 1820s when they saw Aboriginal men wearing old
jackets. Here, then, are Rowses glosses: Europeans expected, and perhaps
still expect, to see either pristine hunter or Aborigines wearing clothes in the
15
16
17
8
Maynard 2006: 103.

Rowse 1991: 12.
Rowse 1991: 34.
European manner. Hybrid dress signals something in between, something

not easily definable. It is precisely this disturbing glimpse, this something in
between that leaves room for an Aboriginal side of the story.18
Second, Rowse examines the role of cowboy clothes by reading them within
the wider gendered, political and economic contexts of the Northern Territory
pastoral industry. The meanings and significance of clothing worn by Aboriginal
men cannot be generalised across time and place they are enmeshed in, and
therefore contingent upon, particular historical contexts.19 Thus, an old, torn
coat might well reveal poverty in one circumstance, but can signify something
quite different in another. Philip Jones argues similarly that the nature of frontier
encounters depended on circumstance, particular actions, myriad variables. It is
necessary therefore to look carefully at the moment of exchange, and to see that
frontiers were loaded with other possibilities.20
Jones demonstrates that the artefacts of frontier encounter and collection
themselves carry information: they are the chains along which social ideas run.
Ethnographic artefacts which crossed over may well reveal ideas generated
within the Indigenous culture of origin. What of European artefacts, like glass,
metal hatchets and clothing, which crossed the other way, and were adopted and
adapted by Aboriginal people? What can they reveal or suggest about Aboriginal
culture response and world-view from within?21
But here is a further difficulty. Flaked glass and metal blades may make it
into public collections, but as Margaret Maynard points out, dress generally
is marginalised in such collections. Even within such assemblages, working
clothes, prisoners clothes and European-influenced Indigenous clothes are rare
inclusions.22 The jackets worn by warriors have not survived, the artefacts are
absent. It is not possible to see or touch the real fabric, study the colour, cut,
stitching, buttons, piping, braid, the tears and stains. These coats and jackets are
ghost artefacts, recorded only in the paintings and words of white people, and
then often conveyed through thick lenses of ridicule, revulsion or pity.
Jacket wearing by Aboriginal warriors in the early colonial period is a practice
lost to history, just as these garments themselves have long disappeared. Yet these
repeat glimpses are a faint but insistent leitmotif. In tracking them something
more might be recovered about the encounters between colonists and Aboriginal
people, the lived texture of negotiated lives and spaces in the early colony. What
forgotten codes and protocols, and what larger scenarios of negotiation or
accommodation or cultural adaptation might jacket-wearing suggest?23
*
18
19
20
21
22
23
See also Brock 2007: 1; Jones 2007: 1112.

Brock 2007; Land 2006; Kovacic 2006.
Jones 2007: 56.
Jones 2007: 67.
Maynard 1991: 77.
Jones 2007: 6.
9
Jackets and coats were significant objects during the earliest encounters between
the Berewalgal and Eora in January 1788. After Governor Phillip and his party
had broken the ice by ritual gift-giving, some Kamaygal (the people of Botany
Bay) came forward to inspect the strangers more closely. They were particularly
curious about the clothes, as Surgeon George Worgan wrote later, feeling the
Coat, Waistcoat, and even the Shirt and on seeing one of the Gentlemen pull off
his Hat, they all set up a loud Hoop.24
What struck the Berewalgal, on the other hand, was the sight of so many
perfectly naked people, walking about as if being stark naked was the most
normal thing in the world. The newcomers, who were accustomed to wearing a
number of layers of clothing, associated wearing clothes with being civilised,
while being unclothed was an instant marker of savagery. The unclad body
triggered a whole range of responses: the most basic was that it indicated a total
lack of modesty.25 The First Fleet officers also saw it as evidence of the poverty
and deprivation of the savage state. Giving these poor creatures clothing was
thus an act of kindness and charity.
Here we encounter a linguistic and conceptual gap. The Eora may have been
unclothed, but they were not naked, for they dressed their bodies in many
complex and distinctive ways. As Ian Gilligan points out, dressing (rather than
clothing) the body is a universal feature of all known human cultures, so there
can be no such thing as nakedness.26 In the Sydney region, each of the more
than 30 groups of Aboriginal people dressed their bodies in distinctive ways.
Men and women were marked by with cicatrices (raised scars) in distinctive
patterns on their chests and arms. They painted their bodies with clay: white
for corroborees, red for war, contests and mourning. Men everywhere wore
long beards, but the different groups were distinguished by their hairstyles.
Those from the Botany Bay area gummed their hair in dreadlocks, which to the
Berewalgal looked like the thrums of a mop; other groups adorned their hair
with the teeth and the tails of animals. Men and women sometimes wore multistranded necklaces made of dried reeds, or cascades of kangaroo teeth. Initiated
Eora men of the coastal Sydney region were also marked by a missing front
tooth, while women had lost the top two joints of the little finger of their left
hands. Many had pierced septums, for wearing small bones or sticks.27
As for clothing, the groups of the colder, higher regions to the south wore possum
fur cloaks, slung over the shoulders, fastened at the front. But in the Sydney
region, apart from the barin, or apron, worn by prepubescent girls, and the
string waistband in which warriors carried their tools, the Eora wore no clothes
at all. Their sex could thus be instantly gauged. However, as the Berewalgal
24
Worgan, George, letter to Richard Worgan, 1218 June 1788, with journal fragment 20 January
1788 11 July 1788, Mitchell Library.
25 Russell 2010: 34.
26 Gilligan 2008: 487.
27 Collins 1971[1798], 1: 551552; Worgan, George, letter to Richard Worgan, 1218 June 1788, with
journal fragment 20 January 1788 11 July 1788, Mitchell Library: 9; Attenbrow 2002: 107111,
118.
10
gradually realised, modesty was nevertheless part of Eora womens culture.

Their customary way of sitting was with one leg bent and the foot covering the
genitals.28 For men, though, there was no such consideration: in fact it was vitally
important that their manhood be visible.
In fact the Eora probably did not possess a concept of nakedness, or a word
for naked.29 The Berewalgals layers of strangely textured and coloured (and no
doubt pungently odorous) clothing must have seemed like so many extra skins.
And removing what looked like part of ones head to reveal hair underneath
must have been astonishing. No wonder they whooped in amazement. But these
extra skins stopped the process of encounter and communication dead in its
tracks, because the Eora warriors and elders could not tell if these pale creatures
were men or women: they had no beards and their genitals were hidden. Eora
society was deeply gendered. Men dealt with men, though often the negotiations
revolved around women. The truth, first revealed when a sailor was ordered
to drop his trousers, elicited another great whoop: they are men!30 Physical
appearance clothing, lack of clothing, hairstyles, scars, tattoos, painted skin,
beards and clean-shaven chins thus profoundly shaped the encounters for both
peoples, and would continue to do so over the long colonial period.
Not long after the first encounter in Botany Bay, a jacket was given as a sign of
friendship though not by the official party, but ordinary sailors who went on
shore to meet the Kamaygal. Unlike their superiors, the sailors were without
Arms or any thing to protect themselves, sailor like. They met men, women
and children who were very friendly, and who eagerly accepted of a Jacket
which one of the sailors gave them.31 It was probably a blue sailors jacket,
either brought along deliberately, as a gift; or perhaps peeled, still warm, from
the wearers back. Even if the coat was of little practical use to the Kamaygal, it
was obviously an item the strangers held in some esteem, for they all wore them.
As a gift it was clearly a sign of friendship. Since exchange and gift-giving was
common to both cultures, both groups understood this ritual.32
Meanwhile relations were also being wrought by the governor and officers.
Instructed to treat the natives kindly and live with them in amity, they were
trying to keep the upper hand in managing cross-cultural relations, as well as
attempting to prevent contact between convicts and sailors (whom they saw as
brutal) and Aborigines.33 But it was through the officers efforts that certain jackets
the soldiers red coats soon developed very different meanings. They were
associated not with friendship and amity but with danger and violence. These
28
29
30
Collins 1971[1798], 1: 562, 457; Attenbrow 2002: 109; Brock 2007.

Cf Donaldson 1985; Kohen 1993: 208262.
Bradley 17861792: 60, 63; Worgan, George, letter to his brother Richard Worgan, 1218 June
1788, with journal fragment 20 January 1788 11 July 1788, Mitchell Library: 4, 9; King 1786
1789: entry 20 January 1788.
31 Bradley 17861792: 61.
32 Worgan, George, letter to Richard Worgan, 1218 June 1788, with journal fragment 20 January
1788 11 July 1788, Mitchell Library: 2; McBryde, 1989: 169182.
33 Governor Phillips Instructions, 27 April 1787, in Watson 19141925, Historical Records of
Australia, series 1, vol 1: 1, 1314; White 1962[1790]: 109.
11
Berewalgals gestures of peace were always performed under the watchful eyes
of red-coated soldiers and sometimes accompanied by demonstrations of the
might of their weaponry. Musket balls were fired through the hardwood shields
(elemong) the Eora warriors used to protect themselves in battle. As Lieutenant
Watkin Tench coolly remarked, Our first object was to win their affections, and
our next was to convince them of the superiority we possessed: for without the
latter, the former we know would be of little importance.34 The natives were to
be treated kindly, but they had to be shown exactly where they stood. The Eora
understood the gun part perfectly.
Unsurprisingly, then, the red coat soon became a sign of danger. They know and
dread the superiority of our arms, wrote Surgeon John White, for they carefully
avoided a soldier or anyone in a red coat.35 The colour red was also significant
in Eora culture: painted in clay on the body, it was the colour of anger, revenge,
fighting and mourning. The messengers who ran from one country to another
with news were painted red too: it signalled important events, it was the colour
of alarm, of warning.36 Soon the mere sight of the soldiers red coat caused the
Eora to melt into the bush, so preventing any opportunity for contact, let alone
friendship. The officers were disappointed. After all the initial friendly overtures
and meetings, and all those gifts, the Eora avoided the Camp at Sydney Cove
for months.
But by May 1788, Eora warriors were stealing convicts jackets, often while the
latter worked cutting timber or rushes on the harbour. The earliest recorded
incident occurred near Balmain, upriver from Sydney, and it had terrible
consequences:
Some Canoes landed at Major Ross Garden up the Harbour, they stole a
Jacket & several other things which were afterwards found in one of the
Canoes by some of the Convicts who followed them along the shore to
the next Cove where they landed37
Rumours that the pursuing convicts killed an Aboriginal warrior soon spread,
and may explain the first killings of convicts shortly after: payback attacks on
two rush cutters working in the same area. One was beaten to death, the other
appeared to have died of shock.38
Thefts of jackets continued, and they infuriated the convicts. In January 1789
another party of rush cutters working down the harbour found that three jackets
34
35
36
37
38
12
Hunter 1968[1793]: 39; White 1962[1790]: 111; Worgan, George, letter to Richard Worgan, 12
18 June 1788, with journal fragment 20 January 1788 11 July 1788, Mitchell Library: 3; Tench
1979[1789/1793]: 35, 37, 50.
White 1962[1790]: 110, 111; Clark, Ralph, letter to Lt William Collins, 1 October 1788, Letterbook,
Mitchell Library.
Tench 1979[1789/1793]: 278; Smith 1992: 143.
Bradley 1788.
White 1962[1790]: 132, 134; Worgan, George, letter to Richard Worgan, 1218 June 1788, with
journal fragment 20 January 1788 11 July 1788, Mitchell Library: 33; Collins 1971[1798], 1: 1617,
3031; Tench 1979[1789/1793]: 50.
had been taken from their boat, the two culprits paddling away like lightening.
Their coxswain set off in pursuit, and, finding the jackets in a canoe beached on a
small island, reclaimed them and stole the canoe as well. His boat was followed
by a hail of spears from the enraged Eora men.39
At this early stage the thefts may have been opportunistic. Jackets, unlike
trousers, were the items left lying about when it was hot. It might have been
retaliation for the convicts and sailors thefts of Eora tools and implements they
found about the camps to sell to the people on the transports.40 The European
objects the Eora desired and later demanded were usually practical things,
like steel axes and fish hooks, food and drink, while they left the useless beads
and mirrors on the sands. So jackets seem odd things to target. They may have
seen them potential trade items, adding them to the other goods that passed
from hand to hand along the customary trade routes up and down the coast
and between the coast and the interior. But as shown, the Eora of the Sydney
coastal region did not customarily wear clothes, even when they were cold, so
it is unlikely that they were wanted for warmth or protection. In any case these
garments would at first have been extremely uncomfortable if not completely
impractical for such active people, who used their backs, shoulders and arms
constantly for paddling canoes, carrying children, for throwing spears with
deadly accuracy, for parrying with shield against the spears of enemies. One
man who tried on a shirt seemed appeared to be deprived of the use of his
limbs.41 Wearing a jacket would have involved considerable discomfort and a
sacrifice of mobility, at least in the beginning. What could have induced warriors
to want, and then wear, such a garment?
By early 1790, the Eoras keenness on jackets had filtered through to the higher
echelons of the colony. On one harbour outing Phillip and his companions saw a
group of women on a point near Rose Bay (Pannerong). They throwd a Jacket
& several other things onto the beach there. Phillip might have been thinking
of an early excursion he made in Broken Bay, when a woman had wanted his
greatcoat so badly, she sang, danced, flirted, wheedled and wept for it, all to
no avail. Later he ordered mens frocks and jackets for the Eora, writing that
these would do for men and women alike.42 But it was men alone who would
commandeer jackets.
In the boat with them that day off Rose Bay was an Eora man, Woollarawarre
Bennelong. Relations had fallen to such a parlous state during the previous year
that Phillip resorted to kidnapping warriors in order to force open a means of
communication. The young man Bennelong, grabbed from the beach at Manly in
November 1789, proved to be an enthusiastic student and admirer of everything
the Berewalgal showed him. Phillip dressed Bennelong over-warmly in a coat
in an attempt to alter his physical sensibilities, to make him feel the cold, and so
39
40
41
42
Collins 1971[1798], 1: 52.

Collins 1971[1798], 1: 17, 23, 37.
Hunter 1968[1793]: 107.
Bradley 1790: entry 3 February; Worgan 1788: 25; Phillip cited in Maynard 1994: 62.
13
come to know his own nakedness.43 This first coat was thus a tool employed to
civilise the native. It was red, like those of the soldiers, though not made of fine
felted wool, but the coarsest red Kersey, a primitive sort of fabric.44 Bennelong
eventually rejected it. He escaped from Government House in May 1790, leaving
his clothes behind. The governor and officers were deeply disappointed: another
cross-cultural experiment seemed to have failed.
But four months later Bennelong summoned Phillip to meet him on Manly
beach, and a boat was hurriedly loaded with wine, beef and bread, and a
jacket or two, as well as knives.45 Jackets played an important, symbolic role
at this meeting. Bennelong was presented with two jackets, one each by Phillip
and David Collins, and he put them both on. Another warrior Coleby, a rival
of Bennelongs, who had been kidnapped with him, but escaped, was also
presented with a jacket, but he held [it] in his hand, not knowing how to put
it on himself. Not to be outdone by Bennelong, Coleby begged [Lieutenant
Waterhouse] to put on the jacket which had been given which Mr Waterhouse
did for him.46 It would have been quite a feat, for these were older-style military
coats, long at the back and each as heavy as a blanket.47 Nevertheless, these gifted
jackets, while certainly second hand, were not ragged cast-offs, or made of crude
fabric. Wearing them may have reinforced the warriors status as leaders and
diplomats; it was also a sign of goodwill and politesse towards the Berewalgal.
Then, suddenly, the conversation and good relations evaporated. Phillip was
steadily surrounded by warriors and then speared in the shoulder by a man
he did not know.48 The jackets and other gifts did not protect him, for they did
not deter the warriors from what appears to have been the true purpose of the
meeting: ritual punishment.
The spearing, though terrifying, in fact marked a turning point in relations.
Phillip recovered quickly, and within weeks a significant reconciliation took place
on a beach on the north shore opposite Sydney in November 1790. Bennelong
and his new wife Barangaroo, their friends and family, received visits from
parties of officers bearing gifts and food and jackets. Bennelong was presented
with many gifts, but the one that pleased him more than anything else was yet
another jacket: a military red coat with silver epaulets.49
Gifts of jackets were not without precedent in British imperial history. Craig
Wilcox points out that in North America, giving red coats to Indian confederates
in the perpetual frontier fighting against other Indians or against the French and
Spanish was common. They were strategic gifts, meant to forge alliances in the
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
14
King 17861790: 395; Clendinnen 2003: 108109.

King 17861790: 395; National Museum of the American Indian, Wool Trade Cloth in the
Collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Glossary, 2001, <http://www.
nmai.si.edu/wooltrade/glossary.shtml>.
Hunter 1968[1793]: 141.
Hunter 1968[1793]: 141.
Brad Manera, pers comm, 16 March 2011; see Fosten 1989: 27, loc cit; Smith 2007: 97.
Phillip, in Hunter 1968[1793]: 307308.
Phillip, in Hunter 1968[1793]: 311.
embattled beachheads [of] Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. But Wilcox does not

see the New South Wales jacket-gifts in this way. After all, it made little sense in
Australia where frontier fighting was far smaller in scale, so the practice must
have been merely an unthinking continuation of a tradition.50
Yet Phillip was embattled, and strategic gifting precisely is what was occurring
on the shores of Sydney Harbour. Phillip could not control the movements of
convicts, soldiers or sailors into Aboriginal country and they continued to be
attacked, beaten and killed by Aboriginal warriors. Neither would he punish
the warriors, even if he could, for his orders were to treat the natives kindly
and he had forbidden anyone from shooting or otherwise harming them. But
fear, hatred and a longing for payback began to writhe among the convict
populace. Phillip did not want a rebellion on his hands; but nor did he yet
know much about the Eora their numbers, their intentions. It was vital that a
communication be opened so that the colonists could convey both their friendly,
peaceable intentions and their superior strength of arms.51
In Bennelong, then, the officers saw hope for peace between the two races, for
they regarded him as a leader and a go-between, someone with whom they could
negotiate, someone they hoped could control his people and stop the killings.
The fine red jacket was a diplomatic tool in this process, a gift of esteem, an
expression of hoped-for alliance and co-operation. As it turned out, their hopes
were misplaced; and Bennelong seems to have understood and used the jacket
in different ways altogether.
Shortly after that first reconciliation on the north shore, Bennelong and his
people finally came into Sydney. The inclusion of Aboriginal people in the town
had been official British policy as well as the genuine hope of Phillip and several
of the officers from the start.52 Bennelong and Barangaroo were frequent visitors
to Government House, and Bennelong always wore the favourite scarlet coat
when he was in Sydney. As David Hansen points out, this kind of mimicry
was not merely flattery of the Berewalgal leaders, but a customary form of
respect.53 Again, just wearing it would have involved considerable effort and
inconvenience, for it would have hung down to the back of his knees and felt
heavy, hot, prickly. Whether Bennelong also wore it in Eora country away from
Sydney is unknown, but it is possible that the red coat reinforced his meteoric rise
in status among his own people, too. Bennelong had brokered this breakthrough
with the Berewalgal, they were his new allies. He seemed to be very busy
shoring up his position with the other Eora groups, the Kamaygal and Gweagal
of Botany Bay and the powerful Cammeragal of Middle and North Harbours.54
Remembering the symbolic and visual power of the red coat, Bennelongs new
jacket may have been a powerful asset in his ongoing negotiations with the other
groups.
50
51
52
53
54
Wilcox 2009: 13, 1516.

Karskens 2009: 361371.
Tench 1979[1789/1793]: 53.
Hansen 2007: 2732; Brad Manera, pers comm, 16 March 2011.
Tench 1979[1789/1793]: 200; Phillip, in Hunter 1968[1793]: 314, 315; Smith 2001: 6869.
15
Fig 6. SJ Neele, Benelong a Native of New Holland, c1800.

Source: National Library of Australia, PIC S4297.
Bennelong was given many presents of clothing, but he often took garments
with him when he left Sydney and returned without them. This was regarded
by jealous white observers as evidence of savage, childish wastefulness, but it is
likely he was using them as gifts or for trade. Nevertheless, he kept at least one
16
other coat, for an early nineteenth century portrait shows him wearing a tailcoat
(probably dark blue), the collar turned up and without a shirt.55 It is possible,
then, that the Aboriginal way of wearing jackets straight over the skin, keeping
the cicatrices on the chest visible was established in the mid to late 1790s.
*
In the decades following, jacket-taking, gifting, trading and wearing continued,
and can be glimpsed in places far from Sydney. These glimpses are rare and
scattered, but I believe they represent a continued practice. The colony
expanded relentlessly, first to Parramatta in 1790; then to the HawkesburyNepean River and its tributaries from 1794; and then to the southern regions
around Campbelltown and Appin after 1809. The town of Sydney itself had not
appropriated much land, and violent conflict there was limited to skirmishes
and attacks on individuals or small groups who ventured into the areas around
it. But when the Berewalgal began to take much larger areas of land for farms,
they ignited a series of frontier wars. Aboriginal people resisted the invasion
of their country, first at Prospect, then on the Hawkesbury (1795c1809) and
finally in the southern region (18141816). This was not a war with two distinct
sides, though, for settlers also befriended Aboriginal people, giving them maize
and clothing in the hope of continued good relations. Settlers also exploited
the politics of tribal relations, forming alliances with some Aboriginal warriors
against their enemies.56
War, friendship and revenge often twisted together on the frontier. In the foothills
of the Blue Mountains in 1799, Aboriginal warriors killed two Hawkesbury settler
men, Thomas Hoskisson and James Wimbow, while they were out on a hunting
trip together. Hoskisson had always been on good terms with the Aboriginal
people, but Wimbow had taken the daughter of one of the warriors to live with
him. In retribution for their deaths, settlers at the Green Hills (later Windsor)
killed two adolescent Aboriginal boys, Jemmy and Little George. These boys
were well-known among the settlers, who had probably seen them grow up. The
term boy, is misleading, for although they were only aged 16 or younger, they
had been initiated and were therefore warriors.57
Before the killings three Aboriginal boys, including the two victims, had
approached James Metcalfe as he worked on a farm, who invited them into the
house. One of the boys, the biggest of the three picked up Metcalfes jacket,
which was lying on the ground, and put it on before he followed the others
into the house. It must have hung loose on the slim young frame, because once
inside, he was seized, the coat was immediately pulled off, and a tomahawk was
found hidden in the sleeve. What followed was a sort of rough trial, with more
and more angry settlers arriving to interrogate the boys on the murders of the
55
56
57
Neele 1803.
Karskens 2009: chapters 5, 13.
Collins 1971[1798], 2: 281; R v Powell and others, 1516 October 1799, in Minutes of Proceedings,
Court of Criminal Judicature, State Records of NSW, X905: 323, 329362.
17
settler men. One boy escaped, but the other two were bound, taken to a barn,
and shot and stabbed to death. Their bodies were later found, and the killers
were arrested and tried for murder.58
Why did the oldest boy put the jacket on? The accused white men insisted it was
to hide the weapon in the sleeve and therefore bespoke his violent intentions.
But the boys, like all warriors, were openly armed anyway, with spears and
womeras. These were also taken from them. Putting on the coat may have been
a ritualistic gesture: to meet with white men, a warrior put on one of their coats,
as a sign ofwhat? Politeness? A mimesis which was a customary form of
respect in this most urgent and dangerous of situations? An acknowledgement
of the seriousness of the boys predicament? The fact that it was Metcalfs coat
suggests they were claiming a sort of allegiance with him. The boys clearly knew
him well, and, indeed, he was the only one in the room that night who spoke
up against killing them, while the rest bayed for blood. But neither Metcalfe
nor his coat could protect them from the terrible act that followed, any more
than Hoskissons gifts to his Aboriginal friends had protected him. The coat was
stripped off as soon as the boy entered the room, suggesting that the settlers, too,
knew its meaning and intent, and would have none of it. It was as if the shared
understandings, objects and rituals which had grown between the two groups
had to be stripped away for this kind of frontier justice to be enacted.
Right from the start, the colony at Sydney Cove was a place of movement.
Far from being a frightening alien gaol, the bush, waterways and coastlines
constantly beckoned explorers, fortune-hunters, tourists and sightseers,
escapees, foragers, fugitives and eventually cattle thieves and bushrangers. The
latter, of course, are only vaguely glimpsed in official records; they are a kind of
constant, murmuring underside of colonial history.59
Their journeys also involved encounters and negotiations with Aboriginal
people, and here too coats and jackets were objects of desire and trade. Settlers
who went on exploratory journeys might find themselves jacketless through
trading. One 1804 traveller in search of curiosity walked to the Cowpastures,
already a popular rambling and tourist destination, and found the Aboriginal
people there (probably the Murringong) drove hard bargains. Desperate to
possess a clutch of young emus, the traveller managed to talk the Aboriginal
man out of demanding all his clothing in exchange for them. But the black
man would not budge on the jacket, despite the white mans protestations that
he would fall victim to the extreme coldness of the night. That objection he
effectually silenced by demanding, What for I should be colder when I had
parted with my jacket than he himself was that never had one?. This argument
was unanswerable wrote the flummoxed traveller and as I did not choose to
part with the birds, I was necessitated to deal for them in his own way.60
58
R v Powell and others, 1516 October 1799, in Minutes of Proceedings, Court of Criminal
Judicature, State Records of NSW, X905.
59 Karskens 2009: chapter 9, 356ff.
60 Sydney Gazette, 23 September 1804.
18
It was September, so the locals had just emerged from the winter months, when
temperatures can fall below 0 Celsius. Here, then, one reason for demanding
jackets may well have been practical for warmth and protection in the same
way that certain other useful European artefacts were readily adopted: steel
axes and fishhooks, for example, and glass, which could be fashioned into sharp
blades, scrapers and spear points.
Even as far away as Jervis Bay, 150 kilometres south of Sydney, Aboriginal men
sought jackets. In October 1805, a group of sealers led by ex-convict Joseph
Murrell landed in Jervis Bay to collect water for a voyage to King Island in Bass
Strait. They were attacked by hostile warriors, Murrell was speared in the back
and the crew retreated to nearby Bowen Island. There a seemingly more friendly
group visited them, and begged a jacket or two. They promised to bring fish,
and left four boys as hostage with Murrells group. But perhaps the voyagers in
fact took these boys by force, because these wretches soon returned accompanied
by a vast number of others armed in their canoes. A battle of muskets and spears
ensued, two warriors were killed and several more wounded. A third attack saw
the voyagers depart speedily in their whaleboat, leaving their provisions and
necessaries and presumably jackets behind.61
Clearly, the demand for jackets had spread far from Sydney. But why did the
warriors of Jervis Bay want them? For warmth? For meeting with the strangers?
Either way they continued to be key items in the constellation of things which
crossed over in what Philip Jones calls the frontier zone: that edgy, dangerous,
unpredictable place. In 1809 the crew of the vessel Hawkesbury were similarly
attacked at isolated Mangrove Point on the lower Hawkesbury River. Armed
men clambered aboard as they were sleeping. They responded with musket fire,
killing at least two warriors. Still the people on the shoreline tried to get them
to land, and exposed a jacket with some other articles they had stolen, at the
same time inviting one of the people to come for them. The white men thought
it a ruse, a deadly lure. Or was it a desperate attempt to make peace, stop
further killings? Either way, this jacket had been acquired in what was then still
Aboriginal country, isolated from towns and settlers. It was clearly considered
a valuable object, a bargaining tool, something which might serve an important
purpose.
Aboriginal men closer to the urban areas also continued to take jackets from
carts or boats where the whites left them.62 The garments disappeared along the
trade or exchange networks; at other times they were worn by the thief himself.
Jackets appear to have been adopted as the customary dress of resistance
fighters. The warrior Tedbury, son of the famous resistance warrior Pemulwuy,
was arrested at Pennant Hills in 1805 after a series of attacks and raids on settlers
in the region. Marched under guard back to Parramatta, he nearly escaped by
61
62
Sydney Gazette, 27 October 1805; see also 3 November 1805.

Sydney Gazette, 30 December 1804, 3 June 1815.
19
flipping his jacket and slipping away.63 I suspect that the Aboriginal gangs who
bailed up travellers on the Parramatta Road with the same swagger and defiance
as white bushrangers were wearing jackets too.
*
Aboriginal people have lived in Sydney ever since Bennelong, his family and
friends came in in late 1790. They came out of curiosity, having heard the
stories about the town which moved like wildfire across the country. They joined
Aboriginal people already living there, drawn by the great resources of food and
drink that Sydney offered, and by the great contests and corroborees held in the
town. They camped in the bushland encircling the town, or on the north shore.
Some probably came to be close to children who went, or were taken, to live in
the white peoples houses.64
It is worth remembering what the British originally expected Aboriginal
people to do when they settled down in town among the whites, since these
expectations shaped the way they described them. They envisaged the Eora
living harmoniously among them, living in proper houses, speaking English,
cooking and eating English-style food, exercising public decorum and of course
wearing clothes. As for economic use, the British thought that Aborigines
might make quite a serviceable people, performing the lowliest and hardest
labour, tending stock, sailing boats, drawing water and hewing wood. Officially
Aboriginal people were British subjects, bound and protected by British laws,
though in practice they had no such rights or responsibilities.65
What is striking about the earliest urban Aboriginal people is the way they so
quickly forged new lives among the invaders in the growing port town, in ways
which were nonetheless compatible with their customary habits and laws. They
still camped in the open in the bushland that surrounded the town, or sheltered
in traditional bark and timber gunyahs. They continued to eat familiar foods
shellfish and fish cooked quickly over a fire but also adopted maize and bread,
and the pleasures of alcohol and tobacco. Fishing provided most of their income,
for they found a ready market for fresh fish and oysters among the townsfolk
and they also mastered European-style fishing boats. From the earliest years,
too, Eora men in particular made deliberate, almost hyper-masculine, claims to
urban space through their initiation rituals, fights and the great contests which
enforced Aboriginal Law. Aboriginal urban geography thus overlaid the white
one, and of all these places, the great contest ground at the south end of Hyde
Park (now the site of the Sydney Anzac Memorial) was pre-eminent.66
As for clothing, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, most
observers reported that Aboriginal people in Sydney continued to go about the
63
64
65
66
20
Sydney Gazette, 19 May 1805.

Karskens 2009: chapter 12.
Collins 1971[1798], 1: 543; Tench 1979[1789/1793]: 239; Phillip, in Hunter 1968[1793]: 352.
Karskens 2009: 431446.
town unclothed, and artists depicted them that way too.67 Old colonists were
apparently completely accustomed to this, though newcomers were invariably
shocked. I met a native today, gentleman convict John Grant told his mother in
1804, a tall, black, stark naked Man! By Job, it startled me at first, for the fellow
turned a corner suddenly near me, in the town.68 Settler-on-the-make Christiana
Brooks spluttered that it was disgraceful to a town such as Sydney to meet
natives of both sexes entirely naked.69 Even in the 1820s they appear in some
images unclothed, and some Aborigines worked that way as well. A visiting
Russian captain reflected mildly that one soon gets accustomed to looking at
them, and does so without disgust.70 Evidently it was the Europeans who had
to adjust, not the other way around.
By the late 1810s, though, Aboriginal people always asked their visitors for
clothing, and jackets and coats had become the dress of choice among Aboriginal
men living in or visiting Sydney those who chose to wear anything at all. They
wore the garments in distinctive ways. In contrast to the fashionable tight-fitting
jackets and slim pants of the higher ranks of white men, and the soldiers closecut red coats, the warriors jackets were ill-fitting sometimes too tight, but more
often loose-fitting and worn unbuttoned, without trousers or shirt. The looser fit
would have been more comfortable to people who normally went unclothed;
free movement was essential for hunting, fighting, hurling spears or defending
oneself. The too-tight fit buttons straining across chests, cloth straining under
arms suggests that wearing the jacket was considered necessary, even if
uncomfortable: a jacket that was too small was better than none. The unbuttoned
coat would also leave the all-important cicatrices visible, while absent trousers
could leave no doubts about gender.
Jacketed warriors were often portrayed with the spears they always carried. One
jacketed man in Earles lithograph Natives of N. S. Wales as seen on the streets of
Sydney carries a traditional club a waddy. Others added additional small items
of dress. Jedat, a warrior from the Nepean River, wears a red head scarf (with a
clay pipe tucked jauntily into it), together with a cascade of kangaroo teeth on
his chest. Bungaree customarily wore a clay-daubed plaited headband with his
jackets, as well as the engraved gorget presented to him by Governor Macquarie.71
67
68
69
70
71
See Evans c1808, New South Wales, View of Sydney from the West side of the Cove No 1,
watercolour, Mitchell Library; Lewin 1808, Australian and his wife, pencil sketch, Mitchell
Library; Eyre c1808.
Grant 2000[1804]: 38.
Brooks cited in Maynard 1994: 64.
Bellingshausen 1981[1820]: 43; see Carmichael 1829a, b, George Street from the wharf and
Sydney from the Parramatta Road, intaglio engravings, National Gallery of Australia.
Freycinet 2001[1824]: plates opp 124, 306; Pellion 1819a, Sauvages de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud
(dapre nature dans leur Camp pres de Sidney (20 dec. 1819), watercolour, Mitchell Library;
Pellion 1819b, Drawings and etchings of Nepean and Springwood Aboriginal men by and after
Alphonse Pellion, Mitchell Library; Earle c1830, Natives of N. S. Wales as seen in the streets of
Sydney, lithograph, National Library of Australia; Le Jeune 1824; Mikhailov 1820, Sketches of
Aboriginal people, in album of photographs of drawings and watercolours in the State Russian
Museum, Leningrad, copies held in National Library of Australia; Artist unknown c1838, Real
Life in Sydney, lithograph, Mitchell Library.
21
Many of the coats were indeed military coats. The symbolic prestige and power
they held in the contact period appears to have continued. In Pellions 1819
sketch of the men from the Nepean, Tara wears a double breasted civilian tailcoat
in dark blue wool, a garment commonly worn as undress by military personnel.
Peroa, standing side on, wears a sleeved military waistcoat made of unbleached
wool with yellow facings which had probably belonged to a soldier of the 46th
regiment (the South Devons). These were the items of undress that the soldiers
wore for ordinary duties. The regiment was in Sydney between 1814 and 1817,
so this jacket was not a discontinued item, but current issue uniform. Peroa must
have acquired it relatively recently when the sketch was made.
Fig 7. Alphonse Pellion, Jedat et Nemare, pencil sketch, 1819.

Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXD 923/2.
Pellions other sketches and notes were later transformed into an engraved
composite image showing Nepean men Jedat, Tara and Nemare from the waist
up. Jedat (with bandana and pipe) sports a red officers coatee with yellow
facings. These garments, introduced around 1790, were much lighter, shorter
and more comfortable than the coats that Bennelong and Coleby had worn two
decades before. Jedats coatee could have also have originated with the South
Devonshires, or it might have come from the New South Wales Corps. Tara
appears again in his blue tailcoat, though one sleeve is shown torn off with
22
artificial jaggedness by the artist. Meanwhile Nemare wears a convict-issue

yellow waistcoat, which would have been a more comfortable option. His hair is
dreadlocked and the cicatrices are clearly visible on his upper arm.72
Fig 8. E Forget, Nouvelle-Holland, Port Jackson, Sauvages des environs de la

Riviere Nepean, print, based on sketches by Alphonse Peron, Paris c1822.
Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXD923/5.
One of the coats shown in Augustus Earles 1830 tableau Natives of N. S. Wales
as seen on the streets of Sydney is also identifiable: the man with the waddy
standing with his back to the artist wears an officers coatee. This one is red
with buff facings, the little tails nattily turned up to reveal the buff. It originated
either with the 48th Regiment in New South Wales between 1817 and 1824
or the 3rd Regiment, three detachments of which were in Sydney from 1823
to 1827, the same time Earle was visiting. The fact that warriors were wearing
officers coats is significant. While soldiers were forbidden to sell or give away
their uniforms, officers purchased their own, and were thus free to gift or trade
them. It is possible that warriors had personal links with the officers from whom
they acquired their jackets, in the same way that warriors in the early contact
period had exchanged names with officers, and were known by these European
names long after their namesakes had departed.73
72
73
Brad Manera, pers comm, 11 April 2011.

Brad Manera, pers comm, 11 April 2011; Sydney Gazette, 15 January 1809; Smith 2007: 22, 93, 100.
23
Fig 9. Augustus Earle, Natives of N. S. Wales as seen in the streets of

Sydney, c1826.
Source: National Library of Australia, NK1239/3.
A close comparison of Earles picture, itself made up of separate sketches, and

the anonymous lithograph Real Life in Sydney, reveals the extent to which
these images were recycled, manipulated and rendered increasingly grotesque
in the 1830s. The man in the coat reappears in the same garment, tails and all, but
is now depicted in a fight. The women no longer carry fish but drink from the
black glass bottles. The same child appears, in the same pose, his belly horribly
distended. The other figures are wearing the convict, naval or military front fall
trousers and slop shirts of two decades earlier.
Bungarees famous red coat very likely the one given to him by Macquarie in
1822 just before the Governor left the colony signalled his status as leader and
representative of his people, at least to the Europeans. It was the uniform of a
Brigadier General, or a generals Aide-de-Camp, though the elaborate epaulettes
are missing. Fascinatingly, in Earles portrait, Bungaree wears the coat it as it
would have been worn by a general on parade, with the front buttoned back
to reveal the dark facing, rather than simply buttoned up. This would have
involved a complicated set of hooks and eyes, and considerable time and trouble.
24
Bungaree also wears the correct bi-corne hat and sash for this uniform, though
the hat is missing its feather hackle. The baggy, ragged slop trousers he wears are
thus a striking contrast to the careful correctness of the uniform.74
Fig 10. Augustus Earle, Portrait of Bungaree, a native of New South Wales,
c1826.
Source: National Library of Australia, NK118.
74
Brad Manera, pers comm, 11 April 2011.

25
But Macquaries coat was no strategic gift, as Phillips had been to Bennelong.
Macquarie believed that the war between Aborigines and settlers was over, and
that a permanent peace had been established. He wrote that he gave Bungaree
his own old uniform to dress him out as chief. It was a genuine, very personal
parting gift, bespeaking friendship and farewell, but it also reflects the viceregal couples taste for the fashionably exotic, their love of the visual. Bungaree
was the Macquaries friend and favourite, so perhaps there was an element of
dressing him up in the generals coat, for visual effect, an eye-catching spectacle
of reversal: the striking red coat on the black skin, the symbol of prestige and
power on the body of a native man.75
Bungarees own personal flamboyance and taste combined spectacularly with
his role as welcomer of ships, go-between, peacemaker and elder, and his public
persona in Sydney (in 1829 the Sydney Gazette declared firmly that Boongaree
is identified with Sydney).76 The red coat became almost inseparable from the
man himself, an object of mystique and meditation. Yet Bungaree had a much
larger wardrobe of coats and elaborate hats, including a Russian great coat with
frogs, a drab brown suit, a bright blue dress coat with gold frogs and loops, a
full dress naval uniform, and a canary yellow convict suit, and he wore them all
at different times.77
So red coats and other military garb very likely continued to command attention,
and carry status. They offered, too, the beauty of cut, colour and embellishment,
and possibly they also represented the bonds of friendship.78 But the warriors
did not shun the humbler garments the stigma of yellow convict clothing,
for example, did not necessarily cross over into Aboriginal culture, as seen
demonstrated in the case of Nemare and his waistcoat. Bungaree was seen in
his yellow suit, too, and the warriors also begged, bartered or stole the humble
blue gurrah convicts or labourers jackets. Again, it seems that having access to
a jacket or coat was more important than what type it was. Perhaps the humbler
garments were approximations and substitutes for the military jackets.
Most telling of all is the way the warriors so easily shucked the jackets off when
back at their own camps, or for corroborees and contests. When Bungaree
visited Frenchman Rene Lesson in 1822 on his way to corroborees and contests,
he appeared a transformed man. The coat and plumed hat were gone, his
powerful body was dusted with red ochre and painted with red and white
clay, his canoe filled with spears and clubs.79 The warriors moved easily back
and forth between white and Aboriginal worlds, and they had made the white
world partly their own.
75
76
77
78
79
26
Macquarie 1822: entry 11 February ; Wilcox 2009: 21.

Sydney Gazette, 9 July 1829.
Smith 1992: 153.
Wilcox 2009: 2021.
Lesson, cited in Smith 1992: 128129.
Fig 11. Phillip Parker King, Boon-ga-ree aboriginal of new St Wales 1819 who
accompanied me on my first voyage to the N W coast, 1819.
Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXC767.
27
To the Europeans, the warriors seemed to be deliberately subverting the

purposes of modesty and propriety. Wearing clothes was considered a key sign
of the civilisation process in action, for it was assumed that simply being in
the presence of clothed white people would open Aboriginal eyes to their own
nakedness, awaken a sense of shame, and teach them modesty. But after 40
years, some Aboriginal people still customarily went unclothed. Women wore
blankets wrapped around them like togas, or like mantles, with holes cut in
the middle, while the men wore jackets in ways that caused consternation, for
they especially hate clothes for the lower part of the body. Lesson spluttered
in 1822: The stubbornness of this race in rejecting even the narrow loincloth
would deeply astonish the moralist. (Jacques Arago added highly improbable
loincloths to his even more improbable pictures of Aboriginal men.) Despite
the obvious and rather radical adaptation involved in wearing jackets (not to
mention shaving, adopting metal hatchets, eating new foods and adapting to
town life), another French visitor, Hyacinthe De Bougainville wrote in 1825 they
have remained absolutely the same since the Europeans set foot here.80
There were some Aboriginal men who wore trousers: the sailors. Since 1791
they had joined crews on the coastal, sealing and international voyages, and
adopted the wide trousers, round jackets and straw hats of sailors. Despite
their contribution to early trade and exploration, and their trousers, they too
were condemned. Louis de Freycinet decided that he could not count them as
civilised natives because they have been so degraded by the intemperate use
of strong liquor that they are not of much use to anybody.81
The other common response was ridicule, sometimes mingled with horror and
disgust, or pity for these poor creatures, who could not know how to wear
clothes properly, and seemed to be the victims of cruel hoaxes. The less-thanenchanted Lesson described Bungarees
Bowing and scraping, his grotesque way of dressing made him look even
more ridiculous. He wore an old dragoons helmet, and around his chest
flapped a toggled greatcoat left to him by the last Russian expedition.82
Surgeon Peter Cunningham amusingly contrasted Bungarees gold-laced blue
coat with his bare and broad platter feet.83
The Russian visitors on the ships Vostok and Mirnyy arrived in 1820 expecting to
see the natives of New South Wales unclothed. But when Bungarees welcoming
party boarded the ship, Captain Bellingshausen could find no proper way to
describe them. He wrote of Bungarees trousers, headband and breastplate, his
wife Matoras blanket, and the kangaroo teeth in her hair. And yet he wrote: all
were naked.84 Their artist Pavel Mikhailov made beautiful sketches of Bungaree,
80
81
82
83
84
28
Lesson (1822) and Bougainville (1825), cited in Dyer 2005: 189, 196, 180; see Arago 1971[1823].
de Bougainville 1999[1825]: 174; Freycinet 2001[1824]: 300.
Lesson, cited in Dyer 2005: 181.
Cunningham 1966[1827]: 74.
Bellingshausen 1981[1820]: 34.
Matora and the sailors Mahroot and Salamander, but he must have asked
them to remove their clothing, so he could depict them in their proper native
state.85 Here it becomes clear that clothing was associated with the corruption,
the debasement, the brutality and the profligacy which was introduced among
them.86 Nakedness bespoke savage life: wild and primitive, but at least pure,
unspoiled and genuine. Perhaps most disturbing to unaccustomed white
eyes was the Aboriginal combination of dress and undress, this tatterdemalion
upending of every expectation. They were the same dreadful sort of half-world
clothes from which Kerr and Kirby recoiled a century and a half later.
*
Pity, revulsion, annoyance, laughter, unease, a taste for the exotic: these were the
responses of visiting Europeans to Aboriginal jacket-wearing, the lenses through
which they saw them. These lenses offer insights into the way longstanding
conventions of perception shaped the Europeans view, and the pictures and
texts they made. But what do the longer view, the moment of exchange, and the
wider social and cultural contexts, suggest about the jackets from an Aboriginal
perspective? What are the interpretative possibilities? Clearly, they were
desired by Aboriginal men from the early years, the practice spread quickly
into the vaster Aboriginal hinterland, and the garments were steadily acquired
through gift, trade or theft. The glimpses available suggest that this practice
cannot be explained as empty mimicry, by European coercion, or as signs of
impoverishment and culture loss. They suggest a third way of seeing, one
which moves beyond the binary of pure, unchanging savage/corrupted outcast.
They suggest a syncretic culture, and hidden dynamics of contact, negotiation
and concession which reach back to the earliest years of colonisation.87
David Hansen, in his fine meditation on Earles portrait of Bungaree, wrote of
the meanings of Aboriginal mimesis as the adoption of new gestures to permit
the maintenance of Aboriginal protocols of meeting under the new regime. He
focused on the dance of encounter in which Aborigines quickly mimed the
movements of the strangers in a ritual physical performance to neutralise
the charged, uncertain and dangerous space of the meeting.88 Jacket-wearing
may represent an early example of these new protocols, this mimetic strategy of
dancing between the very same and the very different.89 In this scenario, coats
and jackets were sought after so that black men, particularly younger men, could
meet white men with the proper rituals and gestures in those charged spaces.
It was a way of neutralising the power of the Europeans, with their deadly geerubber (muskets), of making the strange familiar, a gesture proclaiming: we
85
86
87
88
89
Mikhailov 1820, Sketches of Aboriginal people, in album of photographs of drawings and

watercolours in the State Russian Museum, Leningrad, copies held in National Library of
Australia.
Govett 1836: 202.
Rowse 1991: 5; Thomas 1999: 4346.
Hansen 2007: 32.
Taussig 1993: 129.
29
too are men, and warriors, we can match you, but we do it our way. Perhaps it
was also, as Anna Cole perceptively writes, a process of copying or imitating
something in order to change yourself as well as the thing you imitate.90
Warriors of particular renown, like Bennelong, may have inspired young, newlyinitiated boys to copy them. And while some jackets were traded, begged or
stolen, others signified links with their original owners: Bennelong with Phillip
and Collins; the Aboriginal boy with the settler James Metcalf. Bungarees
wardrobe represented his links not only with Governor Macquarie but the many
ships captains and visitors he welcomed into Sydney.
Most obvious is the profoundly gendered nature of the practice. Although there
were attempts by women to acquire jackets very early in the contact period, and
even though jackets were ordered for them well into the 1810s, jacket-wearing
appears to have been commandeered exclusively by men. This may well have
been prompted and encouraged by the way European men dealt officially and
diplomatically only with Aboriginal men. After the smallpox epidemic of 1789
especially, young, often aggressive men dominated cross-cultural relations,
partly because the disease appears to have killed a disproportionate number
of older people, and women, but also because Governor Phillip and the officers
deliberately dealt with younger warriors in their twenties and thirties, rather
than the old men who had earlier controlled all the meetings.91
In Sydney the jackets, along with metal hatchet, clipped beards, or shaved or
stubbly faces, marked out warriors in the post-invasion, post smallpox era. They
may have signified male status in a new order, as well as a continuation of the
old order, which Inga Clendinnen aptly calls a tough warrior culture. We might
link them with the determined efforts to create masculine ceremonial and ritual
spaces within the early town. Jackets may also have been a means by which
Aboriginal men could signify gender identification with white men the most
significant concern from the beginning and rough alliances, not as ciphers to
do their bidding, but as men meeting on equal terms to negotiate over power
and authority, over hunting and travelling, over goods and over women.
The fact that both jacket-wearing and being unclothed were customary also
suggests that personal, group or cultural choices were being made according
to circumstance. Here the possibilities are multiplied by what we do not, and
perhaps cannot, know. We see warriors wearing jackets when in town, and/
or in the company of whites, but observers suggested that they were shucked
off back at the camps. Bungaree, like the Arrernte decades later, wore clothes
for meetings with whites, and in the streets of the town, but took them off for
ceremonies and contests.92 Did jacket-wearing have any meaning outside the
towns, far from the farms and roads, away from the white people? Perhaps future
researchers will glimpse them, lying around the campsites, buttons glinting in
90
91
92
30
Cole 2010: 215.

Karskens 2009: 372378.
See footnote 76; Brock 2007: 1112.
the firelight. But then it will be necessary to re-imagine the vaster Aboriginal
world, as Tiffany Shellam has done in her study of the King Ya-nup of King
Georges Sound in Western Australia, a world in which the goings on at Sydney
Cove might well have been only one small aspect of Aboriginal relations and
politics.93
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Down: Australia 17881830, Michelle Hetherington and Seona Doherty (eds),
National Library of Australia, Canberra.
Rowse, Tim 1991, Interpretive possibilities: Aboriginal men and clothing,
Cultural Studies 5(1): 113.
Russell, Penny 2010, Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia, University
of New South Wales Press, Sydney.
Shellam, Tiffany 2009, Shaking Hands on the Fringes: Negotiating the Aboriginal
World at King Georges Sound, University of Western Australia Press, Perth.
Smith, Digby 2007, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars,
Lorenz Books, London.
Smith, Keith Vincent 1992, King Bungaree: A Sydney Aborigine Meets the Great
South Pacific Explorers, 17991830, Kangaroo Press, Sydney.
35
2001, Bennelong: The Coming in of the Eora, Sydney Cove 17881792, Kangaroo
Press, Sydney.
Taussig, Michael 1993, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses,
Routledge, New York.
Thomas, Nicholas 1999, Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture, Thames and
Hudson, London.
Watson, Iris 1998, Naked peoples: rules and regulations, Law Text Culture 4(1):
117.
Wilcox, Craig 2009, Red Coat Dreaming: How Colonial Australia Embraced the British
Army, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.
36
Making history: Torres Strait Islander

railway workers and the 1968 Mt Newman
track-laying record
Leah Lui-Chivizhe
On 8 May 1968, in the red desert of Western Australias Pilbara region, workers on
the Mt Newman railway construction project, contracted to Morrison-KnudsenMannix-Oman (MKMO), broke the world record in track laying. In one day they
laid, spiked, and anchored 4.35 miles (about 7 kilometres) of track, breaking the
previous record of 2.88 miles (4.6 kilometres) set in the United States in 1962.1
The Hedland Times reported that this historic event was due to the talents of
[MKMOs] engineers in developing new machines and techniques with the best
skills of its rail laying crew. Most significantly, the article pointed out that this
crew was largely composed of Thursday Islanders.2
While few Australians are aware of this historic event, within the Torres Strait
Islander community the track-laying record is well remembered and celebrated.
Stories are passed down to family members through anecdotes and songs, with
memories triggered by precious photographs and mementoes. The telling and
re-telling of the event draws from many first-hand accounts which have been
passed from one generation to the next, with the stories augmented by family
photographs and songs, both those sung by the railway workers and new songs
commemorating their achievements. More recently, there have been a number of
local, grass-root initiatives to celebrate the track-laying record through memorial,
film and song. My own contribution is an oral history project entitled Laying the
Tracks: Torres Strait Islanders in the Northern Railways, which will document the
history of Torres Strait Islander involvement in the northern Australian railways
between the 1950s and 1970s. This article explores the uses of memory in the
construction of history, and traces the little-known history of the Torres Strait
Islanders track-laying record through the use of historical documents and an
interview with a former railway worker, John Culear Kennell Snr.
Memory and history

The relationship between memory and history is complex and often contentious.
While memory is dependent on what can be remembered, historys primary focus
1
2
Rail laying breaks record, BHP Review, Spring 1968: 1621.

New World Record at Mt Newman, The Hedland Times, 16 May 1968.
37
is on what happened and the extent to which the past can be substantiated by
documentary evidence. Where academic history is generated through extensive
research and critical analysis, memory is reliant on the minds recollections and as
such, it is often cast as unreliable, selective, or faulty. While history is championed
for its perceived objectivity and universal authority, memory has been castigated
for its subjectivity and inability to deliver irrefutable factual knowledge. The
development of the oral history method as a tool for the democratisation of
history and for recording history from below has, however, contributed to a
closer affiliation.3
In discussing the tensions between history and memory, social historian and
oral history scholar Paul Thompson argues that instead of viewing memory and
history as oppositional, it is far more productive to see them as doing the same
things, perhaps with a different emphasis.4 Thompson proposes that personal
memory is the thread of every individuals life history, and as such is central
to how individuals understand themselves and their own sense of both history
and self.5 Public history, he argues, is the modern version of this, the functional
equivalent to the traditions passed down orally in non-literate societies but now
transmitted in a much more complicated way.6 While they may differ in their
scope and sophistication, memory and history are both undeniable ways of
relating to and relating the past.
Turning to the documentation of Indigenous history in Australia, the passing
down of stories through the generations has played an extremely significant role.
Whether documented in the form of oral histories, life stories or testimonials,
memory has contributed to a considerable and growing body of work. Examples
include Ann McGraths Born in the Cattle (1987), Deborah Bird Roses Hidden
Histories (1991), Peter and Jay Reads Long Time Olden Time (1991), and Nonie
Sharps Stars of Tagai (1993). While scholars can and do take issue with each other
over how oral histories are collected, interpreted and used, the publication of
these studies contributed to an opening up of the academy to the rich potential of
Indigenous memory and recollections of the past. Additionally, the burgeoning
field of Indigenous life writing, such as autobiographies, family biographies,
and memoirs, is a powerful indication that memory and oral history continue
to provide a critical avenue for Indigenous people to speak about their own
experiences. In Oliver Haags examination of the development of Indigenous
Australian autobiographies, he lists 177 published works between 1950 and
2004.7
The problem of how to establish truth in oral accounts can also beleaguer the
work of historians. Thompson argues that since memory is prone to containing
both facts and myths, it is important to both believe and doubt oral accounts.
Historians should, he argues, make use of what we can believe and also of what
3 Attwood 2005; Portelli 1998.
4 Thompson 1994: 2.
5 Thompson 1994: 2.
6 Thompson 1994: 2.
7 Haag 2008.
38
MAKING HISTORY
we must doubt, and to bring the two together in a new interpretation which
fuses both memory and history.8 In a similar vein, in Telling the Truth about
Aboriginal History Bain Attwood asserts that as historians began to grasp the
complexity of the relationship of memory to the past, they have come to see
that the greatest value of oral history lay in its capacity to provide something
other than factual or documentary knowledge.9 This, he goes on to argue, has
allowed the development of works that are informed by the assumption that
something of the truth of past events and/or their aftermath is evident in the
manner in which they have been remembered.10
Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose extends the discussion on truth in oral
history by offering an example of how one Aboriginal community in northern
Australia recognises truthfulness in oral accounts.11 Drawing from her oral
history research with the Yarralin people of the Northern Territory, Rose uses
the term faithfulness rather than truthfulness. She identifies three criteria for
assessing the faithfulness of an account place, presence, and genealogy. Place
refers to knowledge of the location of the event, as this can determine who can
speak about it and is also a form of proof. Presence refers to whether the speaker
is giving an eyewitness account of an event. Genealogy denotes that if it is not an
eyewitness account, the speaker can identify who told the story and whether or
not that person was an eyewitness. Rose argues that in the conscious deployment
of these criteria, Aboriginal standards for faithfulness are not inconsistent with
the kinds of criteria Western historians bring to bear on historical sources.12
Alessandro Portelli has argued for the capacity of oral histories to enlarge
historical knowledge.13 They can, he suggests, provide historians with new
ways of thinking about the past; their underexploited value resides in their
power to tell us not just what people did, but what they wanted to do, what
they believed they were doing, and what they now think they did.14 Viewing
oral accounts in the ways suggested by Portelli encourages us to think beyond
mere recollections, to explore peoples motivations and the layers of meaning
they attach to the events they witnessed or in which they participated.
The stories of the hundreds of Islander men who in the 1960s travelled to work on
the railways in northern Australia are no doubt imbued with nostalgia and most
certainly with pride for what they were able to achieve. If we take up Portellis
challenge, we are sure to find much, much more. The men were moving onto
the Australian mainland at a time of tremendous social and political change for
Indigenous people. They were also leaving behind a place where for decades
government practices included, in Martin Nakatas words, the control of labour,
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Thompson 1994: 12.

Attwood 2005: 174.
Attwood 2005: 175.
Rose 2003.
Rose 2003: 125.
Portelli 1998.
Portelli 1998: 67.
39
finances and freedom of movement and restrictions on consorting with others.15

In the red dust of the Pilbara, far away from the Torres Strait, the men were part
of the large multi-national workforce, pocketing their earnings and making a
name for themselves.
In the accounts of former railway workers and their families, little comes close
to the 1968 track-laying record. This singular event has captured the imagination
of Islanders and its memorialisation underscores Islanders determination that
it not be forgotten. The efforts of the many Islander men in railway construction
and the celebrated 1968 record might also be read as a natural progression,
given their fathers, uncles and grandfathers before them had also been hard
working manual labourers in the Straits fishing and shelling or marine industry.
Torres Strait Islanders and labour

Incorporation of Torres Strait Islanders into the regional labour force began in
the marine industry with the small-scale harvest of beche-de-mer or trepang.
After the first pearling station was established on Tudu (Warrior Island) in 1868,
Islander labour was increasingly sought after. As pearl and, later, trochus shell
began to be harvested in commercial quantities, the industries became reliant on
Islander labour, which was both local and cheap.16 In the main, Islanders were
employed as crew on pearling and fishing boats, often working under South
Pacific Islander skippers and from the late 1890s, with Japanese divers on the
pearl luggers.
In an effort to promote Islander self-reliance, a former member of the London
Missionary Society, FW Walker, established Papuan Industries Limited (PIL)
on Badu Island in 1904.17 The company gave Islander families and clans the
opportunity to purchase their own boats, paying them off as they sold their
harvest. Looking to service those islands that PIL could not, the Queensland
government established a parallel agency and before long Islanders from all
over the Strait began to buy luggers and cutters. Known as Company boats,
Islanders became owners working as equals alongside the private operators, the
Master pearlers for whom they had previously crewed. When PIL folded in
1930, the Queensland government took control over all Company boats, and
Islanders were soon working to the stringent conditions set by the government.18
In early 1936, a general strike unfolded across the region as Islanders refused
to work the government fishing boats. Protesting against the increased control
over Islanders lives, their demands included freedom of movement, the right
to run their own affairs, choice over where and with whom they could work,
and better pay rates.19 Jeremy Beckett described the strike as the first organised
Islander challenge to European authority, and while the government made
15
16
17
18
19
40
Nakata 2007: 131.

See Beckett 1987; Sharp 1993; Shnukal et al 2004.
Beckett 1987; Nakata 2007; Sharp 1993.
Beckett 1987; Sharp 1993.
See Sharp 1993 for a detailed analysis of the 1936 strike.
MAKING HISTORY
changes, which included convening the first conference of Islander Councillors

in 1937, they retained control of the Islanders boats and wages.20 By the late
1930s, the Director of Native Affairs reported that 510 men had been employed
in the marine industry in the 12 months to December 1939, with 26 Company
boats employing 378 men.21
The Second World War interrupted Islander employment in the marine industry.
The Australian government requisitioned large vessels for defence purposes
and immobilised smaller vessels for fear they may fall into the hands of enemy
soldiers.22 With the war on their doorstep and no other job prospects, many of
the men signed up with the defence forces. At the end 1942, 730 men had enlisted
and during what became known as army time, Islander service men got to be
part of a much bigger world, working alongside white soldiers and often doing
the same work for less pay.23
The end of the war would see many of the men return to work the fishing and
pearling boats, but they had been exposed to a different world during army
time, and this experience had changed them. Although Islanders were now
allowed to live on Thursday Island, and were being incorporated into a postwar version of colonialism in the region, rates of pay in the marine industry
and for those who remained in the defence forces continued to be a source of
discontent. Beckett argues that the recollections of army time and of those who
ventured to the mainland and experienced equal wages and freedom from
supervision added further to Islander dissatisfaction.24 As a consequence, more
and more Islander men sought permission to work on the mainland.
In 1948 approximately 80 Islander men were recruited to work as cane cutters
in the Gordonvale area of north Queensland.25 Others followed this initial group
of cane cutters, as a decline in the marine-based economy in the 1950s saw a
growing number of Islander men out of work and with few long-term local
employment prospects. The Annual Reports of the Department of Native Affairs
from the late 1950s to the early 1960s registered the governments concern
over the long-term sustainability of the trochus and pearling industry and the
consequences for employment in the region.26 In June 1955, the Director of Native
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Beckett 1987: 5455.

Queensland Home Secretarys Department 1940, Report upon the Operations of certain SubDepartments of the Home Secretarys Department Aboriginal Department, Information
contained in Report for the year ended 31st December, 1939, RS 25.4/3, Online collections,
Stolen Generations, To Remove and Protect [hereafter OC SG TRP], AIATSIS.
Queensland, Director of Native Affairs 1943, Native Affairs Information contained in Report
of Director of Native Affairs for the twelve months ended 30th June 1943, RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP,
AIATSIS; Hall 1995.
Hall 1995; Beckett 1987; Nakata 2007.
Beckett 1987: 8485.
Queensland Department of Health and Home Affairs 1948, Native Affairs Information
contained in Report of Director of Native Affairs for the Twelve months ended 30th June 1948,
RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP, AIATSIS.
Queensland, Chief Protector of Aboriginals 1957, Native Affairs Annual Report of Director
of Native Affairs for the year ended 30th June 1957, RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP, AIATSIS;
Correspondence, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Queensland State Archives, Item
41
Affairs reported that approximately 800 Islanders had moved onto the North
Queensland mainland. The Department had reported that Islander men and
their families had left their home islands of their own volition to seek work
in the cane fields, the Railways Departments service and other vocations.27 By
1965, the same department reported that 200 men were employed in railway
work on the Queensland mainland.28
While the departmental reports cited above give some context for the
movement of Islanders onto the mainland, they do so from the perspective of
the Queensland government. They offer glimpses of bureaucratic processes for
sourcing employment for Islanders on the mainland and for monitoring their
movements once they left the Torres Strait region. Other documented sources
include news stories, which in the main, painted a picture of Islander physical
prowess and an imputed suitability for hard manual work under an unforgiving
sun. Little has been documented about this history from the point of view of
Islanders themselves.
Yet the collective memory of Islanders is replete with stories of adventure and
achievement. Those interviewed for the Laying the Tracks project described
how some of the men would adopt pseudonyms in an effort to evade detection
by officials of the Queensland Department of Native Affairs. Young Islanders
would also add a few years to their real ages, having learnt from others that some
contractors wanted only adult workers. Venturing onto the mainland made for
many exhilarating experiences, and the stories of these railway men continue to
be told today. A recurring theme in these stories is the 1968 track-laying record.
Remembering Torres Strait Islander railway workers

The efforts of Islanders to commemorate the 8 May 1968 track-laying record
reveal the esteem with which many Islanders view this event. While 1 July
recognises the arrival of missionaries in the Torres Strait in 1871, and 3 June marks
the anniversary of the Mabo 2 Native Title decision in 1992, there is a nascent
movement towards adding 8 May to the calendar of Islander celebrations.
To date, there have been two key attempts to memorialise officially the 8 May
1968 track-laying record. In mid 1992, in response to requests from a Port
Hedland Torres Strait Islander organisation, BHP donated the Goodwin-Alco
M 636 locomotive engine (No. 5499) as a commemorative gift, in recognition of
the significant contribution of Torres Strait Islander men on the Port Hedland
to Mt Newman railroad construction project. With the ongoing support of BHP,
the Commonwealths Department of Environment and Heritage, the Australian
Railway Heritage Society, and a Perth-based Torres Strait Islander organisation,
ID715731.
Queensland Chief Protector of Aboriginals 1955, Native Affairs Annual Report of Director of
Native Affairs for the year ended 30th June 1955, RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP, AIATSIS.
28 Department of Native Affairs, Correspondence, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Annual
Reports 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, Queensland State Archives, Item ID715731.
27
42
MAKING HISTORY
the engine was transported to Perth, restored, and is now housed at the Rail
Transport Museum at Bassendean in Perth.29 The second and related activity
focused on the states north coast. Port Hedland is at the shipping end of the
Mt Newman railway line, and it is here that Islander community members in
northern Western Australia requested that a sculpture be erected in recognition
of Islander railway workers. Originally planned to mark the 40th anniversary
of the track-laying record on 8 May 2008, budget constraints have delayed its
construction and installation. Torres Strait Islanders in Western Australian remain
determined, however, to see the statue erected in the near future.30 Significantly,
these memorials were initiated by Islanders, many of who are former railway
workers or are the children of former railway workers. The permanent and public
nature of the memorials are a powerful means of inserting the contributions of
Torres Strait Islander railway workers into the public history of the development
of the mining transport infrastructure in northern Western Australia.
Taking the story of Islander railway workers to a wider audience was also an
objective for Indigenous filmmaker Kelrick Martin, who released Island Fettlers
in 2006.31 The 25-minute documentary tells the story of Tom Saylor, who left Erub
(Darnley Island) in the 1960s to work in the Pilbara. Saylors story gives a sense of
the challenges he and presumably many Islander men faced in coming to terms
with the heat and isolation of the Pilbara. Unlike many of the Islander men who
left at the end of the major construction jobs to chase lucrative contract work,
Saylor married a local woman and made his life in the Pilbara. His recollections
of railway experiences are interspersed with comments about how he and his
family were able to build and maintain a sense of islanderness in the Pilbara.
In making the documentary, Martin cited the importance of being able to tell
an Indigenous story from an Indigenous point of view. Having grown up in
Broome, about 600 kilometres north of Port Hedland, Martin recalled hearing
fragments of stories of Islander railway workers in his youth, and hoped that
after viewing the film, audiences walked away with a newfound respect for
Torres Strait Islanders and some sense of having learnt a previously hidden
episode of Australian history.32
Adding to the numerous stories, there are also many songs that recall the
experiences of the Islander railway workers. In 2005, Grail Films in Townsville
produced Eastern Torres Strait Islander Railway Songs, which recorded some of
these songs and several dances. The songs are performed by a group of Murray
Islanders in Torres Strait Broken and the Meriam language of Mer (Murray
Islands). With titles such as, Hamersley Iron, Mt Isa Line, Goods Train E,
the songs identify the many places where the men worked and their work
conditions. The singers include Elemo Tapim, who provides translations and
comments on the songs, which he says acknowledge the hard times, but also
celebrate the good times of railway life. Although the songs are not written in
29 G Pitt, pers comm, 25 August 2009.
30 G Pitt, pers comm, 25 August 2009.
31 Island Fettlers 2006.
32 Core Films Pty Ltd 2006.
43
a book, Tapim states, they are written in our minds.33 His participation in the
recording also exemplifies the three criteria identified by Rose as being important
for establishing truthfulness or faithfulness in oral histories. Having worked in
the railways in Western Australia and Queensland for close to 25 years, Tapim
is familiar with many of places that the songs relate to and he is able to identify
the songwriters and the context for many of the songs. He also acknowledges
that recording the songs contributes to the ongoing transmission of the history.
More recently, inspired by stories about the 1968 track-laying record, Thursday
Island band Northern Xposure recorded the song Railway Kebele as a tribute to
the Mt Newman tracklayers. The lyrics include the following verses:
I pick em up and lay em down
I turn those sleepers around
We have lots of miles to go
But we cannot leave.
We have broken the world record,
In blood, sweat and tears
We salute those who have passed on
But their memories are here.34
The song expresses a long-held and high regard for the 1968 tracklayers, and
their perseverance and commitment to finishing what they had been contracted
to do. Another project that draws inspiration from the 1968 track-laying record
is a musical production being developed in Queensland. In 2007 a communitybased arts group began working with Islander musicians, singers and actors,
conducting workshops with Torres Strait Islander communities around the
country. The group is developing a script and writing the music and lyrics for a
musical production to be based around the record-breaking event.35
These community-based initiatives proffer diverse ways of commemorating the
efforts and achievements of Torres Strait Islander railway workers, contributing
an added component to the memory and oral histories, what Bain Attwood calls
memorial discourses.36 With the exception of the musical production, they were
conceived by and continue to be directed by Indigenous people, predominantly
Torres Strait Islanders. As Islander railway stories are told in songs or on film,
these grassroots initiatives demonstrate that the memory of Islander involvement
in northern Australian railways is very much alive in the minds of Islanders and
is re-remembered and augmented in numerous ways. The projects described
above reveal the profound admiration that many Islanders have for the 1968
track-laying record makers.
33 Eastern Torres Strait Islander Railway Songs 2005.

34 Northern Xposure 2008: Railway Kebele track 2.
35 Railway history, Torres News, 20 April 2007.
36 Attwood 2005: 172.
44
MAKING HISTORY
Breaking the record

In October 1967, the American-Canadian consortium, Morrison-KnudsenMannix-Oman (MKMO), began construction on the 427 kilometre (265 miles) rail
link between Port Hedland and the Mt Newman iron ore mine at Mt Whaleback.
The material, machinery and labour requirements of the project were enormous.
The job required 870,000 sleepers and the first shipment was sourced from the
south of the state, pre-cut to the 2.6 metre requirements and pre-drilled before
being shipped to MKMOs Port Hedland storage yard. The total weight of the rail
required was 62,100 tons and was transported by sea from Port Kembla in New
South Wales. The 60kg/m lengths of rail were welded into strings of steel 440
metres long, stockpiled until required, and then loaded onto the steel carrying
trains. The job also required 18,000 tons of anchor plates, spikes, rail anchors and
other material. As the material requirements for the job were being organised,
preparation of the rail bed was also being carried out. Six quarries adjacent to
the railway sidings turned granite outcrops into the tons of ballast required to
form the rail bed, the compacted base on which the rail is laid, as well as the
material for bedding down the track once it has been laid. After watering and
compacting, the surface is smooth and pavement-like and after being graded
level, it was ready for track laying.37
The workforce, which peaked at 1343 in June 1968, had a strong international
constituency and included large numbers of Yugoslav, Greek, Italian and
Portuguese workers. They were accommodated in air-conditioned pre-fabricated
quarters in one of seven camps located along the length of the railroad. Torres
Strait Islander tracklayers, who were invariably referred to as Thursday Islanders,
comprised about one-third of the 137-man track laying team.38 In March 1968, the
tracklayers settled into a ten-hour day, working six days a week and the railway
line snaked slowly out of Port Hedland and headed toward Mt Newman.
Local newspapers and popular magazines such as the Australasian Post
documented the presence of Torres Strait Islander labourers in the railroad
construction workforce in Western Australia. On 5 May 1966, the Australasian
Post ran a story titled: Track layers from Thursday Island and theyre the
best.39 The story told of the movement of Islanders into Western Australia in
early 1965 to work on the Perth to Kalgoorlie railroad construction and described
the Islanders as tremendous workers, strong, willing, fast and efficient. The
previously cited BHP Review article described the Islander workers on the Mt
Newman Project as the skill and brawn behind the operation, men who were
fast becoming legendary figures of the Australian railroad construction scene.40
The article commended the workers for their skill in handling the heavy rail,
their fitness, their rhythmic team work, their spiritedness and obvious pride
in and enjoyment of their work.41 For the Islanders, they took pride in their
37
38
39
40
41
BHP Review 1968; McIlwraith 1988; Mt Newman Mining Company 1969.

BHP Review 1968.
Track-layers from Thursday Island and theyre the best, Australasian Post, 5 May 1966.
BHP Review 1968: 20.
BHP Review 1968: 20.
45
strength and ability. Many had made their way to Western Australia in 1965,
capitalising on the reputation for physical strength and hard work forged on the
Townsville to Mt Isa Rehabilitation Project with Hornibrook Construction in the
early 1960s.
Of the Islander men who had worked on the Mt Newman Project, many are
now in their sixties and seventies, and others have passed away. Despite the
passage of time, a rich bank of knowledge about the Mt Newman job and the
May 1968 track-laying record remains stored in the memories of former railway
workers and their families. In 2008, John Culear Kennell was interviewed for
the Laying the Tracks project. Mr Kennell has considerable experience in railway
construction and was working for MKMO in the period that included the day of
the track-laying record. It is his recollections about this event and other aspects
of his railway experiences to which I now turn.42
Fig 1. John Culear Kennell, Mackay, Queensland, January 2008.

Source: Reproduced with the permission of John Culear Kennell and Leah Lui-Chivizhe.
46
42
John Culear Kennell Snr interviewed by Leah Lui-Chivizhe and Shino Konishi, 2008.
MAKING HISTORY
Fig 2. Islander track-layers positioning the 360 foot rail over sleepers on the
standard-gauge railway line, Upper Swan, Western Australia, February 1965.
Source: The West Australian.
Fig 3. Islander railway workers on the standard-gauge railway line, Western

Australia, February 1965.
Source: The West Australian.
47
Fig 4. Many Islander workers were flown by chartered planes between north
Queensland and the Pilbara. There is little documentation on this image of
workers in front on an ANSETT-ANA DC4. Based on the history of the aircraft,
it is likely the image was taken between 1965 and 1966.
Source: Reproduced with the permission of the Shire of Roebourne, Local History Office, 2005.512.
John Culear Kennell remembers

Like many Islander men of his generation, John Kennell started working when he
was in his teens. At 14, he became a deckhand on a pearling lugger in the Torres
Strait and after several seasons joined the crew of a trochus boat skippered by his
older brother, Jack. His brothers boat, owned by a Mackay businessman, worked
the reefs adjacent to the Queensland coast usually as far south as Mackay, where
Jack was living. When the shell price dropped in the mid 1950s, the Kennell
brothers moved on to cutting cane on the Queensland mainland. Due primarily
to the seasonal nature of the cane-cutting work, John Kennell took on other jobs.
He worked building bridges for the main roads department before venturing
into railway work in 1958. The short term contract work with the railway suited
his circumstances, he said, enabling him to move between the railways and
cane cutting. In a chance encounter with a cousin in Townville in early 1961,
Kennell got word that good money was being offered for labourers to work on
the Townsville to Mt Isa re-laying project. He headed west and at Hughenden
was signed-on by the contractors for the project, Hornibrook Construction.
48
MAKING HISTORY
His abilities and attitude to the work soon brought him to the attention of the
bosses and he was quickly promoted to the level of gang supervisor. When the
Hornibrook job ended in 1964, Kennell was instrumental in recruiting Islander
men to work on the standard gauge project in southern Western Australia in 1965.
He was one of the 100 or so men who travelled by train from north Queensland
to Perth to work on the standard gauge project in the south of the state.
In early 1968, Kennell was recruited for the Mt Newman job and offered a
position as a gang supervisor or foreman. Making his way to Port Hedland via
Darwin, Kennell was astonished by the large numbers of Islander men he saw
when he arrived in Darwin. Somewhere upwards of 50 men were waiting to
be recruited for railway construction work in Western Australia. Kennell spent
almost six weeks in Darwin, waiting out the wet season, before being flown to
Port Hedland by MKMO.
The track laying for the Mt Newman job was undertaken by 137 men divided
into a number of gangs according to the different stages of the track laying
process. Of the gangs, the front steel gang, back steel gang and the ballast and
surfacing gang included large numbers of Islanders and all three gangs were
supervised by Islander men; Patrick Levi on front steel, John Kennell on back
steel and Percy Mallie headed up the ballast and surfacing gang. Kennell recalled
the track laying process in this way. As the 440 metre strings of steel were guided
onto the sleepers, the front steel gang were responsible for manoeuvring the
rail and sleepers into place before every fifth sleeper was fixed to the rail with
spikes. The spikes, long heavy nails with an offset head, were driven into place
manually or with a spiking machine. This allowed the train carrying the rails
and other machinery to move forward and backward when required. The back
steel gang had to ensure every sleeper was evenly spaced before completing the
spiking and anchoring. Anchoring involved the use of machinery that clamped
the rail to either side of the sleeper.
The final gang, the ballast and surfacing crew, were responsible for finishing
off the job. A sledge machine was used to lift the track and distribute the ballast
underneath the sleepers and additional ballast was spread between the sleepers.
The rail was aligned and the ballast was tampered or packed down to give the
track the most effective support and guard against buckling of the rail.
In the front steel gang, the crew of 12 or so Islanders had worked with Patrick
Levi on the Dampier-Tom Price construction job that had finished around mid
1966. Levis crew were as familiar with Levis work approach, as he was with
theirs. This would not be the case for John Kennell, however. When he first
started on the Mt Newman job, Kennell was told that due to a fracas involving
Islander workers on the Dampier-Tom Price project, no other Islanders, with the
exception of Levis gang and a few other men including his brother, would be
employed by the firm. As a result, his gang of 30 was comprised predominantly
of non-English speaking workers, many of whom he thought were Portuguese.
Kennell knew from the outset that it would be an enormous challenge and the
49
gangs inexperience was reflected in their performance. Over several days, Levis
front steel gang was setting the pace at 3.2 kilometres of track laying each day. At
best, the back steel gang were managing to complete only half that.
One Friday afternoon a supervisor asked light-heartedly, John, couldnt you do
your job. Kennell quickly replied give me my Torres Strait Islanders, they know
me and I know them. About the pre-dominantly non-English speaking gang
he supervised, Kennell said, theyre good blokes, but they got no experience.
Experience aside, the language barrier, was also taking its toll. When I want
a hammer, I have to draw it in the sand, Kennell said, adding I cant run
back and forward, for 30 men. After the brief exchange, the supervisor left,
returning at around 5pm and said to Kennell, John, you win ring Darwin
and bring them over the firm will pay the fares. After the evening meal,
Kennell rang a couple of the Islander men he knew in Darwin and told them:
collect 30 boys, and go to the airport. By Sunday afternoon, the newly recruited
Islander workers were in camp and on Monday Kennells back steel gang was
reformed. The new gang was now a mix of Portuguese and Islander workers
and to assist with his supervision duties, Kennell identified two leading hands,
one of them Portuguese and the other, an Islander. With his new crew, the gang
worked faster. By the time Patrick Levi reach the ballast pit, Kennell said, we
right there, behind Patrick Levi. With a different crew, Kennell had managed to
significantly improve on the track laying time of the back steel gang.
An attempt at the world record had floated in and out of the conversations of
the workers for some weeks, although no one was certain just where along the
long stretch of line it would be attempted. Kennell had noticed that project
supervisors were closely watching the work of the steel gangs. At one point he
said, they swap us, put me on front steel and Patrick on my gang, believing that
the supervisors did this to see whether the two gangs could work faster. Kennell
later told the supervisor that the men in the front steel gang look forward to
working for Patrick, just like mine look forward for me. Clearly, there was some
sense of loyalty among the men to the foremen they had signed on with. In
terms of where the record might be attempted, Kennell was certain that the firm
had long established the feasibility of such an attempt and in all likelihood had
selected a stretch of track already.
On the day of the record, Kennell recalled being on site for the usual 6am start.
As the track-laying crews readied themselves for the day, he noted the presence
of several American and Canadian bosses. One of the project supervisors
approached Kennell and they talked about an attempt at the world record. When
the supervisor said John, we have studied it, Patrick Levi will drop four mile of
steel, Kennells gut feeling that the crews were being readied for this day was
confirmed. The supervisor went on to say that if the old record were to be broken,
it would be almost totally reliant on Kennells back steel gang. The supervisor
told Kennell: because youve got so many thousand sleeper to be spaced, so
many thousand sleeper to be plated, spiked and anchored the world record
lays on the back, not the front. Kennell knew this to be true. His crew of 30 men
had more processes to complete compared with the front steel gang. With his
50
MAKING HISTORY
knowledge of the task and his experience of leading the back steel gang, Kennell
knew that unless his crew were able to fasten the steel to the sleepers with both
precision and speed, there could be no record.
Kennell was then asked if he required more men and was told to select whomever
he needed. Kennell called for ten more men and said give me Mr Manaway
a South Sea Island man, hes got this own men, bring them over, so when that
ol fella come I tell him, you look after anchoring, anchoring and spacing [in
the] back. After allocating tasks within his gang, he assembled his crew of 40
around him and said the firm wants a world record today and it depends on
us at the back. With those words, the workers went to their work positions. As
soon as the rail started being dropped by the front steel gang, Kennell recalled
with pride, you can see them boys move different, they move with one spirit.
Buoyed by the prospect of setting a new record, the track-laying crews advanced
quickly. By 11am, the front steel gang had managed to drop the first 3.2 kilometres
of steel. Kennell had to move his men and machinery off the track to allow the
empty rail wagons to be shunted back into the siding. His crew took a smoko break
and the wagons containing the next load of steel were shunted into position. By
4.30 or 5 in the afternoon, Levis front steel gang had dropped the final quantity
of rail and within an hour or so; Kennells back steel gang and then the ballast
and surfacing gang completed their components of the job. At 5.50pm, close to
12 hours after they had started, 7 kilometres (4.35 miles) of heavy-duty standard
gauge rail had been placed, spiked and anchored. A new record was set.
Back at their camp later in the day, the workers celebrated, the revelry lubricated
by a keg of beer courtesy of the bosses. Kennells final comment about the tracklaying performance of the men amounted to a quietly spoken, it was a highlight
for the boys. He recalled that news of the new track-laying record was broadcast
in the Western Australian press in the days following the event.
Conclusion: making history from memories

What is clear from news stories and the few official accounts of the Mt Newman
Project is that Torres Strait Islander men played a critical role in the tracklaying record in May 1968 and in the overall construction of the railroad. Using
Kennells oral account, I have sought to show how his recollections can be used
to construct a history of the Mt Newman Project and the track-laying record
from the point of view of the Islander workers.
In terms of the veracity of his account, Kennell fulfils Roses criteria of place
and presence. He is also named in magazine articles and several photographs
of him appear in new stories and other accounts of the Mt Newman Project.
Supplementary to Roses criteria, Kennells own efforts to record or perhaps
remember the 1968 track-laying record included keeping lists of the Islander
men in the track-laying crews, with details of the different roles of crew
members. There is considerable overlap between Kennells list and another list
51
of Islander workers collected by the sister-in-law of one of men on the back steel
gang. Kennell also provided numerous photographs taken during his time on
the Mt Newman Project. While the lists of workers and the photographs provide
avenues for corroborating particular aspects of Kennells accounts, they are also
rich sources of information that can be drawn on to flesh out and deepen our
engagement with this little known history.
Over 45 Islander men worked on the track-laying gangs on the Mt Newman
Project, and so it is to be expected that there will be multiple, potentially
conflicting, narratives. Accounts may vary according to the ages of the men,
the work they performed, and each individuals motivation for working on
the Western Australian railroad. Yet it is possible to weave from their personal
memories the beginnings of a collective history. Furthermore, the stories and
recollections of the accompanying Islander spouses and children can position the
mens stories in a familial, and potentially in a broader socio-cultural, context.
For the men who have passed away, their stories, too, continue to be told by their
children and other family members, instilling additional layers of meaning and
complexity.
Within the personal memories and oral histories of Islander railway workers
lies the potential for a powerful collective history of Islander migration and
labour force participation. Writing this history is long overdue and a necessary
act of recognition of the hundreds of Torres Strait Islander men, who for a time
became railway workers, and who played an important if unrecognised part in
the development of northern Australia.
Acknowledgements
I thank and acknowledge the contributions of John Culear Kennell (Snr) and
George Pitt and thank the families of Patrick Levi, Percy Mallie and Hughie
Manaway who have given permission for their identification in this paper.
Thank you also to Shino Konishi who commented on early drafts of the paper
and John D Kennell for his assistance with getting information to and from Mr
Kennell (Snr). Finally, to all the Torres Strait Islander railway men, men like my
father and numerous uncles, I pay tribute to you for your many years of hard
labour.
References
Primary sources
Correspondence, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Queensland State
Archives, Brisbane, Item ID715731.
52
MAKING HISTORY
Queensland, Director of Native Affairs 1943, Native Affairs Information

contained in Report of Director of Native Affairs for the twelve months ended
30th June 1943, RS 25.4/3, Online collections, Stolen Generations, To Remove
and Protect (OC SG TRP), Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Studies (AIATSIS), accessed 5 September 2009: <www1.aiatsis.gov.
au/exhibitions/removeprotect/prot/lists/qld_prot_list.htmlvn20058957x_a.pdf>
Queensland, Chief Protector of Aboriginals 1955, Annual Report of Director of
Native Affairs for the year ended 30th June 1955, RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP,
AIATSIS, accessed 5 September 2009:
<www1.aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/removeprotect/prot/lists/qld_prot_list.
htmlvn2005895_10x_a.pdf>
Queensland, Chief Protector of Aboriginals 1957, Native Affairs Annual Report
of Director of Native Affairs for the year ended 30th June 1957, RS25.4/3, OC
SG TRP, AIATSIS, accessed 5 September 2009:
htmla329165_1957_a.pdf>
Queensland Department of Health and Home Affairs 1948, Native Affairs
Information contained in Report of Director of Native Affairs for the Twelve
months ended 30th June 1948, RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP, AIATSIS, accessed 5
September 2009:
htmla329153_1948_a.pdf>
Queensland Home Secretarys Department 1940, Report upon the Operations of
certain Sub-Departments of the Home Secretarys Department Aboriginal
Department, Information contained in Report for the year ended 31st
December 1939, RS 25.4/3, OC SG TRP, AIATSIS, accessed 7 September 2009:
htmlvn2005895-4x_a.pdf>
Newspapers/Magazines
Australasian Post
The Hedland Times
Torres News
BHP Review
53
Secondary sources
Attwood, Bain 2005, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History, Allen & Unwin,
Sydney.
Beckett, Jeremy 1987, Torres Strait Islanders: Custom and Colonialism, Cambridge
University Press, Melbourne.
Core Films Pty Ltd 2006, Island Fettlers Press Kit, Core Films Pty Ltd, Broadway,
New South Wales, accessed 1 September 2009: <http://www.corefilms.com.
au/Core_Films/Island_Fetters.html>
Eastern Torres Strait Islander Railway Songs 2005, compact disc and digital video
disc, Grail Films, Townsville, Queensland.
Haag, Oliver 2008, From the margins to the mainstream: towards a history
of published Indigenous Australian autobiographies and biographies, in
Indigenous Biography and Autobiography, Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little
and Anna Haebich (eds), ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Inc, accessed
22 May 2009: <http://epress.anu.edu.au/aborig_history/indigenous_biog/
pdf/ch01.pdf>
Hall, R 1995, Fighters from the Fringe: Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Recall
the Second World War, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
Island Fettlers 2006, videorecording, documentary, Core Films Pty Ltd, Broadway,
New South Wales.
McGrath, Ann 1987, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country, Allen &
Unwin, Sydney.
McIlwraith, John 1988, The First 500 Million: The Mt Newman Story, Iron Ore BHPUtah Minerals International, Perth.
Mt Newman Mining Company 1969, The Mt Newman Railroad Story, Mt Newman
Mining Company and Morrison-KnudsenMannixOman, Perth.
Nakata, Martin 2007, Disciplining the Savages, Savaging the Disciplines, Aboriginal
Studies Press, Canberra.
Northern Xposure 2008, Railway Kebele, in Someday Sunday, compact disc:
track 2.
Portelli, Alessandro 1998, What makes oral history different, in The Oral History
Reader, Robert Perks and Alistair Thompson (eds), Routledge, London: 6274.
Read Peter and Jay 1991, Long Time, Olden Time: Aboriginal Accounts of Northern
Territory History, Institute of Aboriginal Development, Alice Springs.
54
MAKING HISTORY
Rose, Deborah Bird 1991, Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs,
Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
2003, Oral histories and knowledge, in Frontier Conflict: The Australian
Experience, Bain Attwood and SG Foster (eds), National Museum of Australia,
Canberra: 120131.
Sharp, Nonie 1993, Stars of Tagai: The Torres Strait Islanders, Aboriginal Studies
Press, Canberra.
Shnukal, Anna, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata 2004, Navigating Boundaries: The
Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, Pandanus, Canberra.
Thompson, Paul 1994, Believe it or not: rethinking the historical interpretation
of Memory, in Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting
Experience, Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall (eds), University Press of
America Inc, Maryland: 116, accessed 22 May 2009: <http://www3.baylor.
edu/Oral_History/memorybook.htm>
55
The stolen veteran: institutionalisation,

military service, and the Stolen Generations1
Noah Riseman
Lance-Corporal David Cook is an Aboriginal man of mixed descent born in Ebor

in the New England region of New South Wales on 16 May 1945. This is the
borderland of the Djungutti and Gumbaynggirr peoples, but Dave Cook does
not self-identify with any particular Aboriginal mob. Around the time of Daves
tenth birthday, he and his four siblings were removed from their parents. Dave
was placed in Kinchela Boys Home for three years before being fostered out with
three of his sisters. At the age of 17 Dave enlisted in the Army; he served two
tours of duty in Vietnam before being discharged in 1968. Though a successful
soldier liked by his peers, Daves life spiralled downhill in the 1970s. Cycles
of violence, imprisonment, and racism threatened to turn him into another
Aboriginal statistic until he got his life back on track through reconnecting with
his siblings.
This article uses the prism of Dave Cooks life story to analyse the relationship
between the armed forces and the Stolen Generations. Little research has been
conducted in the history of Indigenous service, and even less on Indigenous
service post-Second World War.2 The dominant argument proposed by Robert
Hall and other historians is that military service provided new social and
economic opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advancement,
as witnessed in high-profile Second World War Indigenous veterans such
as Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), Reg Saunders, and Charles Mene.3
This argument certainly has merit, and among the testimonies of veterans
of Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, and other ex-service personnel, similar
themes of new economic opportunities, learning skills and contributing back
to their Indigenous communities have permeated ex-servicemen and womens
1 As a warning to any Indigenous readers, this article uses the names of persons who are deceased.
It also discusses some very sensitive Stolen Generations material such as abuse and welfare files.
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Army History Research Grant,
Dave Cook and his familys generosity and the constructive suggestions of the two referees.
2 The only source that significantly examines Indigenous service post-Second World War is the
documentary The Forgotten 2003. Other sources that address aspects of Indigenous service postSecond World War include: Carroll (RL) 1992; Jackomos and Fowell 1993; Stasiuk 2004; Smith
2001; Kartinyeri 1996; Moremon 2003; Bray, Laughton and Forster 1995; James 2010. The most
comprehensive histories of Indigenous service during the Second World War are Hall 1997; Ball
1991. For the First World War see Winegard 2009; Huggonson 1993; Pratt 1990.
3 See Hall 1995; Gordon 1965; Ramsland and Mooney 2006: 179201.
57
life stories.4 But there is one commonality among the majority of documented
cases in which Dave Cook does not fit: they were not forcibly removed from
their parents as children and thus were not members of the Stolen Generations.
Certainly their lives were subject to discrimination, but they maintained their
family connections and some sense of personal autonomy and agency over their
own lives.
This was not the case in the life of Lance-Corporal David Cook. Instead, Cooks
life followed many of the common trends among Stolen Generations survivors
as outlined in the Bringing Them Home report (1997) and the Royal Commission
into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991). In Cooks case, while his experience in
the Army was positive and free of racism, it did not provide the escape and
new opportunities commonly touted among historians of Indigenous service.
Contrarily, the Army was an environment where Dave thrived because it
prolonged his institutionalisation. He was treated as an equal, but at the same
time it could not undo the damage that had been done to him as a result of
being Stolen. After his service in Vietnam, Dave Cook went on a negative
trajectory through prison, family violence, and confronting both de jure and
de facto discrimination. Dave Cooks life story suggests that while the armed
forces did provide many significant opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander advancement in the post-Second World War era, when it came
to the Stolen Generations the military was not necessarily an escape from the
institutionalisation and long-term trauma so prevalent among survivors of
removal.
Historiography and methodology

Before delving into Dave Cooks life, a few preliminary comments are necessary
on the historiography of links between the Stolen Generations and the armed
forces. Social welfare historians have indicated that enlisting in the armed forces
was not uncommon for survivors of out-of-home care. The military provided
a steady job with a steady income and accommodation, and the regimentation
and discipline mirrored the institutionalisation experienced through the welfare
system. This trend applies not only to the Stolen Generations, but also to other
removed and institutionalised groups such as the Forgotten Australians.5
When looking at Indigenous service in general, there are no clear numbers of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service personnel because prior to 1993
the armed forces did not record the race or ethnic background of enlistees. In
1993 there were 697 Indigenous full-time members of the Australian Defence
Force, making up a little over one percent of the total services.6 Yet the exact
number of Indigenous people who served in conflicts such as Korea or Vietnam
4
The Forgotten 2003; Jackomos and Fowell 1993; Bray, Laughton and Forster 1995; I Hope the War
Will be Over Soon 1988; Bostock 1991, Black Veterans of Vietnam, unpublished manuscript,
Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies [hereafter AIATSIS].
5 Commonwealth of Australia 2004: 161; Murray et al 2008: 132133.
6 Smith 2001: 136.
58
THE STOLEN VETERAN
is unknown.7 It was service in these conflicts, as well as the First and Second
World Wars, during which Stolen Generations members would be among the
ranks of Australian Defence Force personnel.
Though there are no clear statistics, there is anecdotal evidence and oral
testimony that suggest the armed forces were a destination for numerous Stolen
Generations survivors. Yet only a few historical sources have mentioned the
armed forces in the context of Stolen Generations. Peter Read has presented
excerpts from Stolen Generations survivors who enlisted in the Army or Navy.8
The Bringing Them Home report makes one mention of the Army in a submission
from the Northern Territory that reads: I worked there for seven and a half years,
never got paid anything, all that time So I had to join the army to survive.9
A handful of Stolen Generations biographies such as Rob Rileys and Alec
Krugers mention military service; interestingly, though, in these biographies
military service plays a minor role in the Stolen Generations members wider life
stories.10 Beyond these minor mentions of the armed forces, there is no indication
as to the fate of those individuals who served. Dave Cooks story sheds some
light on the experiences of those Stolen Generations service personnel.
The methodology behind this article is quite complex for numerous reasons.
First and foremost, the mere nature of the Stolen Generations and the personal
nature of Dave Cooks life story require sensitivity. The main primary sources
for this article are oral testimony, Dave Cooks welfare file and his service
records, in conjunction with key Stolen Generations documents such as the
Bringing Them Home report. The article takes the approach of contextualising and
juxtaposing Daves oral history narrative with written primary and secondary
sources because, as oral historian Alistair Thomson cautions, oral historians
interviewing veterans need to be critically aware of the interviewees motivations
for participating, the form of narrative and the impact of public memory on the
participants recollections. Thomson suggests that such critical awareness will
make more careful and nuanced use of personal testimony in their [historians]
reconstruction and interpretation of historical events: what happened, how
and why it happened, what it felt like and meant for participants.11 When I
interviewed Dave, he was quite adamant that he wants his life story shared and
is comfortable having the sensitive, personal details of his life disclosed because
he wants Australians to understand the impact of the Stolen Generations on
Aboriginal people and the Vietnam War on veterans; for this very reason Dave
provided a copy of his welfare file and Department of Veterans Affairs health
records.
7
Staff at the Australian War Memorial are currently tracking service numbers of all identified
Indigenous service personnel in all Australian conflicts. For Korea, the Australian War Memorial
has identified approximately 35 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service personnel and for
Vietnam approximately 260.
8 Read 1999: 91, 138.
9 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their
Families (Australia) 1997: 114.
10 Beresford 2006; Kruger and Waterford 2007.
11 Thomson 2006: 20.
59
The other complication is my position as a non-Indigenous academic researching

Indigenous history. Clare Bradford wisely remarks:
[t]o speak for any group without being a member is a chancy move to
make, but to speak for people formerly colonised is to replicate colonial
processes which assume that we know what they think and desire.12
To avert the risks of re-colonising Dave Cooks story, this article centres
Indigenous persons Dave Cook in particular as the primary actors rather than
as passive objects in the wider historical context. The privileging of Aboriginal
voices aligns with Indigenist methodological aims to focus:
on the lived, historical experiences, ideas, traditions, dreams, interests,
aspirations, and the struggles of Indigenous Australians. Indigenous
Australians are the primary subjects of Indigenist research. Indigenist
research gives voice to Indigenous people.13
Significantly, as the author is non-Indigenous, this article could not be classified
as Indigenist or applying Indigenous Standpoint Theory.14 Yet the aims and
outcomes of this research adhere to the principles of such research methodologies,
working through a collaborative approach between non-Indigenous academic
and Indigenous active participant.15 Oral historian Heather Goodall writes:
[t]he public work which leads us into genuinely new relationships will
be that which poses questions on which diverse groups of people want
to collaborate and which fosters a strong enough sense of confidence to
allow an exploration of complexities and ambiguities.16
While there are some conclusions which can be drawn from this article, I hope
that, following Goodalls suggestion, it will open a space for further dialogue,
inquiries into Indigenous military service and/or the Stolen Generations and
collaborative research partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
people.
Dave Cooks stolen childhood

David Cook spent his early childhood living with his mother, father, five sisters
and a younger brother; Dave was the second child. He does not recall much of his
life before removal, nor does he discuss the actual forced removal of himself and
his siblings. Daves welfare file indicates that he was removed around his tenth
12
13
14
Bradford 2001: 133.

Rigney 1999: 117. See also Foley 2003.
For Indigenous Standpoint Theory, which is similar to Indigenist research methodology, see
Nakata 2007; Foley 200506; Tuhiwai Smith 1999.
15 See Somerville and Perkins 2003.
16 Goodall 2002: 24.
60
THE STOLEN VETERAN
birthday in 1955 and placed at the notorious Kinchela Boys Home in Kempsey,
New South Wales, for three years. Enough has been documented about Kinchela
to suggest that these were probably very hard years. Dave recalls:
[I]f you played up in Kinchela Boys Home, if you done something that
you shouldntve done, your punishment they all the boys would
be lined up, and the punishment used to happen when you go to, um,
lunch, or dinner, or tea. They all lined up, and you have to walk down
the line, and theyve gotta hit ya. They cant hit ya in the face; they punch
you in the chest, in the belly [makes smacking sound]. And if you didnt
hit hard enough, youd go up the end of the line.17
Cooks testimony aligns almost perfectly with other accounts of this ritual,18 and
other Aboriginal testimonies describe graphic incidents of physical and sexual
abuse that occurred at Kinchela.19
Kinchela was also the site of institutionalised labour for the Aboriginal boys.
Cook describes how they did not receive an education, but rather worked in the
gardens and tending to livestock such as cows.20 As Peter Read indicates, the
work the boys were compelled to do, such as scrubbing and washing, was not
the life of normal healthy boys.21 Institutionalisation at Kinchela went beyond
the rigidity of labour. The residents were referred to by numbers instead of by
names. Routine, structure, and hierarchy were strictly enforced at Kinchela,
and this had a profound impact on the Aboriginal residents.22 Marlene J Norst
describes the institutionalised Stolen Generations members at Kinchela as
captives totally removed from their own cultural traditions languages,
beliefs, ways of seeing and doing and then actively encouraged to despise and
to feel shame rather than pride in their roots.23 In regards to Dave Cook, one
letter from Kinchela would later state, [w]e remember him as an excellent type
of boy during his period of three years residence at Kinchela.24 Thus Dave Cook
ostensibly succumbed readily to this regime and became an institutionalised
man.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Cook, David, interview with Noah Riseman, Raymond Terrace, New South Wales, 20 January
2010, transcript: 16.
Simon et al 2009: 3141; Norst 1999: 20; National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Australia) 1997: 166.
National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their
Families (Australia) 1997: 160, 166167; Read 1999: 68; Simon et al 2009: 4147; Norst 1999: 20;
Ramsland 2004: 102103; Ramsland 2006: 237248; Harrison 2002: 8.
Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 1. See also Simon et al 2009: 2431; Harrison
2002: 1011.
Read 2009: 153.
National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from
their Families (Australia) 1997: 166; Simon et al 2009: 2062; Haebich 2000; Who Killed Malcolm
Smith? 1992.
Norst 1999: 22.
AF White, Manager, Aboriginal Boys Training Home, Kinchela, 9 June 1961.
61
After his three years at Kinchela, Dave Cook was fostered to a Mrs Smith25 of
Allworth outside of Newcastle.26 Describing the impact of life after institutions
such as Kinchela, Norst writes:
Having successfully been made to believe that black was white, they
were then thrust defenceless into the real white world where their
assimilation proved to be an illusion and they were despised for being
black. Here they found no acceptance and felt completely disoriented.27
The feelings of being an outcast and confrontations with racism most certainly
were the case for Dave Cook. He testifies that he was taunted because of his
race, but he was able to fit in with New Australian migrant youth who were
also derided by locals.28 Cooks comments inadvertently align with a critical
argument pursued by historian Anna Haebich that although the histories of
Indigenous people and ethnic minorities during the assimilation period from the
1950s to the 1970s were most certainly different, there are parallel developments
within the history of assimilation of these different groups who were subject in
varying degrees to the assimilatory pressures of nation building at the time.29
Cook was fortunate that three of his sisters were also fostered to Mrs Smith,
but their younger brother remained at Kinchela. Living with Mrs Smith, Cooks
life continued down a path common to many Stolen Generations survivors.
The NSW Aborigines Welfare Board reports consistently described Cook as
very well clothed, very well behaved and very kindly treated. The reports
indicated that Cook was not very bright in school but that he was happy and
well.30 Dave Cooks testimony supports the reports that he was not physically
abused, but he certainly contradicts the idea of being content. Cook suggests that
Mrs Smith simply fostered him and his sisters as a source of income. He recalls
being kicked out of home by Mrs Smith, though he does not indicate why.31
Correspondence between Mrs Smith and the Aborigines Welfare Board suggests
that Cook would not obey her and thus she could not have him in her home.32
Instead, Cook was taken in by the Thomas33 family. The Thomas assessment was
quite different from Mrs Smiths, writing that they were deeply concerned for
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
62
Name changed to protect identity.

Peter Read points out that from 1957, the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board advertised
for foster parents, considering fostering a more economic alternative to running institutions
such as Kinchela. See Read 1999: 6264. For a history of child removal in New South Wales, see
Families (Australia) 1997: 3955, 600610; To Remove and Protect, AIATSIS, online, accessed 30
June 2010: <http://www1.aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/removeprotect/index.html#>
Norst 1999: 2223.
Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 2.
Haebich 2008: 14.
Inspection Report on Aboriginal Ward Boarded-out or placed as adopted boarder, 30 June
1958, 16 January 1959, and 4 June 1959.
Letter from Mrs Smith to Aborigines Welfare Board, 13 November 1961; Letter from EH Mason
to Superintendent, Aborigines Welfare Board, 14 November 1961.
Name changed to protect identity.
THE STOLEN VETERAN
Davids welfare & aim to see that David is well cared for & justly treated.34 The
alleged behaviour problems that manifested during Daves time with Mrs Smith
coincide with the findings of the Bringing Them Home report about the impact of
institutionalisation often leading to delinquency during adolescence.35 Though
the records and Cooks testimony do not indicate the extent of delinquency, the
diverging opinions of the Thomas family and Mrs Smith suggest that providing
a supportive environment was more conducive to Cooks development. Dave
Cook remained with the Thomas family until just after his 17th birthday, at
which time he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy. Dave never saw his father
again, and he would only ever see his mother again twice when he was an adult.
He remarks, [t]here was nothing. It was like meeting a stranger.36
Service in the Australian Defence Force

Dave Cook says that he enlisted in the Navy as a form of escape. Whereas the
documented experiences of other Indigenous service personnel have suggested
the armed forces as an escape from government regulations, controls, reserve
life, and discrimination,37 Cooks testimony suggests it simply was to escape the
drudgery of his life. In fact, he claims that it was to escape his sisters, still living
with Mrs Smith, whom he describes as demanding and thus making his life quite
difficult. At that time Dave did not hold any grudge against the government for
taking him away because he did not realise child removal was a phenomenon
specifically targeting Aboriginal children across New South Wales. He recalls:
And I didnt know they treated the whole lot of the, uh the rest of the
Aboriginals the way they treated us, cuz I was so young; yknow what
I mean? And I kept saying, Why are they treating me like this all the
time? Yknow. And I thought it was a personal thing with me.38
Cooks points about self-doubt and his inability to see the big picture of the
policies of child removal are not surprising given the psychological impacts
of being Stolen, the denigration of Aboriginality and the subsequent effects of
institutionalisation on removed childrens self-esteem.39
Dave Cooks time in the Navy was short-lived; he was soon discharged for
failing his examination on completion of the Recruit Disciplinary course. There
34
35
36
37
38
39
Letter from Mr Thomas to EM Mason, 20 November 1961.

Hall 1995; Jackomos and Fowell 1993; Bostock 1991, Black Veterans of Vietnam, unpublished
manuscript, AIATSIS.
63
were also letters expressing problems with Cooks slovenly dress and habits.40
According to Cook, it was racism rather than a lack of discipline that drove him
out of the Navy. He states:
And I was the only Aboriginal in the outfit, and there werent many
Aboriginals in- in the- in the forces. And, it didnt matter what I done,
I just couldnt do it right. He just didnt want me in his outfit. He just- I
was a blot on his- on his outfit, being Black.41
Testimony from an Aboriginal Korean War veteran suggests similar problems of
racism preventing him from joining the Navy, and historian Jason Sear argues
that the Australian Navy was the service that traditionally discriminated most
against non-Europeans.42 Cook moved home for only a few months before he
signed up again, but this time in the Army. Cook served in the Royal Australian
Engineers in New Guinea and Borneo. In 1965 he volunteered to go to Vietnam
attached to the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.43 He did two tours in
Vietnam in 196566 and in 196768.
The address on Dave Cooks attestation form reads Aborigines Welfare Board,44
indicating that it was still his legal guardian at the time of his enlistment. In fact,
in Cooks Welfare file there is correspondence between the Aborigines Welfare
Board and both the Army and Navy in relation to both Cooks behaviour and
welfare. The Aborigines Welfare Board wanted confirmation that Cook had
enlisted in the Army.45 Even after Cooks enlistment, his mother was sending
letters to the Aborigines Welfare Board in an effort to communicate with him.
Cooks mother clearly did not know that Dave had joined the Army, and the
Welfare Board simply told his mother to contact Department of the Army.46
Yet the Superintendant of the Aborigines Welfare Board was still sending his
own personal letters to Cook, indicating that he clearly had Cooks address in
the Army. Thus the Aborigines Welfare Board continued to exert power over
aspects of Cooks Stolen life, even as he seemingly escaped their control through
enlistment in the armed forces.
When asked about racism in the Australian Army, Dave definitively declared:
never once did I have any prejudice pinned on me in the Australian Army.
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
64
Lieutenant DG Bowen, RAN, to HJ Green, Aborigines Welfare Board, 6 September 1962; 22

August 1962, Dave Cook welfare file.
Egglestone, Private Cedric Ned and Don McLeod, Royal Australian Infantry Corps 1998,
interviewed by Bill Bunbury, 3 September 1998, RSL Reservoir, Australian War Memorial AWM
S01907; Sears 2001: 71.
Record of Service, Cook, D, 214933, in Department of Veterans Affairs Medical File, SS00205;
David Cook service records, service number 214933, Central Army Records Office [hereafter
CARO]; Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 36.
Application form for males for enlistent in The Australian Regular Army, in David Cook
service records, service number 214933, CARO.
HJ Green, Superintendant, to The Aborigines Welfare Officer, 5 February 1963, Dave Cook
welfare file.
Norma Cook, to HJ Green, Superintendant, 4 July 1963; HJ Green, Superintendant of Aborigines
Welfare, to Miss Norma Cook, 19 July 1963, Dave Cook welfare file.
THE STOLEN VETERAN
Not once.47 This was the first time in Daves life in which he was a complete
equal with non-Indigenous people. In fact, not once in Cooks service records
does the word Aboriginal appear;48 this is common among service records of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Korean War and Vietnam War veterans.
Cook served in Vietnam with three other Indigenous people: Billy Coolburra
from Palm Island, Torres Strait Islander Bill Unmeopa and a Yamatji man from
Western Australia named Frank Mallard.49 Their Commanding Officer, Captain
Sandy MacGregor, writes: they were rarely, if ever, subjected to racism. The
strong bond between soldiers and engineers in particular transcended more
obvious differences like colour and culture.50 Interestingly, both Coolburra and
Cook have commented on the contrasting prevalence of racism in the United
States Army. Dave states: [t]he whitefellas lived here, the blackfellas lived here.
The blackfellas ate in this mess and the whitefellas ate in this mess Even the
Australians were shocked at the racism that it was because theyve never seen it
so blatant.51 Other Aboriginal veterans have similarly commented on racism in
the American Army.52 As this was not the case in the Australian Army, Dave saw
it as an opportunity for escape from the problems he confronted in Australia.
He even wrote to the Aborigines Welfare Board, expressing interest in seeing
his brother, still at Kinchela. Dave wrote, Im going to try & get him to join the
Army or Navy if he think he can or should.53
Dave had quite an active time in Vietnam and received significant praise from
his superior officers and peers. An early report from his basic training declared,
[a]n above average soldier handles weapons well could be developed into
NCO material very carefree nature works well without supervision.54 Dave
lived up to these expectations, as he was ultimately promoted to the NonCommissioned Officer rank of Lance-Corporal. Captain Sandy MacGregor
writes: Dave was one of the wilder elements in the troop but he was also
one of the best forward scouts in the Australian Army.55 Cook got himself into
trouble on occasion. He recalls one particular incident during which he got into
a brawl with several American soldiers in a bar, resulting in him being hauled
away by American Military Police.56 Dave managed to miss the Battle of Long
Tan by virtue of accidentally shooting himself in the leg two days prior. During
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56

David Cook service records, service number 214933, CARO.
David Cook actually did not know that Frank Mallard was Aboriginal, nor is he mentioned as
Aboriginal in Sandy MacGregors book. Mallard is indeed Aboriginal, though, and comes from a
Yamatji family with a strong tradition of Aboriginal service. Frank Mallard, interview with Noah
Riseman, Northbridge, Western Australia, 24 November 2010; James 2010: 223230.
MacGregor 1993: 81.
Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 6. See also MacGregor 1993: 85.
Bostock 1991, Black Veterans of Vietnam, unpublished manuscript, AIATSIS: 1112; Bostock
1991, Interviews with Aboriginal Vietnam Veterans for proposed book Black Veterans of
Vietnam, AIATSIS.
Letter from Dave Cook to Mr and Mrs Green, November 1963, Dave Cook welfare file.
Individual Training Progress Report, 6 March 1963, in David Cook service records, service
number 214933, CARO.
MacGregor 1993: 85.
Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 78; MacGregor 1993: 8587.
65
his second tour of duty, he missed the Tet Offensive by virtue of being bitten by a
scorpion. During the Tet Offensive, Cooks section was hit quite hard, with all but
one soldier being wounded or killed.57 In Daves own words, the psychological
impact of missing Tet was enormous; he says: [w]ell, I went over the hill. I
went troppo. They sent me back to Australia.58 These Vietnam experiences of
Cooks are not dissimilar to the histories of other Australian Vietnam veterans.59
Essentially, as Dave himself posits, the war experience was indeed similar to
non-Indigenous Australians for better and for worse. But it was upon his
return to Australia and his discharge from the Army that the long-term impacts
of being Stolen would re-manifest.
Civilian spiral
Like so many other Vietnam veterans, Dave Cook experienced Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD) after his discharge in December 1968. He recalls the
difficulty of adjusting from being in the jungle of Vietnam one day, and the next
being at home in western Sydney with a partner and two screaming children.
This new family was the result of relations Dave had with a woman in Australia
during his time of service, and the two children were born while he was
overseas. Dave says, [t]he change was so terrific- horrific, yknow. I just couldnt
handle it.60 Stories of Vietnam veterans difficulty adjusting to civilian life and
experiencing PTSD are not uncommon and also transcend race and culture.61
Yet unlike most veterans, Dave had to deal with the compounded problems of
confronting racism and entering a society for which his Stolen childhood had
ill-prepared him. PTSD has not only been common among veterans, but also
among Stolen Generations survivors. The Bringing Them Home report indicates
that [t]hese [removed] children are more likely to choose trauma-prone
living situations in adulthood and are particularly vulnerable to the ill-effects of
later stressors.62 Dave very candidly admits that his family and work life after
Vietnam were volatile. He admits to being an ill-prepared and unfit father, which
adheres to findings of the Bringing Them Home report about the intergenerational
impacts of forced removal.63 He admits to physically abusing his wife, which is
how he first got into trouble with the police and entered the legal system. Cook
does not attribute this violence to alcohol abuse, though, which was common
among Army members in the 1960s70s.64
57
58
59
60
61

See, for instance, Maddock 1991.
Department of Veterans Affairs 199899; Burstall 1990; Giblett 1990; Maddock 1991. Kristy Muir
discusses how PTSD has impacted veterans of not just Vietnam, but other conflicts as well. See
Muir 2007; Muir 2003, especially Introduction.
64 Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 13, 15; McGregor 2010: 192193.
66
THE STOLEN VETERAN
Daves unashamed bias against the police problematises some of his oral
testimony about his legal problems. Nonetheless, much of what he recalls
aligns with patterns presented by Bringing Them Home and the Royal Commission
into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, lending validity to much of his testimony.65
Dave acknowledges that he returned from the Army hating authority; when
he encountered racist police officers, his post-Army confidence resulted in him
retaliating rather than passively accepting police abuse. He also emphatically
believes that police targeted him for being Black; he cites examples of police
pulling him over while driving, hurling racist abuse at him and his wife, and often
stacking charges against him that were unfounded and unrelated to his assaults.66
Problems of police stereotyping of Aboriginal people, verbal harassment and
racial profiling were explicitly highlighted in the Royal Commission among the
issues hindering positive relationships between Aboriginal people and police. As
the Royal Commission succinctly summarised, far too much police intervention
in the lives of Aboriginal people throughout Australia has been arbitrary,
discriminatory, racist and violent.67 This was the experience for Dave Cook.
Dave does not deny committing crimes; he acknowledges:
Ive been locked up, and, um, through violence. Iron-barring peoplehitting them with iron bars they werent, they were other people,
yknow. And, uh, you just cant do that sort of things; I know that now-68
Dave spent much of the 1970s and 1980s in and out of prison as punishment
for these assault convictions. The question at hand, though, is whether Daves
Army or childhood trauma led to this destructive life cycle. Certainly one cannot
definitively say that it was one or the other, but a few pieces of evidence suggest
that his Stolen childhood had more of an impact and that the Army trauma
reinforced this. First, the links between child removal and Daves offending
patterns receive support from the Royal Commission and Bringing Them Home
report. The Royal Commission determined that the legacy of child removal
has had a distinct role to play in institutionalisation and consequent juvenile
offending.69 As early as 1982 the Australian Law Reform Commission similarly
determined there to be a link between very high rates of Aboriginal juveniles
in corrective institutions and of Aborigines in prisons and their having been
placed in substitute care as children.70 Daves own experience in the criminal
justice system also mirrors Royal Commission findings about the high proportion
65
66
67
68
69
70
Peter Read effectively points out that despite the biased nature of some oral testimonies, [t]he
answer is that the written records uphold them. Read 1999: 173.
Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 1213, 20.
Australia 1991: section 13.2.3.
Australia 1991: section 11.7.6.
Australian Law Reform Commission, Aboriginal Customary Law: Child Custody, Fostering and
Adoption (Sydney, 1982), 6, in National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Children from their Families (Australia) 1997: 190.
67
of Indigenous people in custody. Dave recalls: theres a lot- a lot of Aboriginals

And it was the cream of the Australian Aboriginal youth back then was locked
up. A whole generation of them, and it was sickening to see.71
The other evidence that suggests the Stolen Generations experience was the
primary cause of Daves post-Army spiral emerges through general studies of
Australian Vietnam veterans, PTSD and the legal system. When asked if there
were any other Vietnam veterans in prison, Dave could think of only one. He
said, [h]e was a white. But he was, uh, he was a lot worse than me. He was a
man armed holdup. He used to run around doing armed holdups.72 The topic of
Vietnam veterans and the Australian criminal justice system is clouded in myths
and false constructions borrowed from the United States. Indeed, historians
have found that many aspects of Australias national myths surrounding the
Vietnam War and the anti-war movement have been based falsely on United
States experiences.73 Similarly, myths about criminality and Vietnam veterans
have transmitted from the United States to Australia. There is data from the
United States that suggests that Vietnam Veterans suffering PTSD were overrepresented in the prison population. In 1975, for example, 30 per cent of adult
male federal prisoners in the United States were Vietnam veterans.74 By 1987
it was estimated that up to 25 per cent of American men who saw combat in
Vietnam had been charged with a criminal offence.75 This over-representation
fuelled public perceptions of criminality and Vietnam veterans, and the popular
perceptions transferred to Australia along with other American memories of
Vietnam.
Yet the evidence suggests that there are no parallel correlations of Vietnam
veterans and the criminal justice system in Australia. There is no mention of prison
or criminality in the most comprehensive inquiry into the status of Australian
Vietnam veterans conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1998
99.76 A psychology study providing an overview of literature on both American
and Australian Vietnam veterans and the problems of PTSD was published by
Bruce Boman in 1982. This article focuses on PTSD and interrelated problems
of personality changes, depression, substance abuse, and treatments for PTSD.
Boman debunks the myth of criminality among Vietnam veterans: the amount of
criminal behaviour among Vietnam veterans has been said to be no greater than what
might have been predicted from their behaviour prior to entering military service.77 The
only journal article even to address the question of PTSD, Australian Vietnam
veterans and the legal system published in 1987 principally describes the
United States experience. The article by Terry Shulze describes the rise of PTSD
as a legal defence among American veteran defendants, which could have
71
72
73
74
75

See, for example, Grey 2010; Grey and Doyle 1992; Pierce, Doyle and Grey 1991.
Boman 1982: 119.
Shulze 1987: 3840. For more information about American Vietnam veterans and the criminal
justice system, see Erlinder 1984.
76 Department of Veterans Affairs 199899.
77 Boman 1982: 120, emphasis added.
68
THE STOLEN VETERAN
potential ramifications in Australia.78 Yet despite sensationalist media accounts

in the 1980s of Vietnam veterans allegedly committing crimes, the Minister
for Veterans Affairs Arthur Gietzelt reported a study in Victoria in 1983
which found that Vietnam veterans were disproportionately underrepresented
amongst the prison population by approximately one-third.79 Thus it is clear
from evidence or rather lack thereof that the stereotype of criminal behaviour
being preponderant among Vietnam veterans is not applicable to Australia. The
reasons for this divergence from the American experience of PTSD have not been
adequately researched, and they are outside the scope of this article.80 What set
Dave Cook apart from the majority of Australian Vietnam veterans including
other Aboriginal Vietnam veterans was that he had been institutionalised even
before he joined the Army.
The impact of institutionalisation on the Stolen Generations has already been
well-documented.81 Bringing Them Home summarised:
Psychological and emotional damage renders many people less able to
learn social skills and survival skills. Their ability to operate successfully
in the world is impaired causing low educational achievement,
unemployment and consequent poverty. These in turn cause their
own emotional distress leading some to perpetrate violence, self-harm,
substance abuse or anti-social behaviour.82
Dave Cook was one of the people that fell into this pattern. Dave Cooks service
records include a psychological assessment given upon enlistment which
highlighted extant mental health problems. The test was a series of yes/no
questions, and the assessor noted ten responses which indicated cause for concern.
The two questions that deserve mention here are: Do you feel like jumping when
you are on a high place? YES and Do you feel that your childhood was a happy
one? NO.83 Moreover, his original employment allocation after basic training
commented, [t]est results are average. A willing worker but appears easily
misled. General appearance is average.84 These mental health problems did not
preclude Cook from being an effective soldier, and in fact the Army regularly
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
Shulze 1987: 3840.

Senator Arthur Gietzelt, Minister for Veterans Affairs, in Parliament of Australia 1986.
Non-Indigenous Vietnam veteran Gary McKay suggests that Australian soldiers were more
professionalised and had a better rotation system that fostered teamwork, unity and a sense of
camaraderie among soldiers. McKay speculates, [w]hen we came back we found that people
on the whole imagined us to be like the Americans; but having seen the US Army in action,
witnessed their lack of professionalism and the problems they had because of their draft and
drugs, the Americans were the last people with whom we wanted to be compared. McKay 1987:
188.
Families (Australia) 1997: 187192; Read 1999: 190.
Australian Army Psychology Corps: Test SDI, no date, in David Cook service records, service
DP3 Employment Designation Training, 6 March 1963, in David Cook service records, service
69
enlisted men with low educational standards because it was difficult to attract
applicants during an era of full employment.85 Nonetheless, the tests indicate
that the Australian Army could already identify psychological problems even
before Dave Cook was dispatched to Vietnam. Certainly one could argue that
the Vietnam experience exacerbated mental health problems, but the original
causes being Stolen and institutionalised predated his tours of duty, and the
service records suggest that the Army merely noted the mental health problems
without treating them.
Wider ramifications of Dave Cooks life story

Dave Cooks life was his alone; while aspects of his experience as a member
of the Stolen Generations, a Vietnam veteran and an Aboriginal man in prison
may mirror wider patterns, these relationships do not detract from his own
feelings, his own memories and his personal development. While Dave Cooks
life is the case study examined in this article, other sources affirm the argument
that the armed forces merely prolonged the institutionalisation of Stolen
Generations members. The story of Rob Riley, Noongar activist and civil rights
advocate, highlights the ongoing trauma experienced by Stolen Generations
ex-servicemen. Riley was removed from his family and placed in Sister Kates
Home in Perth. He too confronted racism when in the wider community and he
too experienced abuse during his childhood. Later in life, Riley commented that
his institutionalised childhood made him grow up thinking that we were totally
alone in the world. We had no family, no belongings no identity.86 Rob joined the
Army in 1973; fellow Sister Kates inmate Sue Gordon recalls, Aboriginals from
an institutional background felt comfortable in the army and the army offered
seconds at meal times, which did not happen at Sister Kates!87 Rileys experience
in the Army was egalitarian like Cooks. He wrote in 1987, there was a system
that everybody, no matter who it was, has to put up with, conform to.88 After
his Army service, Rob Rileys life did not spiral downward like Dave Cooks. He
received a tertiary education, became a leading member of the West Australian
Aboriginal Legal Service and Chair of the National Aboriginal Council. Yet as
Quentin Beresford writes, [o]utwardly he emerged [from the Army] self-assured
and confident yet he bore hidden scars: the damage done by institutionalisation,
sexual abuse, broken family ties and racial harassment.89 Ultimately depression
stemming from the long-term impacts of Rileys traumatic childhood consumed
him and tragically he committed suicide in 1996. Thus like the case of Dave
Cook, even though his service in the Australian Army had a positive impact on
his life, it did not overpower the damage of his Stolen childhood.
85
86
87
Grey 2001: 209210.

Beresford 2006: 69.
Sue Gordon, quoted in Beresford 2006: 74. Non-Indigenous Australians from welfare institutions
have expressed similar sentiments. See Murray et al 2008: 132.
88 Rob Riley, in Beresford 2006: 74.
89 Rob Riley, in Beresford 2006: 74.
70
THE STOLEN VETERAN
Dave Cook did manage to get his life back on track after serving six years in
total in prison because of his determination to reconnect with his family. He
says, I decided to come home, I rang me sister and they says Yeah, come home
and stay with us. Everything panned out.90 He worked for his brother-in-law
for much of the late 1980s2000s. He is now retired and receiving a pension; at
the time this article was written, Cook was in Cambodia assisting with land
mine clearing under a program run by a fellow veteran. His relationships with
his children are estranged, which he also attributes to his Stolen childhood. He
remarks:
its mainly because I got no love in me body. I cant love anybody;
yknow what I mean? I got no feelings for nobody I know Id like to
experience it, but Im a little too old for it now.91
Daves inability to make emotional attachments reflects the intergenerational
impacts of child removal outlined in Bringing Them Home.92 He does not
confront racism anymore in his daily life, but he does recall key moments in
recent years when he encountered racism. One such incident was during the
time of Hansonism in the late 1990s when One Nation Party founder Pauline
Hanson tapped into public discontent over Aboriginal affairs and so-called
special treatment and resulted in a brawl in his hometown. The other major
occurrence happened at a Vietnam veterans reunion. While disagreeing with a
fellow member of his Vietnam company, the gentleman retorted:
Ah, you Black cunt! Yknow. No ones ever said that to me. No one!
So, out of all the guys I meet in the Army, there was no one not nothing
like that said in Vietnam, maybe because I had a gun. They would
never say that.93
Although this was an isolated incident which did not represent the overall
sentiments of the ex-service community, it still demonstrates that military service
was not the perfect escape from the wider racial attitudes of Australian society
and some servicemen still held prejudicial attitudes, even if they did not overtly
express them during the Vietnam War.
In conclusion, the Army was not able to rescue Dave from the cycle of
disengagement and anti-social behaviour so common among Stolen Generations
survivors. Dave Cooks story suggests new questions of inquiry for historians
of both the Stolen Generations and of military history. Following Goodalls
suggestion, this article take[s] the risk of not knowing the answers to all
the questions at the outset.94 Dave Cooks life story does not automatically
correspond to every Stolen ex-serviceperson, just as there is no one model
90
91
92

93 Cook, interview with Riseman, 2010, transcript: 27.
94 Goodall 2002: 24.
71
Stolen Generations case. Nevertheless, his life story indicates that broadening
oral history research into the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
service personnel can widen historical and contemporary understandings of the
impact of military service on Indigenous people. Dave Cooks life story suggests
that the argument of the Army as an escape for Aboriginal people has its
limitations. To summarise in Daves own words:
Dont get me wrong. I was no angel; you know what I mean? But because
everything just sort of went haywire from the organised life I had in the
Army to the disorganised life that I had out in civilian street.95
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I Hope the War Will be Over Soon 1988, directed by John Ruane, produced and
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the Somme to Vietnam, Victoria Press, South Melbourne.
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Alec Kruger, IAD Press, Alice Springs.
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75
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77
The Convincing Ground Aboriginal massacre

at Portland Bay, Victoria: fact or fiction?
Ian D Clark
In 2005 the so-called Aboriginal History wars moved from Tasmania to a new
convincing ground in Victoria. Michael Connor contested the historiography
behind an alleged Aboriginal massacre at a site known as the Convincing
Ground, at Allestree, on the coast some ten kilometres north of Portland.1 The
site came to public attention in January 2005 when Aboriginal Cultural Heritage
Officers halted bulldozing and development work that had begun as part of a
proposed coastal residential development.2 It subsequently became the subject
of a Federal Court Native Title case and a Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal
hearing.3 The dispute with the residential developer was settled in February
2007 when it was agreed that an area of land that encompasses the Convincing
Ground would be set aside as a reservation.4
The purpose of this paper is to respond to Connors critique that the massacre
did not take place and that I have fabricated the story and embellished the
narrative. The paper rebuts Connors claims and others, by revisiting my earlier
work on the Convincing Ground and by presenting new and important material.
It examines the strategies Connor uses to claim the massacre could never have
happened, and critiques his interpretation of the evidence. By identifying his key
tactics and showing how he has deliberately set out to manipulate and misread
the evidence, the paper deconstructs Connors approach as a massacre denier.
Connors claims
The Convincing Ground massacre has been discussed by myself, Critchett,
Connor, and Anderson.5 In a recent opinion piece, in his role as editor of Quadrant
Online, Michael Connor offered the following comment on the historiography of
the Convincing Ground:
Another story [in Clarks 1995 Scars in the Landscape] is based on original
sources which have been misread and misused to put together a massacre
1
2
3
4
5
Connor 2005a, b, 2006, 2007, 2010.

Michie 2005.
Bradmore 2005.
Watt 2007.
Clark 1989a, b, c, 1990a, 1994, 1995; Clark and Ryan 2005; Critchett 1990; Connor 2005a, b, 2006,
2007, 2010; Anderson 2006.
79
narrative. All Clark has really achieved is the ruination of modern lives
and the inflaming of dissension in a small coastal community. It is the
incident he places at a locality named the Convincing Ground near
Portland in Victoria. Clarks story is unfounded. After a committee of
the Victorian Heritage Council heard evidence, and what appeared to be
oral history based on Clarks history, committee member Damien Cash,
the only historian who heard the case, issued this dissenting comment
which accurately sums up what has happened: the massacre claim was
revealed a case study in the misuse of historical evidence, beginning with
a series of errors made by Robinson in 184142, and then perpetuated
through a series of unreasonable conclusions and other errors made by
historians. In this particular instance Richard Broome is involved in the
mess these errors have caused, and rather than acting to set the record
straight, he has contributed to Clarks misuse of sources himself adding
an invented death toll of sixty people.6
Connor contends here that false knowledge of the massacre has led to the
ruination of modern lives and the inflaming of dissension in a small coastal
community. On the contrary, Connors intervention has caused irreparable grief
and harm. Connors use of vituperative language is ultimately counterproductive
to the investigation of massacre where a cool head and temperate language is
critical. Semelin has argued that when [c]onducting empirical case studies on a
particular massacre, the facts need to be reconstructed almost as if they would
in a police investigation.7 Connor implies that historians violently disagree with
the evidence. As will be shown in this article, this is a simplistic assessment
that assumes that history is a one-dimensional flat terrain in which certainty
can be known. Ultimately this view is counterproductive to the investigation of
massacre, which is typically a difficult task as massacre is often carried out in
secret.8 Bain Attwood, in a public lecture in September 2005, on the release of
his book Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History, raised some critical issues that
take us to the heart of the debate over the Convincing Ground. He asked:
Whose accounts should they [the public] believe? Which of the historical
narrators or history-makers should they trust? Where might the truth of
this history lie? There might also be other questions they are asking too:
Can we learn the truth about what happened there more than 170 years
ago?9
Convincing Ground: the context

George Augustus Robinson, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip
from 1838 until early 1850, learned of the Convincing Ground in May 1841 on
6 Connor 2010: 3536.
7 Semelin 2007: 376.
8 Semelin 2007: 376.
9 Attwood 2005b: 2.
80
THE CONVINCING GROUND ABORIGINAL MASSACRE AT PORTLAND BAY, VICTORIA
a visit to Portland. He considered that it was a remarkable place on the coast

whose name originated from severe conflict between Aborigines and Europeans.
Connor observes:
On the coast outside Portland in Victoria is a locality known as Convincing
Ground. Scars in the Landscape played a role in placing a massacre as
the origin of the place name. In the writings of the Chief Protector of
the Aborigines George Robinson, was an after-dinner story of violence
which he embroidered on, and which was, almost 150 years later, much
improved by Ian Clark and other historians. The story Robinson was
told by a white settler only emerged late in the twentieth century when
transcriptions of his papers were made.10
In this statement Connor is questioning first, the integrity of the informants;
second, the situation in which the evidence was first presented, including
Robinsons account; and third, my own account of the event. Let us take these
issues in order. Connor questions the integrity of the people who attended
the dinner and their after-dinner story of violence by implying that all after
dinner stories are unreliable. Connor conveniently overlooks the fact that the
informants were the elite of the Portland district. Connors view of Robinsons
account is that it is interesting but as historical evidence it lacks clarity. Where it
took place and how many people were involved is not clear. When it took place
was not specified. Who, if anyone was injured is not suggested.11 He continues:
Neither Blair nor Tyers had long been in Portland. Both men were offering
suggestions for the origin of the place name. Here, it is important to note,
Blair did not say that the fight over the whale was the basis of the place
name but some transactions with the natives of the kind mentioned.12
Connor claims that Robinsons story only emerged late in the twentieth century,
but on this point he is wrong as a survey of the publication of Robinsons
material clearly shows.13 Connor is using the tactic of deflection here, also
known as furphies or red herrings, to divert the reader away from considering
critically important aspects of Robinsons evidence. Connor claims the incident
did not become known until Robinsons journals were published in the late
twentieth century. Robinsons references to the Convincing Ground were in his
private journals for 1841 and 1842 and in an official report of his 1841 journey
that he submitted to government in late 1842. The 1841 journal entries have
been transcribed and published by Presland, and Clark, and the 1842 journal
entries have been published by Clark.14 Parts of Robinsons official report were
published by Kenyon, and Learmonth, and the complete report has since been
10 Connor 2005a: 140.

11 Connor 2005a: 142.
12 Connor 2005a: 142.
13 Similar claims were made by Keith Windschuttle in his arguments against the Cape Grim
massacre in Tasmania: see McFarlane 2008: 128.
14 Presland 1980; Clark 1988, 1998, 2000a.
81
published by Clark.15 Kenyon published an abridged version of the official

report in 1928, and although he omitted as much as 50 per cent of its content,
he did reproduce Robinsons discussion of the Convincing Ground. This would
suggest that Kenyon is the first known published report of the incident. Thus
Connors assertion that the story Robinson was told by a white settler only
emerged late in the twentieth century when transcriptions of his papers were
made is clearly incorrect.
Origin of name Convincing Ground

A second example of deflection used by Connor is to focus on the dispute
surrounding the origin of the name Convincing Ground. He implies that if the
name did not exist at the time of the incident, or that it had another meaning,
then the massacre could not have taken place. Analysis will show that denying
the name does not deny the massacre. There are at least four explanations of the
origin and meaning of the place name Convincing Ground found in primary
and secondary literature relating to south-west Victoria. The first explanation
involves Aboriginal people and whalers in disputation and has two variants:
one found in Robinsons writings from 1841 and 1842 is that the dispute was
over a beached whale; the other, presented by Critchett, is that the dispute was
over whalers abuse of Aboriginal women.16 The second explanation, which
Robinson sourced from CJ Tyers in 1841, is that the name originated from whalers
choosing that site to settle their disputes. It was repeated by Dunderdale and by
Moorhouse.17 A third explanation promoted by local historian JG Wiltshire in
1976 is that it originated from Major Thomas Mitchells visit to Portland Bay
during his 1836 Australia Felix expedition. Local historian JM MacKenzie
has suggested a fourth explanation that it was a whalers term for his outdoor
factory where whale oil was tryed out of the blubber, but no other authority
has supported this explanation.18
Dispute between Aborigines and whalers over a beached whale

George Augustus Robinson is the sole source of this explanation, based on
information given to him by Edward Henty and James Blair in 1841 during a
visit to Portland when he was touring the Western District of the Port Phillip
Aboriginal Protectorate. Robinson was given two explanations, however he
15
16
17
18
82
Kenyon 1928; Learmonth 1934; Clark 1990b, 2001.

Critchett 1990.
Dunderdale 1973[1870]; Moorhouse 1888.
MacKenzie 1976: 25. Geoff Parker, in an unpublished manuscript dated 24 November 2005,
has advanced the following view that in 1833 Edward Henty and Captain Liddle of the Henty
owned vessel the Thistle, when on a visit to Portland Bay dug a turf from a hill overlooking the
beach and carried it back to Launceston to help convince Thomas [Henty] that Portland Bay was
the end of the Hentys long quest for land suitable for pastoral development. Thus, the place
were the black clod of earth was removed is Edward Hentys convincing ground. No other
source has supported this interpretation of the origin of the place name.
believed that the explanation involving a clash over a disputed whale was the
most feasible. Robinson visited Portland in May 1841, and on 16 May during a
meal he shared with Charles Tyers, Daniel Primrose, Edward Henty, and James
Blair, he learned the origin of the name Convincing Ground.19 He related in his
journal:
Mr Edward Henty and Mr Blair called and spent the afternoon. We had
tea and coffee, wines and dessert after dinner. Mr Henty said the Blacks at
Mt Clay are a bad set and he did not think I should get a communication
with them. I said I did not lay wagers but I could venture to do so in this
case; that I should get to them. He related one story of their badness. He
said that some time ago, I suppose two or three years, a whale broke
from her moorings and went on shore. And the boats20 went in to get it
off, when they were attack by the natives who drove them off. He said
the men were so enraged that they went to the head station21 for their
firearms and then returned to the whale, when the natives again attack
them. And the whalers then let fly, to use his expression, right and left
upon the natives. He said the natives did not go away but got behind
trees and threw spears and stones. They, however, did not much molest
them after that.
There is a spot on the north shore, where the try22 works are I think, which
is called the Convincing Ground and I was informed that it got its name
from some transactions23 with the natives of the kind mentioned, so Mr
Blair said. Mr Tyers however said it was because when the whalers24
had any disputes they went on shore and there settled it by fighting.
I however think the former the most feasibly, especially after what Mr
Henty himself stated.25
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Surveyor Charles Tyers arrived at Portland on 14 November 1840; Daniel Primrose was described
by Robinson as clerk of the bench, sub-collector of customs and postmaster; and Edward Henty
arrived at Portland on 19 November 1834. James Blair was appointed Magistrate at Portland Bay
in 1840 and arrived at the Bay in October 1840 (Bride 1983: 176).
Connor mistranscribes this as boat it is most certainly boats. Peel (1996: 24), in a discussion
of whaling at Portland, has noted that a whaling party conventionally consisted of three boats,
or four where the competition was strong. She notes that whale boats were usually manned by
five oarsmen and a headsman except when competition increased when a boat with seven or
more oarsmen might be used.
Connor (2007: 1) comments the word station is incorrect. Robinsons writing is unclear and
I suggest the word may be flenser, so that the men went to the head flenser for arms. If this
reading is correct, it suggests that in this whaling station guns were secured by a responsible
person. It also suggests that Henty had reasonably detailed knowledge of the event. Connors
reading is incorrect: the word is clearly station the letter he takes to be s is most certainly the
consonant t. It has the t cross bar that is not found in the consonant s.
Connor (2007: 1) correctly transcribed this as try; earlier transcriptions by Presland (1980) and
Clark (1998, 2000a) had big.
The manuscript reads transactions. This is the only time the particle s is used; in all later
discussions Robinson uses the singular.
Connor correctly transcribed this as whalers; it was mistranscribed as whites by Presland
(1980) and Clark (1998, 2000a).
Robinson, Journal 16 May 1841.
83
The following day, Robinson added further details to his journal:

[Blank] miles from Double Corner is Messrs Hentys fishery. This spot
where the buildings are is called the Convincing Ground, see note for
Sunday and Monday. It is stated that the natives fought the whalers.
Now, the cause of this fight, if such an unequal contest can be so
designated, firearms [are] certain death against spears, was occasioned
by the whalers going to get the whalebone26 from the fish, when the
natives, not knowing their intentions and supposing they intended to
take away the fish which the natives considered theirs and which it had
been for 1000 of years previous, they of course resisted the aggression on
the part of the white men.27 It was the first year of the fishery,28 and the
whalers having used their guns beat them off and hence called the spot
the Convincing Ground. That was because they convinced them of their
mistake and which, but for their firearms, they perhaps could not have
done.29
Connors commentary on this entry is that:
Robinson has expanded on the whale incident. He offered no sources
for the new information or suppositions he was adding to the original
story. The original aggression in Hentys story had been on the part
of the Aborigines, Robinson now transferred that to the whalers. If the
Aborigines in Hentys story were from the local area, though they may
not have been, they would have known that the whalers were only after
part of the whale. It was the first year of the fishery may be an invention
on the part of Robinson and is little help in dating the incident for it is
uncertain what fishery he was referring to.30
Connor reveals here that he is an eisegete, in that he dismisses or ignores parts of
the evidence that do not suit his argument. Connor assumes that the Aboriginal
people would have known that all they had to do was wait till the whalers
had finished with the beached whale and it would have been theirs without
interruption (a la Mitchells 1836 account of the sagacity of the Aborigines in
waiting for discarded whale carcass). Yet, that assumes that the Aborigines had
previously seen whalers flensing beached whale, and this might well be the
26
27
Whalebone is also known as baleen.

See Clarke 2001. Mark Staniforth (2008: 126) has commented that Groups of Indigenous people
in Australia had utilised beached (or stranded) whales as a food source long before permanent
European settlement in 1788 and whale strandings were occasions for feasting. Especially, since
whale meat was a rich source of protein for Aboriginal groups (Staniforth 2008: 130). Anderson
(2006: 137) has noted that archaeological evidence in the Portland area demonstrates Aboriginal
use of coastal areas and occupation for at least 12,000 years.
28 Edward Henty landed in Portland Bay on 19 November 1834 (Learmonth 1970: 3). William
Dutton settled permanently in Portland Bay in 1828, and settled at Double Corner in 1829.
Presland (1980) mistranscribed this sentence as It was the first guns of the fishery. This
subsequently misled research by Critchett (1990) and Clark (1995). The sentence was transcribed
correctly by Clark (1998, 2000a).
29 Robinson, Journal 17 May 1841 in Clark 2000a: 208.
30 Connor 2005a: 145.
84
point of the Convincing Ground incident: that because it occurred in the first
year of the fishery it might have involved the first clash over a beached whale
that had been harpooned. Hence the importance for the whalers of making
a stand and convincing the Aborigines that they no longer had free access to
beached whales. Connors comment that Robinson might have invented the
sentence about it being the first year of the fishery is implausible, and so can
be dismissed as empty eisegesis. Connor contests the integrity of Robinson as
a source of information, yet he was the most experienced massacre investigator
in Australia at the time. He had investigated massacres of Aboriginal people in
Tasmania in the early 1830s and his accumulated knowledge of how massacres
happened had given him great insights into their investigation.
In his official report of his 1841 journey into western Victoria, Robinson discussed
the incident in the following terms:
Among the remarkable places on the coast, is the Convincing Ground,
originating in a severe conflict which took place a few years previous
between the Aborigines and Whalers on which occasion a large number
of the former were slain. The circumstances are that a whale had come
on shore and the Natives who feed on the carcase claimed it was their
own. The whalers said they would convince them and had recourse to
firearms. On this spot a fishery is now established.31
Major TL Mitchell and his exploration party arrived in Portland Bay in
August 1836, and although Mitchells journal does not specifically mention
the Convincing Ground as either a place or an incident, on 30 August 1836 he
does discuss interactions between whalers and Aboriginal people that are very
reminiscent of the account told to Robinson in 1841:
I understood it frequently happened, that several parties of fishermen,
left by different whaling vessels, would engage in the pursuit of the
same whale, and that in the struggle for possession, the whale would
occasionally escape from them all and run ashore, in which case it is of
little value to whalers, as the removal, &c, would be too tedious, and
they in such cases carry away part of the head matter only. The natives
never approach these whales, nor had they ever shewn themselves to the
white people of Portland Bay; but as they have taken to eat the cast-away
whales, it is their custom to send up a column of smoke when a whale
appears in the bay, and the fishers understand the signal. This affords an
instance of the sagacity of the natives, for they must have reflected, that
by thus giving timely notice, a greater number will become competitors
for the whale, and that consequently there will be a better chance of the
whale running ashore, in which case a share must fall finally to them.
31
Clark 1990b: 108; 2001: 21.

85
The fishers whom I saw were fine able fellows; and with their large ships
and courageous struggles with the whales, they must seem terrible men
of the sea to the natives.32
An entry in Francis Hentys journal for this period notes that he rode with brother
Edward and Mitchell to the convincing ground with him [ie Mitchell] when
we parted.33 This could well explain the similarity between Mitchells narrative
and the later one given to Robinson they both derive from Henty. Another
observation to make on Mitchells comment is that the reluctance of Aboriginal
people in 1836 to approach beached whales that had escaped from whaling crews
along with their contentment with eating cast-away whales is consistent with
them having been taught a lesson that they were not to try to take beached whale
but to wait their turn. Thus it is plausible that the Convincing Ground incident
had already occurred and that Mitchell was describing the post-incident reality.34
Aboriginal harvesting of beached whale is supported by local squatter Thomas
Browne, who argues that the Aboriginal people on and near the south-western
coast of Victoria
had been for untold generations accustomed to a dietary scale of exceptional
liberality. The climate was temperate; the forests abounded in game; wild fowl at
certain seasons were plentiful; while the sea supplied them with fish of all sorts
and sizes, from a whale (stranded) to a whitebait.35
It is also confirmed by an article in the Portland Guardian of 13 July 1844. The
newspaper reported that Aborigines were attracted to putrid carcasses of 2 or 3
whales near double corner after regaling themselves on the savory morsel which
drew them from their ordinary haunts and employment to Portland. Portland
residents had not for two years witnessed such a large gallery of Aborigines and
many visited their encampment and were confounded to see them profess to
cook, and actually devour the filth which the whale carcass of the time rapidly
decomposing, afforded them.
When Robinson camped at Double Corner on 14 May 1841, from the general
report of the settlers I was induced to suppose that the majority of the natives
would be congregated at Portland Bay as the whaling season had commenced,
and they would go there in quest of cun.der.bul, whales. Robinson considered
the congregation of large numbers at Portland Bay would be opportune for
32
33
34
Mitchell 1996: 242243.

Peel 1996: 163.
Of course another observation is that Mitchells account lacks substance. Parker (2005) has
suggested that the known practice of shore-based whaling that of deliberately beaching whales
for processing by tonguers contradicts Mitchells account. However, Parkers qualification is
only sound if the whales are beached reasonably close to the try-works as any distance would
make it difficult to carry strips of blubber to the nearest rendering plant. Mann (1839: 242) refers
to the practice at Portland: A few years ago they had seventeen whales killed and dragged
ashore at one time.
35 Boldrewood 1969: 40. Browne was at Squattleseamere station on the Eumeralla River south of
Macarthur from 1844 until 1862.
86
he could procure supplies more easily for a large party at the bay than if they
were inland as he would have to cart them at much expense. However, once in
Portland, he learned from Edward Henty that the blacks had not visited the
settlement at the bay for some years and the blacks at Mt Clay and between the
first and second rivers are a wild set and will not allow white persons to come
to them.36 At his first meeting with Blair, the police magistrate, Robinson noted:
Mr Blair has had no communication with the natives and only knows what
has been told him.37 Further on he noted: There have been no natives seen at
Portland for the [blank] years. Indeed, they never visit the town and the Mount
Clay natives will not allow any person to go near them.38 Again, this avoidance
of Portland by the Mt Clay people supports the contention that things were not
right at Portland.
Connor is of the view that a serious contemporary argument against the massacre
story is the behaviour of the Aborigines during Robinsons visit to the Portland
district in May 1841. He claims that: Travelling to a camp closer to Double Corner
they showed absolutely no fear of crossing the Convincing Ground site, or of the
whalers.39 In fact Robinson and his attendants had a difficult time in keeping the
Aborigines and the whalers apart.40 The young whalers they encountered, both
at the Convincing Ground and in the bush, tried hard to attract the attention
of the Aboriginal women. This is Connors third example of deflection. He is
arguing that the massacre could never have happened because the Aboriginal
people did not avoid the Convincing Ground during Robinsons visit in May
1841. Connor reveals his superficial understanding of the operation of the Port
Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, in that he does not understand Robinsons modus
operandi when he travelled in the early years of the protectorate with the intention
of meeting Aboriginal people. Nor does he comprehend the affection and respect
that Aboriginal groups conferred on Robinson. They were as keen to meet with
him as he was with them. The reason for their willingness to travel to Double
Corner was to meet with Robinson and to receive the gifts and food they were
promised, as can be seen in the description above. Robinson left Melbourne with
two European assistants who were attached to the protectorates central office
in Melbourne, and Pevay, one of several Aboriginal Tasmanians in Robinsons
care. As they travelled through the Western District, Robinson recruited local
Aboriginal people to travel with him as guides and envoys, and as facilitators of
meetings with other Aboriginal people. When he arrived at Portland, Robinson
was accompanied by a large entourage of Aboriginal people.41 Robinson travelled
with as much fanfare as he could orchestrate; he wanted to impress upon the
Aboriginal people of western Victoria that he was their Chief Protector, and that
36
37
38
39
40
Robinson, Journal 15 May 1841 in Clark 2000a: 202.

Connor 2007: 2.
Connor is obfuscating here, another well-known tactic of massacre deniers. In fact, Robinson
had trouble keeping the whalers from the Aborigines, not vice versa. Connor is seeking to subvert
the historical context.
41 See Robinson, Journal 28 May 1841 in Clark 2000a: 226.
87
he had many gifts and supplies to distribute. He also wished to gather as much
intelligence about them as he could about their language, social groupings,
customs, demography, and so forth.
Robinsons visit was a significant event significant enough that it saw the
Kart gundidj and other clan remnants living with them willingly break their
apparent prohibition against visiting Portland. Thus, Robinsons visit to
Portland and his meeting with the local Aboriginal people represented a
fundamental repositioning of their relationship with local Europeans as their
apparent avoidance of Portland appears to have ended with Robinsons visit.
This was confirmed with striking effect on 2 June 1841, less than a fortnight after
Robinson had left Portland to continue his tour of the Western District of the
Aboriginal protectorate. On that day, Police Magistrate James Blair sent a letter
to Superintendent La Trobe:
A messenger has just arrived from the Convincing Ground with the
intelligence that upwards of 200 Blacks have assembled there & the
whalers are in consequence obliged to remain on shore, being in
momentary expec- of an attack on their huts.42
The dispute with whalers was over Aboriginal women

Jan Critchett has argued that there is another explanation of the conflict between
whalers and Aboriginal people: that on 23 March 1842, MacDonald, the headsman
at Captain Alexander Campbells station on the Merri River near Port Fairy told
Robinson some whalers had got among or with the N- [Native] women, and
that this was the cause of the Convincing Ground dispute.43 However not only
has Critchett mistranscribed Robinsons journal entry, she has misunderstood its
context. Robinsons entry is as follows:
It was 8 or 9 years ago the collision between the whalers & blacks took
place at the Convincing Ground. MacDonald, the headman, said some
got among or with the native women.44
On this day Robinson met with 30 Aboriginal men and women from seven
Dhauwurdwurrung clans. Presumably these people discussed the Convincing
Ground massacre or it was raised by MacDonald or Campbell. With the
correct transcription, MacDonald may not be claiming a different cause of the
Convincing Ground massacre, but simply stating that some of the whalers were
having sex with Aboriginal women. The greatest flaw with Critchetts argument
is that when Robinson came to finalise and submit his official report of his
42
Blair 2 June 1841 in VPRS 10. This was not the only time conflict ensued after Robinson had
visited a locality and met with local Aboriginal people. James Kirby (1895: 52) at Piangil on the
Murray River near Swan Hill considered Robinsons visit to the station in 1846 was the cause of
conflict that ensued between Aboriginal people and the Beveridge family.
43 Critchett 1990.
44 Robinson, Journal 23 March 1842 in Clark 2000a, 2: 48.
88
1841 journey, which he completed and submitted after his March 1842 sortie
to Port Fairy, he did not change his description of the Convincing Ground: the
narrative continued to be around conflict over a beached whale, not over access
to Aboriginal women. Robinson was never afraid to comment on and be critical
of the sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women, so it is unlikely that he would be
coy here. Thus the two sentences are not connected and the cause of the dispute
remains contested ownership of a beached whale.
Connor makes much of the 1842 report: Robinsons last reference to the
Convincing Ground appears in his official report which was not written until
October 1842 some 17 months after he had visited Portland.45 He is critical that
the text has sometimes been given out of chronological order by historians and
in his article and chapter he places it in the correct order. Connor makes much of
this chronology, but ultimately it is a deflection that when examined in greater
detail does more harm than good to Connors case. That the official report was
in all likelihood finalised after Robinsons 1842 visit to the Port Fairy district
strengthens the Convincing Ground case and weakens Connors argument
dramatically. The report was submitted to government on 7 October 1842, the
date of its accession. Robinson returned to Melbourne from his five month
Western District expedition in August 1841 and promised La Trobe a full report
of my proceedings I shall do myself the honour to transmit for the information of
the Government.46 Robinson took 14 months to submit the report. We cannot be
certain when the final report was written, but if we accept that it was written after
Robinsons March 1842 Port Fairy visit, then the consistency between Robinsons
official report and his 1841 journal entries confirms that Critchetts and Connors
arguments that there is another explanation for the conflict between the whalers
and Aborigines have little credibility.
Another problem with the two sentences in Robinsons 23 March 1842 journal
entry is that they may not be related to one another. Connor observes that in my
1995 publication I seem to be:
separating the two sentences so that the first is taken to be a reference
to the fight over the whale and the second no more than an irrelevant
general comment about whalers and women. When Clark told the story
in Scars in the Landscape, he did not print the two sentences or even
mention MacDonald.47
Connor is correct: this was a deliberate separation. In Robinsons journal his
narrative for that particular day is interrupted by two pages of jottings. On the
first page was the sentence that: It was 8 or 9 years ago the collision between
the whalers & blacks took place at the Convincing Ground; and on the second
page, the sentence: MacDonald, the headman, said some got among or with
the native women. While Connor quite rightly went to the primary source and
45
46
47
Connor 2007: 3.
Robinson, VPRS 10 Item 41/1207 in Clark 1990b: 99.
Connor 2005a: 149.
89
consulted Robinsons 1841 manuscript, he should also have gone to Robinsons

1842 manuscript where he would have seen that they are not in all likelihood
connected, and this would have made sense of the Convincing Ground entry in
my 1995 publication. Nevertheless, even if they are related, the argument that
MacDonald is proffering a new explanation for the Convincing Ground incident
is flawed.
A place where whalers settled their own disputes

When Robinson was told about the Convincing Ground place name he was
given a second explanation by surveyor CJ Tyers. He said that the name emerged
because when the whalers had any disputes they went on shore and there
settled it by fighting.48 Surveyor Tyers had been in the Portland district since
November 1840. Of the two explanations given to him, Robinson considered
Blairs explanation relating to a contest over a beached whale to be the more
feasible, especially after what Henty had told him.
There are two nineteenth-century published references to the Convincing
Ground. The first from George Dunderdale gave the following explanation of
the name: the Convincing Ground, which was so-called because the whalers
used to go down there to fight, and convince one another who was the best
man.49 The second reference is found in a March 1888 address entitled Victoria
given by Dr James Moorhouse, the Right Rev the Lord Bishop of Manchester,
which he delivered to members of the Manchester Geographical Society, and
subsequently published in the Societys journal:50
At last, however, two gentlemen called Henty went from Tasmania and
landed at Portland. They set up an establishment, which was partly a
grazing establishment and partly a fishing establishment. They catch
whales there, which is, perhaps, something you did not know. This
was one of the employments of the persons engaged by these Hentys. I
may tell you, in passing, that it was difficult to keep order in those early
days. The people were not lawless, but they were rough. And when the
partners got any persons to enter their service they were apt to affirm
their own independence and there was no way of reducing them to
subjection and of keeping order in the little settlement but by appointing
one of the partners to [be] the representative of physical force. There was
a certain field, which was called the Convincing Ground, and if any
man thought he was a better man than the master, Mr Henty would say
Come to the Convincing Ground. Thither they would go, take off their
48
49
50
90
Robinson, Journal 16 May 1841.

Dunderdale 1973[1870]: 40.
Connor makes no reference to this source.
coats, and try who was the better man of the two. For the most part
Mr Henty thrashed his man, but if a man thrashed Mr Henty he was
dismissed.51
This is an extraordinary discussion in that it places the Henty brothers as central
participants in the explanation of the Convincing Ground as a site where intrawhaler disputes were settled. Indeed, Moorhouse is not stating that this is a
place where whalers per se settled their disputes, but where the Henty brothers
settled their disputes with their employees, who may or may not have been
whalers. Thus it was a site where employer-employee disputes were resolved.
Moorhouse came to Victoria where he was installed in early 1877 as the second
Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, and left Victoria in March 1886 to become the
Bishop of Manchester.52 How could Moorhouse have known this intimate detail?
Who was his source? Did he visit Portland during his bishopric? We learn from
Moorhouses biography that each year he would set out on visitation tours that
would last several months at a time.53 However Sturrock, in her recent discussion
of Moorhouse in the field, implied that he concentrated his visits on Gippsland,
north-east Victoria, and the goldfields, and does not give any indication that he
visited the Portland district.54 We know from Edward Hentys obituary55 that
the Hentys were Anglican. Indeed, Sturrock confirms that the Henty family in
Melbourne were actively involved at St Stephens Richmond,56 so we can assert
with some certainty that Moorhouse knew the Hentys personally. What do
we make of Moorhouses statement? Presumably it came from either Edward
or Frank Henty or one of their children. Is it perhaps the boasting of an old
man in his later years overstating his physical prowess during the early years
of Portlands settlement trying to impress his listener with a crude system of
employer-employee dispute resolution? Does it tell us anything about the origin
of the place name or does it simply provide us with a variant description of the
use of the site by the Hentys?
Connor argues that Robinson got it wrong, and considers that of the accounts
given to Robinson, those of Blair and Tyers:
Tyerss suggestion was possibly more feasible, for convincing ground
was a phrase with definite and known meanings in the nineteenth
century. In the Australian National Dictionary a convincing ground is
defined as a place where prize or grudge fights were held. Illustrating
usage, the dictionary gave examples ranging from an 1830 Sydney
newspaper to a 1951 Australian novel. In 1898 George Dunderdale, in
The Book of the Bush, wrote that Portlands Convincing Ground was socalled because the whalers used to go down there to fight, and convince
one another who was the best man. Dunderdale would not have read
51
52
53
54
55
56
Moorhouse 1888: 40.

Badger 1974.
Rickards 1920: 104; Serle 1949.
Sturrock 2005.
The Argus, 15 August 1887.
Sturrock 2005: 17.
91
Robinsons journal and would not have known that this was the origin
for the place name suggested much earlier by Tyers he may only
have been repeating what everyone in the nineteenth century took for
granted.57
Connor is citing from the second edition of Dunderdales work, and has not
indicated that it was first published in 1870 by Ward, Lock & Co, of London.
He also fails to mention that Dunderdale arrived in Victoria in 1853 and never
lived in the Portland district. When he arrived in Victoria, he joined the central
goldfields, and within four years had settled at Colac where he commenced his
first appointment in the government service. In 1869 he left western Victoria for
public service in south Gippsland, from where he published The Book of the Bush.
He published very detailed accounts of early colonial life in Victoria, some of it
of events that took place before he arrived in the colony. How could he know
this detail? How did he come across these truthful sketches? Walsh and Hooton
consider Dunderdales stories and sketches consist of historical narratives or
fictional reconstructions of Australian history, dealing with the more colourful
aspects of topics such as discovery and exploration, pioneering in Gippsland,
convicts, shipwrecks, whaling, sealers and swagmen.58 It is possible that
Dunderdale knew Tyers and received information directly from him,59 so Tyers
may be the source of the Convincing Ground gloss that he presents. Connor
seems to put aside the textual criticism he applies to Robinson and his informant
Blair and then fails to apply it to Dunderdale. As a result, he blindly accepts
Dunderdales explanation of the convincing ground because Dunderdale was
repeating what everyone in the nineteenth century took for granted. Once
again, Connor is being misleading and selective of nineteenth-century references
to convincing grounds. It is possible that Tyers and Dunderdale were simply
guessing the origin of the Convincing Ground place name by applying their
understanding of its use in other contexts in Australia.
Connor makes the following comment on the validity of Tyers gloss on the
toponym: Tyers suggested it was a place where the whalers went to settle their
disputes. This is a completely feasible suggestion. Convincing Ground was a
common term for such a place and has been used in this sense in other parts
of Australia.60 A search of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian
newspapers and publications confirms that convincing ground was indeed a
term in common use. However, its application is not as simple or as exclusive
as suggested by Connor. A brief sortie through the literature confirms that the
use of the term convincing ground is not confined to the definition given by
Partridge and Beale as The site for a grudge fight.61 Its use in early Sydney was
as the place where convicts were hanged,62 and in Brisbane in 1830 it referred
57 Connor 2005a: 142.

58 Walsh and Hooton 1998: 70.
59 Dunderdale 1973[1870]: 265.
60 Connor 2007: 1.
61 Partridge and Beale 2002: 250.
62 Anonymous 2004: 21.
92
to a place of punishment of prisoners,63 of convincing those being punished of

the error of their ways. It is often used to refer to the space or ground or arena
where a contest is settled, hence its common usage to refer to sporting contests
such as pigeon shooting at Green Ponds in Tasmania,64 horse racing,65 skiff
racing,66 a ploughing competition in Longford, Tasmania,67 boxing matches,68
trials at agricultural shows,69 shooting matches at Ballarat,70 as well as the polling
booth for a parliamentary byelection in Brisbane.71 Edmund Finn described a
Grand Stand serving as a convincing ground for a contortion contest known
as collar grinning, that was held on the first public race day in Victoria on 6
March 1838 on Batmans Hill.72 The venue for Melbournes first duel between
Peter Snodgrass and William Ryrie in 1840, a grassy common on the verge of
the swamp northwardly adjoining Batmans Hill, was also referred to as the
convincing ground.73
In these examples the use of the term convincing ground implies overcoming,
vanquishing, and winning a contest, whether it be a sporting contest or a
political contest. This understanding is consistent with Blairs explanation that
the place name Convincing Ground near Portland owes its origin to a dispute
between whalers and Aborigines over a beached whale. The whalers named it
Convincing Ground because it was where they had overcome and vanquished
their Aboriginal opponents in the contest over a beached whale and they had
shown the Aborigines the error of their ways. This is what toponymists refer
to as an incident name commemorating an event.74 But equally, its use in
contemporary literature is consistent with Tyers explanation that it originated
with whalers settling their disputes by fighting. Thus both explanations have
credibility when compared with other vernacular uses of the term convincing
ground.
One of the curious things about Tyers explanation is the fact that other than the
Dunderdale reference and the address by Bishop Moorhouse, it is not possible to
find any other contemporary reference to the Convincing Ground near Portland
as a place where whalers settled their disputes. Hentys writings, for example,
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
Evans 2007: 40.

Hobarton Mercury, 12 July 1854.
The Courier, 12 April 1844; Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 1849; The Argus, 31 October 1855;
Wheelwright 1861: 237.
Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1865.
The Mercury, 8 October 1861.
The Argus, 5 January 1909.
The Argus, 1 December 1871.
The Argus, 15 July 1862.
The Courier, 17 December 1862.
aka Garryowen 1888: 713.
Garryowen 1888: 777. It is also possible to find another instance of convincing ground surviving
in a local place name. In New South Wales there is a Convincing Ground Road at Karangi near
Coffs Harbour. According to GE England (n.d.) the history of this place name is as follows: In
the village at the Beacon Mines the 400 inhabitants appointed a committee to keep order in the
little community. All arguments had to be settled on Sunday morning at 10 oclock on a cleared
space called the Convincing Ground.
Hodges 2007: 398.
93
do not discuss whalers going to the Convincing Ground to settle disputes, which
is striking given Moorhouse has situated the Hentys as central to the Convincing
Ground narrative. This must weaken the claim that its origin stems from a series
of convincing events in which whalers went to this place to settle their grievances.
There are two toponymic possibilities not considered by Connor. The first is
that the toponym convincing ground may be polysemic in its vernacular
usage in nineteenth and early twentieth century Australasia, that is, that it is
a toponym with multiple, related meanings, as seen in the variant meanings
chronicled above. The second is that the convincing ground toponym at
Allestree may be an onomastic palimpsest, representing accumulated iterations,
glosses or etymologies laid one over the other, literally the accumulation and
reinforcement of toponymic ideas over time. It is common to find place names
with contested histories a careful reading of any place names dictionary will
reveal many examples. It is plausible that the dispute over possession of the
beached whale predated and preempted the use of the site as a convincing
ground in Tyers sense, where the whalers elected to settle their own disputes,
that is, that it became the ground where the whalers chose to settle disputes
between themselves, as they had earlier with the Aborigines. Thus it is possible
that both explanations are not mutually exclusive, and may both have integrity,
yet Connor does not countenance this possibility.
Origin of name: Mitchells 1836 Australia Felix expedition

In the third explanation which is posited by local Portland historian JG Wiltshire,75
and repeated by Wright,76 the name is held to have originated with Major Thomas
Mitchells Australia Felix 1836 exploration party, who, at that point on the coast
on 30 August 1836, was convinced that the shapes which I thought were rocks
were indeed whalers huts.77 However, the major problem with this explanation
is that the place name existed before Mitchells visit. The earliest reference to
the Convincing Ground locality is an entry in Edward Hentys diary dated 17
September 1835, where he noted that he walked to Convincing Ground.78 This
reference proves that the explanation that the name originates from Mitchell
is erroneous. I was one of the first to note the shortcomings of Wiltshires
explanation, yet it is still promulgated by some sources such as Wright.79
So we have three accounts of the origin of the Convincing Ground toponym:
Blairs account that it related to a particular conflict between Aboriginal people
and whalers over a beached whale; Tyers account that it originated from
the settlement of disputes between whalers; and Wiltshires version that it is
connected with the explorer, Mitchells, 1836 visit to Portland.
75
76
77
78
79
94
Wiltshire 1976.
Wright 2003.
Wiltshire 1976: 26.
Peel 1996: 89.
Clark 1990; Wright 2003: 39.
In discussing the shortcomings of historical realism,80 Attwood has noted that

the lack of hard documentation in academic accounts for an alleged killing
does not necessarily mean that the violence that their accounts point towards
did not occur. (A lack of hard evidence does not mean the absence of a violent
event).81 Attwood promotes another approach reading the signs as offering
new potential to understand the past. He writes:
As such, the task of the historian is not simply one of extracting
information or quarrying facts from historical sources in order to reveal
some reality. (Reading the signs regards this approach as necessary and
crucial for historical research, but not as sufficient). Instead, the role
of the historian is also one of discerning meaning in historical texts by
attending to their creative dimension in order to suggest what the reality
might have been. In this, historians contend that much in historical
sources points to the real rather than reflecting it.82
Robinson was adept at reading the signs when he met both Aboriginal people
and Europeans on the frontier. He read such contextual evidence as the fractured
Aboriginal demography on the Portland coast, and the inter-cultural interaction
he witnessed at Portland and its hinterland, especially the views he received
from Henty, Blair, and Lilley, as supporting Blairs explanation of the origin of the
Convincing Ground place name. All this points to this toponymic explanation
as the most likely.
Evidence for violence between Aboriginal people and whalers in

Portland Bay
Corris has noted that the sealers and whalers who began to visit the southwest
coast early in the nineteenth century left little evidence of their activities there,
and observed that evidence of their relations with Aborigines is hard to find.83
He observed that local squatter Thomas Browne aka Rolf Boldrewood hinted
at more violent and passionate contacts between whalers such as Port Fairy
80 Attwood (2005a: 161) understands this as the view of some historians that the frontier could be
known by adopting conventional scientific methods, by assuming that historical truth would
be realised by doing large amounts of research and sifting through the so-called historical record
for historical facts (which they regarded as hard historical evidence). They asserted that their
interpretations were grounded in the historical sources and historical facts, and they provided
accounts in which they amassed examples and detail as documentary proof of the story they
told.
81 Attwood 2005a: 162. This latter point is worth reinforcing. Many early colonists such as Niel
Black (Journal 9 December 1839), GT Lloyd (1862), and Henry Meyrick (correspondence 30 April
1846) confirm that violence against Aboriginal people and Aboriginal deaths were widespread
in early Victoria. Meyricks letter reveals an unwillingness to detail this violence and suggests
that there existed in colonial Victoria an attitude of silence that preserved the anonymity of those
involved and made detection extremely difficult. Connor fails to discuss this silence.
82 Attwood 2005a: 163.
83 Corris 1968: 52.
95
Campbell and his merry men, and the Aborigines, but he gave no details.84 In
March 1836, John Wedge in a letter to John Montagu, the Colonial Secretary of Van
Diemens Land, referred to an attack on Aboriginal people in Westernport Bay
by a party of whalers who were employed to strip bark. Captain Hart brought
Charles Griffiths party of whalers from Portland at the end of the 1834 season
to Western Port to strip wattle-bark in an effort to keep them in employment
and prevent them from being employed by an opposition fishing party.85 Wedge
discussed attacks on Aborigines at Portland, in the following words:
About a year and a half ago a similar attack was made upon the natives
and four of their women were taken from them. It is to be lamented like
outrages have been committed upon the Aborigines at Portland Bay and
other whaling stations, and unless some measures be 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 between them and the
Aborigines, which will only terminate when the black man will cease to
exist.86
In 1839, a Launceston doctor, GC Collier wrote to the Colonial Secretary in
Sydney of an alleged massacre of Aboriginal people in Portland Bay by exconvict servants of the Henty family. Governor Gipps directed Police Magistrate
Captain Foster Fyans to investigate the allegations. Of the men at Portland, Henty
reported from the appearance of the men about the place, I conclude they are a
bad lot of ruffians87 quite independent every fellow appears the Master and
no doubt numerous bad, and improper acts, have been committed and hid from
us.88 Fyans recommended that a Police Magistrate and three constables and three
mounted policemen be appointed which would be the means of keeping the
community in decent order for if allowed to go on in their present state I fear
all will not end well.89 Fyans noted of the Aborigines in the Portland district in
1839: About 30 miles from this [Portland] towards Port Fairy, the natives are
numerous and to all appearance in great agitation on our appearance, which
to me fully proves of bad acts being committed on them.90 Police Magistrate
James Blair once he had taken his position at Portland certainly found the men
unruly. He described the Portland population as composed of the very dregs
of society. The majority of the people here, he wrote in late 1840, are men
who had absconded from whaling gangs and the lawless lives they have led
render a much stronger force necessary to subdue them.91
In all the correspondence from Collier, Fyans report, and in the depositions taken
from the Henty brothers, there is no reference made to the Convincing Ground.
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
96
Corris 1968: 52.

Powling 1980: 14.
JH Wedge to John Montagu, 15 March 1836 in Jones 1981: 35.
Jones (1981: 252) transcribes this as they are a sad set of ruffians.
Bassett 1954: 446.
Bassett 1954: 446.
Jones 1981: 254.
Critchett 1990: 120121.
Edward Henty deposed that since his arrival on 19 November 1834, until October
1838, we were on the most friendly terms with the natives.92 Stephen Henty
gave Fyans the Journal of everything which has taken place at this establishment
since November 1834, and to the best of my belief, every occurrence which has
taken place has been entered in the books now produced and delivered to you.93
Stephen Henty, in his 1854 letter to La Trobe does not mention the Convincing
Ground, but he does assert that during 1835, we were entirely dependent upon
ourselves, both for supplies from Van Diemens Land and for protection against
the natives and the many runaway prisoners who were at large at and around
the whaling establishment.94 The implications here are that the Hentys and
their men were not involved in the Convincing Ground incident and/or that it
occurred before they arrived in November 1834. Learmonth has observed that it
was not until after two months residence that any natives appear to have been
seen near Hentys settlement; the sealers and whalers of former years had no
doubt driven the aborigines back from the locality.95
Who was involved?

It is likely that the whalers who disputed ownership of the beached whale
were tonguers. Tonguers were those who contracted to tow the whale
carcasses ashore and to cut them up and who received in payment the oil from
the dissected carcass, including the tongue and interior parts.96 The violence
levelled at Edward Henty by his whaling men during a dispute over pay in April
1835, when Henty intimated he was going to cut a beached whale with help from
other employees, adds credibility to the massacre account.97 If the whalers were
willing to threaten Henty with violence, how much more violent would they
have been willing to be toward Aboriginal people over possession of a disputed
whale?
In terms of the Aboriginal people involved, it is presumed that those involved
were local clanspeople three clans in Portland and its surrounds have been
reconstructed: the Kilkarer gundidj of the Convincing Ground and the Ngure
gundidj and Borne gundidj from the vicinity of Portland.98 In 1841 Robinson
learned that the Kilkarer gundidj clan that belonged to the Convincing Ground
had been reduced to two young men: Pollikeunnuc and Yarereryarerer. He
92
93
94
95
Cannon 1983: 631.

Cannon 1983: 633.
Bride 1983: 123f.
Learmonth 1934: 103. In the 1845 Report from the NSW Select Committee on the Condition of
the Aborigines, James Malcolm, a settler at Merriang, north of Melbourne, since 1836 (see Billis
and Kenyon 1974: 110), replied to the question to what extent the blacks have suffered loss of
life from the whites?, that I have heard that some blacks have been killed in the district; but
this has not been the case with us, so much as it is said to have been in the Portland Bay District
(New South Wales 1845: 15).
96 Bassett 1954: 310.
97 Peel 1996: 61.
98 Clark 1990.
97
also noted that the remnant of these clans had united with the Kart gundidj of
Mount Clay, where they remained.99 The western end of the Mount Clay range is
within 13 kilometres of Portland.100 This demographic information is consistent
with the Aboriginal origin of the Convincing Ground name and attests to some
intervention in their decline. It is also consistent with Wedges correspondence
that outrages have been committed upon the Aborigines at Portland Bay
and other whaling stations.101 It underscores that introduced disease can not
plausibly account for this demographic decline, as it is unlikely that three
contiguous coastal groups would be practically defunct by 1841, yet an inland
group only 13 kilometres away would be some 158 strong. This demographic
contrast was noted by Wiltshire when he observed that by the 1830s there were
very few Aboriginal people belonging to Portland remaining, however not far
inland, there were quite a number of natives living their normal lives.102
Robinson also learned that Aboriginal people had not visited the Portland
township since its formation. The entries in Robinsons journal and report are
as follows:
[Edward Henty] Said the blacks had not visited the settlement at the bay
for some years and the blacks at Mount Clay and between the first and
second rivers are a wild set and will not allow white persons to come to
them. (In this they are wise).103
There have been no natives seen at Portland for the [blank] years. Indeed,
they never visit the town and the Mount Clay natives will not allow any
person to go near them.104
[George Lilley, merchant, auctioneer and commission agent] said a black
had not been seen in the town for some years. He thought all was not
right.105
No natives were seen in the township or vicinage since its formation and
the nearest were those of Mount Clay, twenty miles east but too wild it
was said to communicate with.106
This is a significant point for in other settlements in the Port Phillip district,
such as Melbourne and Geelong, Aboriginal presence was a major issue and
protectorate officials were under constant pressure from colonial authorities
to discourage Aboriginal people in townships.107 The extraordinary absence of
Aboriginal people from the Portland township and the existence of a remnant
99 Robinson, Journal 1920 May 1841 in Clark 2000a.
100 Bonwick 1970: 91.
101 Wedges 1836 in Jones 1981: 35.
102 Wiltshire 1975: 10.
106 Robinson 1842 report in Clark 2001: 21.
107 Cannon 1993: 66f.
98
from the three clans local to Portland also supports the thesis that relations
between the whalers and local Aboriginal people at Portland were poor.108
Another observation that requires some explanation is that until Robinsons
visit in 1841, Aboriginal people had kept away from the whaling stations in
Portland Bay. This is contrary to the situation in South Australia where whaling
stations attracted large numbers of Aboriginal people.109 Aboriginal avoidance
of Portland and its whale fisheries attests to a violent past, and supports the
likelihood that a massacre took place.
How many Aboriginal people were killed?

In terms of the Convincing Ground incident and the number of Aboriginal
deaths, Robinson noted the following in his journal:
My acquaintence with the natives is not so intimate as to ascertain the
extent of the injuries to which they have been subjected but it has not
been of the best description as the admission of E. Henty and others of
the attack made in consequence of the whale will shew. There is only two
of the tribe who once inhabited the country at the Convincing Ground
now alive (see vocabulary), and only one old man who belonged to the
tribe once belonging to the country where the township of Portland now
is.110
In his official report of his 1841 journey, Robinson reported that a large number
of the former [ie Aborigines] were slain.111
Connor is right to be concerned with the estimates of the death toll of the
massacre. Some of them are extrapolations based on estimates of typical
Aboriginal clan sizes in south-west Victoria. However there are potentially so
many depopulation variables at play (such as European violence, introduced
disease, infertility caused by venereal disease) that any death count for this
massacre can only be speculative. The most explicit comment from Robinson
was that a large number of Aborigines were slain. This is supported by the
depopulation he noted of the three clans in the immediate neighbourhood of the
Convincing Ground locality.
Robinson made the following entries concerning the specific demography of the
Kilkarer gundidj belonging to the Convincing Ground locality:
108
Connor (2005a: 144) asserts that I have misrepresented these entries. I agree with Conner
that my assertions that there was a Kart gundidj embargo on visits to the township (see Clark
1990: 33; 1995: 22) is a misreading of will not allow any person to go near them. However,
Connors interpretation of the significance of the absence of Aboriginal people in Portland since
its formation is similarly flawed. There are four distinct references to this avoidance and Connor
(2005: 144) only alludes to the first two. Arkleys (2000: 177) reading of these texts is consistent
with my reading, that is, that Aboriginal people had been absent from Portland for several years.
109 See Clarke 2001: 29.
110 Robinson, Journal in Clark 2000a: 216.
111 Clark 2001: 21.
99
Yare.rer.yare.rer.mer.nite, 18, and Pol.like.un.nuc, 18, the wild young

man who was troublesome to me, are Kil.care.rer conedeet, country
between Surrey and Double Corner. These two are all that are left of that
tribe, so they stated.112
There is only two of the tribe who once inhabited the country at the
Convincing Ground now alive (see vocabulary), and only one old man
who belonged to the tribe once belonging to the country where the
township of Portland now is.113
In his papers of vocabulary notes and jottings that he took while in the field,
Robinson lists six Kilkarer conedeet:
Yam.bur.rer
Pone.gare.rer.min
Pol.like.en.nuc
Pone.gare.rer.min
Car.cur.rer.cort
Um.ber.rer.boorn.114
However there are inconsistencies between this and a list of Cart conedeet,
where at least three of these names are recorded as Cart conedeet: 1. Yarm.
bar.rer; 2. Poeng.gar.rer.min; 3. Poenk.ar.rer.min.115 Assuming Robinsons larger
Kilkarer gundidj list is in error, this leaves four Kilkarer gundidj, the two young
men Yarereryarerermite and Polikeunnuc and another two: Carcurrercort and
Umberrerboorn. It is possible that Robinsons field notes were wrong and he
corrected them when he wrote his journal entries. However, it is important to
note that when he wrote his official report of his 1841 journey he did not amend
his journal observation that there were only two Kilkarer gundidj men living.
In his official report of the 1841 journey, Robinson presented the following: of
the once powerful Kil-care-er, who inhabited the country between Portland and
the Surry River, two young men, Pol-like-un-nuc and Yare-rer-yare-rer, survive.
Writing on Kilkarer gundidj demography, Critchett notes that there were six
Kilcarer survivors near Portland in 1841.116 Connnor is also aware of the larger
figure in Robinsons papers and asserts: Although this [the claim that there
are only two left of this group] has been generally accepted by historians it is
incorrect.117 Clearly Critchett and Connor did not examine the various census
lists with any care, for had they done so they would have been aware of the
discrepancies identified above. Connor makes much of the different estimates
112
113
114
115
116
117
100

Clark 2000b: 111.
Robinson papers Clark 2000b: 112.
Critchett 1990: 78.
Connnor 2005a: 145.
of the death toll, yet given the careful analysis of the demographic information
available to us, we will never know the precise numbers of Aboriginal people
killed in this massacre. This is the case with most mass killings.
When did the massacre occur?

In my reconstructions I have considered that the massacre took place in 1833
34.118 Critchett concurs with this timeframe.119 There are four references in
Robinsons writings that mention when the event may have taken place:
two or three years ago.120 Robinson is guessing here, and if the incident
is the source of the place name, then his guess is obviously incorrect, as
primary sources show the name was in common usage in 1835, which is
something Robinson would not have been privileged to know as he was not
a local.
It was the first year of the fishery, and the whalers having used their
guns beat them off and hence called the spot the Convincing Ground.121
If the origin of the place name is tied to the conflict over a beached whale,
and as the name was in usage by 27 October 1835, then it had to be before
October 1835.
It was 8 or 9 years ago the collision between the whalers & blacks
took place at the Convincing Ground.122 The source of this statement is
unclear. It could be the whaler Captain Alexander Campbell, or MacDonald,
a headsman, presumably in the employ of Campbell, or an unidentified
Aboriginal source.
severe conflict which took place a few years previous.123
In 1841 Robinson was told by Henty and Blair that the event occurred in the
first year of the fishery at Double Corner. However, given Wedges October
1835 account that there were three whaling establishments at Double Corner,
it is unclear as to which fishery Robinson is alluding to. The Henty brothers
established their fishery during the 1835 whaling season,124 and although
this is the year in which Edward Henty first began to use the place name,
later correspondence between the Henty brothers and colonial authorities
never mentioned the Convincing Ground in any discussion of conflict with
Aboriginal people. Therefore, the year 1835 is unlikely as there is no reference
to the confrontation in any of the writings of the Henty brothers for that year.
Presumably, then it occurred prior to Edward Hentys arrival in November
1834, which means that the reference to the first year of the fishery, must be
118 Clark 1989: 16; 1990: 63; 1995.
119 Critchett 1990: 121122.
122 Robinson, Journal 23 March 1842 in Clark 2000a vol 2: 48.
123 Robinson 1841 Report in Clark 2001: 21.
124 Peel 1996.
101
to another fishery, presumably William Duttons. The third reference dates the
massacre occurring in either 1833 or 1834, and this temporal reference is the most
plausible, as this period falls within the first year of Duttons fishery from March
1833 to March 1834,125 thus there is a synchronicity between Robinsons second
and third references.
Connor asserts that one of the fundamental problems with the dating of the
Convincing Ground incident as being in the whaling season of 1833/34 is that
Clark undermines his own case. For at that time, Edward Henty, whose story
is our only source for the incident, had not even arrived at Portland.126 Yet it is
curious that Connor does not apply this same concern to Tyers or Dunderdale,
neither of whom were present at the genesis of the Convincing Ground toponym.
He is happy to accept them as sources, even though Tyers had not arrived until
late 1840 and Dunderdale had not arrived in Victoria until 1853.
Conclusion
In 2005, Connor presented a case study in which he assessed the historiography
of the Convincing Ground. He concluded: On the presently available evidence
there probably was a fight between Aborigines and whalers over a carcass of a
whale at Portland but it was probably not at Convincing Ground and probably
Convincing Ground was not named because of a massacre. A possibility is that
the whale in Hentys story broke free and ended up beached at or near Double
Corner, not at the Convincing Ground, and the fight took place there.127 According
to Anderson, by focussing on anomalies in dates, transcription errors128 and
descriptions of events by various people as recorded by George Augustus
Robinson and subsequently analysed by academic historian Ian Clark, Connor
seeks to support his broader agenda that academic historians have manipulated
sources to present incorrect evidence, and bad history.129 Andersons assessment
of Connors critique of the historiography of the Convincing Ground is that on
the balance of probabilities Connor fails to achieve his goal of undermining
Robinsons credibility as the sole official source and Clarks subsequent analysis,
though he does raise legitimate concerns about the work of later researchers
and cultural heritage consultants, who have arrived at their own conclusions
with no basis in the historical facts available.130 Anderson further comments
125
126
127
128
Wiltshire 1975: 16.

Connor 2005a: 149.
Connor 2005a: 133134.
It is interesting to note that when the Heritage Council of Victoria registered the Convincing
Ground on the Victorian Heritage Register, it commented: The submissions to the Committee
contain numerous discussions about the differences in transcription of Robinsons journals. ...
The Committee has reviewed these, and concludes that given the difficult nature of the original
documents, transcription errors are unsurprising, and that most of the possible differences in
transcriptions raised at the Hearing are of little consequence in determining the cultural heritage
significance of this place (Buckley et al 2006: 13 in Anderson 2006: 139).
129 Anderson 2006: 139.
130 Anderson 2006: 139.
102
that Connors claim that the good news is that the [massacre] probably never
happened is sensationalised and unsupported by Connors own research.131
Warden has noted that [o]ne of the more instructive outcomes of the history
wars has been the reminder, painful for some, that getting ones facts and
footnotes right is a duty rather than a virtue. The recent battle of the facts and
the footnotes has inflated and exaggerated simple errors into gross moral failing.
What was once pedantry in criticism has been newly fashioned as a flail against
the fabricators.132
This study has shown that Connors research into the usage of the phrase
convincing ground in the nineteenth century has been superficial. Likewise, his
analysis of publications that discuss the specific Convincing Ground toponym
near Portland has been inadequate. He failed to refer to Dunderdales first edition
and was unaware of Moorhouses Manchester address. Although Connor has
attempted to deny that the Convincing Ground massacre took place, his tactics
of massacre denial have failed. He has employed methods of exegesis and report
discounting to dismiss evidence that does not suit his argument; he has used the
tactic of deflection; deliberately obfuscated the evidence; contested the integrity
of the informants and the situation in which the evidence was first presented;
challenged the integrity of GA Robinson; questioned the different estimates of
the death toll; and focused on minor anomalies in dates and mistranscriptions
as evidence of bad history. The actual date of the massacre is uncertain, and
we may never know the numbers of Aboriginal people killed. However the
evidence that it took place is overwhelming.
Connors wider research also has been found wanting. His preference for one
explanation of the origin of the Convincing Ground toponym over the other
is biased and his examination of other uses of the term convincing ground is
superficial and inadequate. His analysis suggests his position was predetermined.
He avoided consideration of the implications of three factors: the demographic
decline of the Aboriginal clans in the vicinity of Portland; Aboriginal avoidance
of Portland; and independent confirmation that relations between the whalers
and Aboriginal people at Portland Bay were violent. When taken together
these factors support the narrative that the Convincing Ground toponym has
its origin in a dispute between whalers and Aborigines over a beached whale.
Furthermore, Connor fails to consider the possibility that the phrase convincing
ground is polysemous which means that we should not expect to find a singular
homogenous explanation or application in the literature. He also fails to discuss
the real possiblity that the toponym may be a palimpsest and that both the
Aboriginal-whaler dispute narrative and the intra-whaler dispute narrative may
be legitimate explanations relevant at particular moments in the places history.
131 Anderson 2006: 141.

132 Warden 2006: 6 (itals in original).
103
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109
Special section:
Indigenous Australian and Asian histories
Introduction
Peta Stephenson and Christine Choo
In 1981 Aboriginal History published a special issue on Aboriginal-Asian contact

history. It comprised articles by scholars with knowledge of Aboriginal culture
and history on aspects of Aboriginal-Asian relations in Australia. In 2011 we
offer a small selection of new work that builds on scholarship in this field over
the last 30 years. (The richness and diversity of scholarship produced over three
decades is reflected in the Select Bibliography appended to this Introduction.)
To introduce the four articles included in this Special Section it is, we believe,
worth revisiting some of the articles published in 1981, partly to acknowledge
their groundbreaking significance, and partly to appreciate the continuities and
differences between scholarship then and now. Before 1981, studies of AboriginalAsian contact had been confined to specific groups and areas (see Berndt and
Berndt 1954; Macknight 1976; Warner 193132, 1969). The 1981 volume was
remarkable for bringing these perspectives together and recognising them as
evidence of a much larger and continuing pattern of inter-cultural exchange.
Still, some biases are obvious and were noted at the time. In his introduction
to the 1981 volume, James Urry acknowledged that while the articles covered
all the major Asian groups that Aborigines had encountered, which he listed
as Indonesian peoples in northern Australia, Chinese and Japanese in northern
Queensland, and Afghans in central Australia, there were no studies from Western
Australia. This is a curious oversight given Western Australias rich history of
Aboriginal-Asian contact. Absence of coverage may have been due to a lack of
information, and this lack may have reflected a proto-nationalist determination
at that time to narrate Western Australias history as one of unilateral progress.
At any rate it is striking that, apart from a brief mention of Asian peoples
presence in Western Australia in articles by Ian Crawford and Neville Green, no
discussion of the Asian presence or Aboriginal-Asian exchange occurs in A New
History of Western Australia edited by CT Stannage, which was also published
in 1981. This said, we acknowledge that neither the 1981 articles in Aboriginal
History, nor those published here, achieve a comprehensive regional coverage.
Our point is merely that the omission of one third of Australias landmass is
notable.
Another distinguishing feature is that the majority of the contributors to the
1981 issue were anthropologists with ethno-linguistic expertise; in this current
collection historians working with the archival record predominate. In 1981, Luise
Hercus reported Afghan first contact stories told to her by two Arabana speakers
and two Wanganuru speakers; Christopher Anderson relied on Norman Mitchell,
113
a Kuku-Yalanji descendant, for information about Chinese-Aboriginal contact in

North Queensland, while Peter Austen transcribed two stories, shocking as well
as amusing, about Afghan male interactions with Indigenous women related to
him by Diyari speaker Ben Murray. For these scholars, evidence of AboriginalAsian contact had emerged in the course of pursuing other enquiries; it was a
side-effect of collecting life stories that were originally valued because they were
vehicles of preserving threatened Indigenous languages.
That the primary focus of these writers lay elsewhere had two consequences.
One was an astonishingly rich historical contextualisation of the personal stories
presented; the other, though, was a relative absence of textual interpretation. On
the whole, the testimonies are taken at face value and the language in which they
are framed, and the subject positions this implies, remain largely uninterrogated.
The reconstruction of the life of artist Tommy McCrae by Cooper and Urry
remains an exemplary introduction to the social, economic and legislative
disadvantage that one Aboriginal person experienced in nineteenth-century
Australia. But its focus is historical rather than biographical. The proposition
that McCraes cartoon Aborigines chasing Chinese did not represent anything
he had ever witnessed surely suggests the figure of the trickster or fabulator,
the same stereotype applied in other popular contexts to the opium-smoking
Chinaman. Likewise, Ben Murrays anecdote of an Afghan man exposing
himself to an Aboriginal girl surely demands explanation, whether this is to be
pathological, cultural or political. The 1981 essays presented a range of visual
and oral materials that raised complex issues about subjectivity, but on the
whole the authors chose not to develop these.
Athol Chases study of Japanese influence at Lockhart River is exemplary in
another way: it captures in great detail the social, cultural and economic worlds
of two subject groups under colonialism. Chase concludes speculatively that
the multi-ethnic experience might have strengthened local Aboriginal identity
to resist later attack. However, this exception reinforces our general point that
the 1981 contributors were primarily concerned with Aboriginal life stories.
What has happened since, though, is the progressive reframing of such personal
testimonies in narrative and interpretive frameworks derived from a range of
disciplines concerned with probing questions of identity. It has also become
apparent that the subjectivities of the subaltern communities involved in interand cross-cultural exchange are far more variable and complex than earlier
historiographies allowed.
The more exhaustive enquiries into personal lives reflected in the articles
presented here, as well as in the work of many of the scholars listed in our
bibliography, aim at expanding biographical knowledge, but they also insist on
the historical construction of these lives. What the 1981 scholars documented
in such a groundbreaking way was, it turns out, only the tip of an historical
iceberg of environmentally, socially and politically framed relationships that new
interpretative perspectives from the broad fold of cultural studies has articulated.
114
SPECIAL SECTION: INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN AND ASIAN HISTORIES
The four articles included in this section were chosen from a broad range of
offerings in response to our call for papers. They offer fresh perspectives
on Indigenous Australian relations with Makassans (Campbell Macknight),
Chinese (Victoria Haskins), Filipinos (Anna Shnukal) and Indonesians (Julia
Martnez). In a retrospective piece that reflects on his unparalleled contribution
to Australian scholarship of the trepang industry, Macknight urges an inversion
of geographical perspective. In making this call, Macknight helps incidentally
to illuminate the importance of the accompanying articles by Shnukal, Martnez
and Haskins. Macknights reading of the Makassan trade as an encounter with
(Indigenous) Australians relocates Australias north coast on the edge of an
eastern Mediterranean. It is instructive to think of the Chinese, Filipino and
Indonesian men, albeit few in number, whose life journeys traverse the coastal
settlements of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland in the
same way. Instead of appearing as isolated and proportionally insignificant
in terms of the national story these people are seen to belong to an economic
diaspora whose sources are in metropolitan seagoing regions to the north.
Although hitherto little explored, it is likely that this cheap Asian labour was as
important to the opening up of Australias northern and western coasts as the
annexation of unpaid Indigenous labour was in occupying Australias interior.
Within this inverted perspective, ethnic and cultural minorities which have been
historically and historiographically disparaged as inferior a racist judgement
that underwrites the discriminatory legislation that Shnukal, Martnez and
Haskins document in moving detail prove to be vigorous exponents of a
mercantilism at home throughout the archipelago, and more than competitive
with their white peers when it came to the organisation of labour, capital and
transport. This is a point that the letter written by Charles Gore to Searcy,
the Sub-collector of Customs for the South Australian administration in 1903
(reproduced in Macknights article), eloquently illustrates.
The articles by Shnukal, Martnez and Haskins document similar experiences
of legislatively-enshrined racial discrimination from three different ethnic
standpoints. It may reasonably be asked what is gained apart from an
intrinsically valuable expanded historical database from the rehearsal of the
history of Indigenous Australian-Asian discrimination along (respectively)
Filipino, Indonesian and Chinese lines. Although subtle discriminations occurred
in the politics of race in northern Australia, so that Chinese might stand slightly
higher in the scale of humanity than Filipinos and Indonesians, the real value of
these articles is to extract from the official records the lineaments of exemplary
life stories exemplary because, although numerically few, the characters
whose struggles with discriminatory legislation are painstakingly narrated
here, experienced the full impact of policies whose practical implications were
diffused, and even imperceptible, in other parts of the community.
The Quan Sing affair (Haskins), the story of Santiago Remidios attempt to marry
Nazareth Ansey (Shnukal), and the parallel cases of frustrated intermarriage in
the Torres Strait Islands (Martnez), illustrate the attempts of a Commonwealth
government to engineer the present and future, socially and economically. But
115
perhaps their methodological interest resides in the determination of the authors

to extract from the official records the historical subjectivities of those involved.
This is a necessary procedure where subalterns only speak, as it were, through
the enactment of the legislation ranged against them. The bias of court records
is obvious: pronouncing as unnatural the desire to contract legal unions, they
stigmatise the most normal of activities as monstrous.
Shnukals study repositions the clash with classifications as an episode within a
much longer history of Filipino-Aboriginal encounter, mutual accommodation
and naturalisation. In this expanded temporal perspective, it is the white
legislation and its executives who seem the outsiders. Martnez, similarly,
celebrates the endurance of families who survived the dual burdens of
immigration restrictions and the so-called protection of the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Acts, adding geographical breadth to Shnukals historical
depth. Haskins account of the extraordinary persistence of Quan Sing and his
Australian-born daughter Yuanho Quan Sing to assert their rights to employ
Aborigines suggests that in time this family had, against its own will, to define
itself oppositionally against a raft of discriminatory laws consolidating its
entrepreneurial identity. All three scholars show how life stories can be deduced
from the friction with unjust laws when these laws are themselves relativised
and placed in the context of perennial human needs for sustenance, security and
succour.
Macknight discloses something more: the necessary evolution of the historian in
relation to the subject matter. Graduating from archaeology to human geography,
and via both to an immersive, almost radical empiricism able to incorporate his
personal experience into the sifting of historical probabilities, Macknight shows
how the strictest attention to the facts can, and should, coexist with an educated
historical sympathy. This tacit alignment with, and respect for, the absences
in the historical record is not evidence of any lack of rigour. On the contrary,
a vigilant human empathy acts as a stimulant to scour often meagre records
ever more patiently. The buried testimonies recovered here have a symbolic
significance in understanding the vicissitudes of modern nation building that far
outweighs their number. They retrieve pre-colonial and colonial relationships
that place white settler narratives of Australias social development in a wider
perspective. In the process they challenge the ideological foreclosures and
sometimes methodological timidity of mainstream nationalist histories.
In framing this introduction we are grateful to Professor Paul Carter for his
assistance.
116
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People, F.W. Cheshire, Melbourne.
Balint, Ruth 2005, Troubled Waters: Borders, Boundaries and Possession in the Timor
Sea, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Binh Duy Ta 2000, Conversations with Charlie, in Diaspora: Negotiating AsianAustralia, Helen Gilbert, Tseen Khoo and Jacqueline Lo (eds), University of
Queensland Press, St Lucia: 88105.
Chi, Jimmy and Kuckles 1991, Bran Nue Dae: A Musical Journey, Currency Press
and Magabala Books, Sydney and Broome.
Choo, Christine 1994, The impact of Aboriginal-Asian Australian contacts in
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Studies in Western Australian History 16: 86111.
1999, A Challenge to Human Rights: Aboriginal Women in the West
Kimberley, Women and Citizenship: Suffrage Centenary: Studies in Western
Australian History 19: 4861.
Cote, Joost 2008, Redefining the history of Australias Asianness, (Book Review)
Asian Ethnology 67(1), Spring: 137150.
Crawford, Ian 2001, We Won the Victory: Aborigines and Outsiders on the Northwest Coast of the Kimberley, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, Western
Australia.
Crawford, IM 1981, Aboriginal cultures in Western Australia, in A New History
of Western Australia, CT Stannage (ed), University of Western Australia Press,
Nedlands: 334.
Edwards, Penny and Shen Yuanfang (eds) 2003, Lost in the Whitewash: AboriginalAsian Encounters in Australia, 19012001, Humanities Research Centre,
Australian National University, Canberra.
Ganter, Regina 1998, Living an immoral life coloured women and the
paternalistic state, Hecate 24(1): 1340.
2004, Coloured people: a challenge to racial stereotypes, in Navigating
Boundaries, Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata (eds): 219246.
117
(with contributions from Julia Martinez and Gary Lee) 2006, Mixed Relations:
Aboriginal-Asian Contact in North Australia, University of Western Australia
Press, Crawley, Western Australia.
Gilbert, Helen, Tseen Khoo and Jacqueline Lo (eds) 2000, Diaspora: Negotiating
Asian-Australia, Journal of Australian Studies no 65, Australian Cultural
History no 19, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia.
Green, Neville 1981, Aborigines and white settlers in the nineteenth century, in
A New History of Western Australia, CT Stannage (ed), University of Western
Australia Press, Nedlands: 72123.
Hokari, Minoru 2003, Anti-Minorities History: Perspectives on Aboriginal-Asian
Relations, In Lost in the Whitewash, Penny Edwards and Shen Yuanfang (eds),
85101.
2011, Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback, University of New
South Wales Press, Sydney.
Jensen, Lars 2004, Towards an Aboriginal-Asian colonial contact history,
Crossings 9(3), available at: <http://www.inasa.org/crossings/9_3/index.
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2005, Unsettling Australia: Readings in Australian Cultural History, Atlantic,
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Kanumori, Mayu and Lucy Dann 2000, The Heart of the Journey, Performance,
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Le, Hung and Ningali Lawford 2001, Black and Tran, Performance.
Macknight, CC 1972, Macassans and Aborigines, Oceania 42(4): 283321.
1976, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia,
Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria.
1986, Macassans and the Aboriginal past, Archaeology in Oceania 21(1): 6975.
Martnez, Julia 1999, The Malay community in pre-war Darwin, Asians in
Australian History, Queensland Review 6(2): 4558.
Neuenfeldt, Karl 2004, Some historical and contemporary Asian elements in
the music and performance culture of Torres Strait, in Navigating Boundaries,
Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata (eds): 265276.
Rajkowski, Pamela, 1995, Linden Girl: A Story of Outlawed Lives, University of
Western Australia Press, Crawley, Western Australia.
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connections and contentions on Thursday Island, in Navigating Boundaries,
Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata (eds): 5380.
Reynolds, Henry 2003, North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australias North,
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Russell, Denise 2004, Aboriginal-Makassan interactions in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries in northern Australia and contemporary sea rights
claims, Australian Aboriginal Studies 1: 317.
Shnukal, Anna and Guy Ramsay 2004, Tidal flows: an overview of Torres Strait
Islander-Asian contact, in Navigating Boundaries, Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay
and Yuriko Nagata (eds): 3352.
Shnukal, Anna and Guy Ramsay 2004, Confluence: Asian cultural contributions
to ailan pasin, in Navigating Boundaries, Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and
Yuriko Nagata (eds): 247264.
Shnukal, Anna, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata (eds) 2004, Navigating
Boundaries: The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, Pandanus Books, Australian
National University, Canberra.
Stannage, CT (ed) 1981, A New History of Western Australia, University of Western
Australia Press, Nedlands, Western Australia.
Stephenson, Peta 2007, The Outsiders Within: Telling Australias Indigenous-Asian
Story, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney.
2008, Andrish Saint-Clare and the Trepang Project: the Creative Intermediary
in an Indigenous-Asian theatrical production, Journal of Australian Studies
32(2): 163178.
2010, Islam Dreaming: Indigenous Muslims in Australia, University of New
South Wales Press, Sydney.
Warner, W Lloyd 193132, Malay influence on the Aboriginal cultures of northeastern Arnhem Land, Oceania 2(4): 476495.
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Kimberley Coast, Asians in Australian History, Queensland Review 6(2): 5973.
119
The view from Marege: Australian knowledge

of Makassar and the impact of the trepang
industry across two centuries
Campbell Macknight
When Matthew Flinders and Robert Brown met the trepanging fleet from
Makassar off north-eastern Arnhem Land in 1803 and interviewed Pobassoo,
its old Commander, they asked a very well-informed question; according to
Brown, They [that is, the trepangers] denied having any of their celebrated
Poison wch they call Ippo, on board.1 Given the long and complicated history
of the European understanding of this poison, it is not clear how Flinders and
Brown picked up the common association of ippo, or more usually in Malay
upas, with Makassar.2 The significance of the question in this discussion,
however, is that it demonstrates how these British observers of the trepang
industry in northern Australia were able to place the trepangers within a known
context. Neither Flinders nor Brown had ever visited Makassar or would in
the future, but they knew this detail about the world of South Sulawesi and the
Indonesian archipelago more generally. It is a useful point from which to begin a
survey of the changing attitudes of those who saw this industry in action, before
turning to the outlook of those who have studied it subsequently.
Almost everyone who has written about the trepangers has been concerned to
describe the nature and consequences of the interactions between these visitors
and local Aboriginal people. Indeed, for most anthropologists and historians of
Aboriginal societies their interest in the industry relates directly to the question
of assessing the impact of this external contact on Aboriginal Australia and the
response, especially in Arnhem Land. The effects of such interactions have been
studied across many fields, but particularly in language, art, music, religion,
health and economic life, and the memory of the industry is still strong. Yet,
as we shall see, just as one cannot understand the historical sources without
understanding the changing times at which they were written, so one needs
to take account of the outlook and limited knowledge of later scholars in their
accounts of the industry and its impact.
1
2
Brown journal, 18 February 1803, British Museum (Natural History). See also Flinders 1814, 2:
230; Brown 2001: 373.
See the seven pages of discussion and quotation in Yule and Burnell 1903: 952959. From the form
of the word used by Brown, I suspect he knew it from Rumphius.
121
A narrowing focus
Three points need to be made about the general context within which Europeans
made observations of trepangers and the trepanging industry up to about
1850. Firstly, there was much in common between the world of the observers
and that of the trepangers. Most obviously, all the Europeans, such as Flinders,
but also the British military and others at early British settlements, depended
upon and were intimately familiar with the operation of sailing vessels, as were
the trepangers. The praus seen by Flinders were somewhat smaller than the
Investigator, but they depended on the same basic technology. Similarly, other
aspects of technology, especially guns, and of social and economic organisation
were not widely divergent.
Secondly, the territorial claims of the various imperial powers were far less
assertive in the first half of the nineteenth century than they became towards the
end of the century. Flinders and King in their meetings with the trepanging fleets
were beyond even the formal boundaries of New South Wales.3 Admittedly,
the western boundary of the British claim was moved in 1824 to cover the
settlement of Raffles Bay, and thus all of the coast regularly visited by praus
coming around the eastern end of Timor, and the remainder of the continent,
including the Kimberley coast, was claimed in 1829 to cover the Swan River
settlement, but there was little desire for exclusive control, even had that been
possible. Conversely, in Makassar, although the praus seem to come from the
area under the direct control of the Dutch East India Company in the eighteenth
century and later the Dutch colonial government, with a brief British interlude
the reality of Dutch power was rather more relaxed. Trepang was never a trade
item of interest to the Dutch Company itself, though the trade in trepang, like
that in all items, was recorded by the Dutch, as we shall see. Trepang was one
of those items which the Company was content to leave to locally-sponsored
production and independent trade with China, and the same applied to the
successor governments in the nineteenth century. There was, however, much
interest in the prospect of other trade between north Australia and the eastern
parts of the archipelago. This motive lay behind the foundation of the Raffles
Bay settlement, though nothing much came of it. One European vessel, probably
the Heroine from the Port Essington settlement, is even recorded in the Makassar
harbour records as bringing a few goods from Nieuw Holland or Marege in
1842, and there was much coming and going from Port Essington with other
closer islands.4
Thirdly, the Enlightenment view of non-Europeans persisted on the ground or
perhaps even more aptly, on the deck long into the nineteenth century and
decades after the tide of intellectual thought had moved into a concern with
ranking and hierarchy. This earlier view was concerned to compare peoples and
societies, rather than to place them on a ladder of development with, towards
3
4
122
Gammage 1981.
Spillett 1972: 85; Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta, Arsip Makasar, 354.4.
THE VIEw FROM MAREGE
the end of the nineteenth century, clear evolutionary implications.5 If the other
was merely different, not lesser or lower, then there was the possibility of mutual
learning. Flinders and Brown on board the trepanging prau in 1803 exemplify
this attitude: they seek information of all kinds; they accept Pobassoos warning
to be careful of Aboriginal people; having discovered that the praus come from
Makassar, they are happy to reply in turn that they come from Port Jackson and
then to record the version of this name written in what were, to them, unfamiliar
characters.6 There is a strong mutuality in this exchange. Another example of this
open, comparativist view can be seen in the attitude of Collet Barker at Raffles
Bay in 1828 and 1829. On 17 May 1829, just before a group of praus returned to
Makassar, Barker and a group of prau captains sat down together and compared
notes on maps, but this was merely the final interview in what had been nearly
two months of fairly constant and friendly dealing between Barker and prau
captains and their crews.7 Ten years later, George Windsor Earl, the best informed
of all nineteenth-century British observers of the trepangers from his extensive
experience in the archipelago, was still hearing from one of the captains Barker
had met about the respect in which Barker had been held. Earl himself displays
much the same open-minded curiosity about others and sympathy with the fate
of individuals.8
Much of this general context changed as the nineteenth century wore on and,
for our interests in the coast of northern Australia, a date of about 1850 provides
a useful hinge. There were important differences between the attitudes of the
earlier British hydrographers and those condemned to endure the tedium of the
early settlements, on the one hand, and, on the other, the outlook of those South
Australians associated with giving some reality to South Australias possession
of its Northern Territory from 1863 onwards.
There is an instructive contrast between Barkers accounts of his attempts to
mediate between aggrieved trepangers and local Aborigines and Alfred Searcys
exuberant narrative of his handling of a similar situation at Melville Bay in 1884.
Barker records the arrival on 2 April 1829 of a very small prau which was in
want of everything. It had come from just around the corner in Bowen Strait
where the Aborigines had taken some rice.
One of the first things they asked was permission to proceed with a party
into the country to punish [the Aborigines]. This of course I did not accede
to, telling [the captain] that as we were on friendly terms with them, I
could not allow any hostilities to take place from this settlement. That
5
6
7
8
The significance of this change in European understanding of other societies has only recently
become apparent in relation to Australia, though it has a long and complex history more
generally. See Macknight 2008b. In appreciating the importance of this change, I am much
indebted to Carroll 2005 in particular.
Flinders 1814, 2: 232. Brown (2001: 373) omits the actual characters, but they are there in the
original manuscript. Cense (1952: 250) seems to have been the first modern scholar to have been
able to read them.
Mulvaney and Green 1992: 134168.
Earl 1846: 56. See also Mulvaney and Green 1992: 151 for Bapa Padu.
123
had he landed in the Straits I should not have interfered, but added that
I should not approve of his acting even there in the manner he proposed
against the blacks of our neighbourhood, who we were endeavouring to
bring into some order.9
On 13 May, Barker had actually to intervene in person to prevent a party of
trepangers attempting to take Aboriginal hostages to obtain the return of some
stolen canoes.10
Searcy, the Sub-collector of Customs for the South Australian administration
in Darwin, had hired a steamer admittedly not a very large or comfortable
one for a voyage along the Arnhem Land coast to investigate whether some
trepanging praus had by-passed the new arrangements for paying Customs
duties and purchasing fishing licences. On 29 March 1884 in Melville Bay in
north-eastern Arnhem Land, he found two praus; one had paid up, the other
had not. [The captains] excuse I considered fairly good, so fined him only 10,
which sum, with the dues, he paid up in gold. Searcy also met a very fine, tall,
well-made nigger called Cadado.
The masters of the proas came aboard while Cadado was there, and
complained that as soon as the rice was cooked for their men, the black
captain and his followers took it. I talked to Cadado, and told him that if
he interfered with the Malays, white men would come and growl. I also
informed the Malays that in a measure they must defend themselves,
but that if they used any unnecessary violence they would be punished.
Cadado promised never to steal again. He must have had a relapse,
however, for not long afterwards the Malays killed him. The Malays told
me that they were not frightened of the natives, but were afraid that the
whites would punish them if they interfered with the blacks. I did not
believe this at the time, but it seemed as if it were a fact.11
The essential point of the British intervention in both cases is the same: both
Barker and Searcy urge the trepangers not to resort to violence. But notice the
differences. Searcy has a steamer, not a sailing vessel, and, as he makes clear
elsewhere, I always used a Martini-Henry carbine when after big game.12 There
was no shortage of the latest ordnance aboard his steamer. Moreover he has
no hesitation in applying the requirement to pay the imposts of the colonial
administration of the Northern Territory and himself fixing an arbitrary
penalty for avoidance! This is a clear assertion of effective territorial control.
Lastly, he assumes that it is the European who is in a position to growl and to
punish either side of the dispute. There is no room to doubt the superior power
of British justice.
9 Mulvaney and Green 1992: 140.
10 Mulvaney and Green 1992: 165.
11 Searcy 1907: 9496. See also Macknight 1976: 110111; Correspondence received in the office
of the Minister controlling the Northern Territory, State Records of South Australia [hereafter
SRSA] GRS 1 1884/445.
12 Searcy 1907: 63.
124
There are other differences too. Barker, who was 44 at the time of these events,
came from an educated background in England and had served in Sicily, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, France, Canada and Ireland, before arriving in the Australian
colonies.13 Searcy, who was only 30 at this stage of his career, had grown up
in Adelaide and had not yet left South Australia other than on his voyage to
Darwin.14 Yet what is most remarkable about Searcy is his capacity to transcend
the grosser limits of his background; he has the imagination to realise that some
others at least see the world differently. Many lacked such imagination.
They also lacked the benefit of Searcys official position. The following letter,
written on 30 March 1903 almost exactly a century after Flinders and Brown
interviewed Pobassoo and about 20 years after Searcy was in Melville Bay, shows
in its jumble of tangled syntax, prejudice and special pleading just how far the
attitudes of some people on the ground and with different interests had
changed. Copies of the letter were sent to various South Australian Government
officials.
Sir,
I am trying to make a living down the Coast fishing and preserving
Beche de Mer commonly called Trepang but find that on account of
the Malay Proas being allowed to come over here yearly, it has such a
debasing effect on the natives that a whiteman cannot get them to work.
The law prohibits us from giving the natives intoxicating liquors but
the Malays are able to supply them with a great quantity, and so the
blacks will not work unless they get a certain amount, and so we are only
able to make a bare living.
Another thing is the Malays spread the venereal decease [sic] all
along the Coast and shortly after the Proas come it[]s no uncommon
thing to see five or six men and women in a camp rotten. I saw three die
on C[r]oker Island last year, and young women too.
I am given to understand that the duty collected from the Malays
only amount to about 300, and it takes all that to pay the expenses of
collecting, and the said Proas take away yearly between 4 & 5 thousand
pounds in fish, Turtle-Shell and Pearls.
Again, they are under the Dutch Flag, and are allowed to build
houses and in fact live ashore for six months of the year in Australia,
but if we should wish to go over say to the Auru or Key Island, we are
prohibited from fishing within (3 leagues) not three miles, and if only
wanting wood and water, and go on shore for the same, we if [we are]
caught stand a good show of losing our boat and plant. (Hardly fair is
it.)
13
14
Mulvaney and Green 1992: 326.

Macknight 1988.
125
The general opinion of all of us that are trying to make a living

down the Coast is that if the Malays were stopped from coming, that the
Whites and Natives would benefit greatly and the industry would grow
very shortly into a big sourse [sic] of revenue to the N. T. but we cannot
compete against the Malays whose Grog and Rice costs so very little in
Maccassar [sic]
Charles E. Gore15
In the event, the government obtained more balanced and reliable information
so that nothing in particular came of the charges in this and similar letters.16
A striking feature of the attitudes displayed in this letter is the emphasis on
the territorial integrity of Australia, along with a recognition that the Dutch
imperial power insists on a reciprocal claim. Both territories are seen as subject
to the oversight and control of their respective governments. We should also
note the depersonalised categories used: Malays, natives or blacks, and
even whitemen. There is no sign that our letter-writer knows the name of any
individual Malay or native as Searcy or Barker so clearly did. Nor is there
any doubt about the priority of the various interests to be considered. Even if
the natives are to be protected from intoxication and disease, it is only so that
they may supply more labour to white enterprise. Lastly, and perhaps most
importantly, we can see in the letter the assumption that all initiative lies with
the writer and his kind, aided where necessary by the power of his government.
If only the Malay trepangers can be prohibited from coming by government
regulation, then all of us that are trying to make a living down the Coast will be
free to develop the industry.
In the end, it was this final argument that led to the effective prohibition of the
trepanging voyages from Makassar to the Northern Territory coast in 1906, but it
was a complicated affair and a hollow victory for local enterprise.17
This review of the attitudes of contemporary observers of the trepanging industry
in Australia reveals a gradual narrowing of sympathies over a period of about
100 years following Flinders account. This is not just the result of the change
in the intellectual climate from an earlier Enlightenment outlook to the Social
Darwinism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but even more
importantly, a constriction of focus and a decline in knowledge. By contrast, in
the century since then, a broadening of approaches to the study of the trepanging
industry and ever wider sympathies among its students have gradually become
apparent. These developments have affected the ways in which the impact of the
industry, that is the interactions of the trepangers with local people and the longterm consequences of such interactions, has been understood.
15
Correspondence received in the office of the Minister controlling the Northern Territory, SRSA
GRS 1, 1903/461. See also the very similar letter in SRSA GRS 1, 1903/438.
16 The wider context of these letters and their reception is described in Macknight 1976: 121.
17 For a detailed discussion of these events, see Macknight 1976: 122126.
126
Widening views
The first major ethnographic research in the area visited by the trepangers,
that is along the coast from the Cobourg Peninsula to the bottom of the Gulf of
Carpentaria, was conducted by Norman Tindale on Groote Eylandt in 1921 and
1922. This was, in a sense, accidental since Tindales primary motive for the trip
had been to collect entomological specimens for the South Australian Museum,
though he had also made some preparations for ethnographic research, at least
as it applied to working with Aboriginal people. Once in the field, however, he
could not fail to record the abundant evidence of the former industry. A measure
of his unfamiliarity with the origins of the trepangers can be seen in a research
note from 1922; working with an informant, Rupert, a Nungubuyu man,
I asked him if the word sail tumbula of Ingura [Tindales term for the
main language spoken on Groote Eylandt] is Malay. Rupert says it is also
the Macassar word, the Malay word being again different. If other words
substantiate this one can fix the origin of the Malay traders who came
here & are said yet to ocassionally [sic] trespass along the coast.18
In his published list of words probably all of foreign origin, he notes some
possible Malay sources, but admits that the items in the list have not been
compared with Macassar or Bugi vocabularies, in which the sources of some
will probably be found.19
Today we should admire the typical precision of Tindales observations rather
than note his lack of access to sources on the finer points of linguistic and cultural
divisions in the Indonesian archipelago. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the
word Malay continued to be the most common term to describe the trepangers
and reference was made only to the Malay language for linguistic comparisons.
This is well demonstrated in Jennisons excellent article from 1927 which draws
on linguistic material from South Goulburn Island and from Elcho Island.20 More
famous is Warners discussion of cultural influences based on his fieldwork at
Milingimbi between 1927 and 1929.21 Warner uses the term Malay consistently
throughout his work. Thomson who worked extensively in eastern Arnhem
Land in the late 1930s, but was publishing in the 1940s, is highly inconsistent in
his usage of Macassar, Malay and now Indonesian, though he thought that
the trepangers brought a virile culture.22
18
19
20
21
22
Quoted in Walter 1988: 66. This thesis provides an extended discussion of Tindales work on
Groote Eylandt and in many other places. Ruperts information is correct; the regular Makassar
word is sombala, which derives ultimately from Sanskrit, while the usual Malay/Indonesian
word is layar. In relation to the suggestion that trepangers were still trespassing, it is most
unlikely that this was so. Tindale knew little of the history of the industry.
Tindale 192528: 132.
Jennison 1927.
This was first published as an article (Warner 1932), but the material has also appeared in the
various editions of his great book, A Black Civilization. On Warner, see also Hamby 2008.
For example, see the use of these terms in Thomson 1949: 8294, but similar casualness is also
apparent in his other publications from the 1940s.
127
It would be unfair to criticise researchers such as those just mentioned for not
looking more closely at the trepangers themselves. After all, the central focus
of these anthropologists was Aboriginal society. The work was also being done
in Australia where, at that time, any investigation of the background in the
Indonesian archipelago would have required access to scholarly and linguistic
resources not readily available. One remarkable exception to this lack of
interest is Tindales reference to the Dutch publication of late sixteenth-century
drawings to illustrate sails and vessel shapes similar to those known on Groote
Eylandt.23
The situation is more complex with the work of Ronald and Catherine Berndt
who conducted their research in various locations along the Arnhem Land
coast between 1946 and 1951, with many later visits as well. They recorded an
extraordinary body of ethnographic data, much of which they published with
exemplary dispatch. Perhaps it was just this desire for speedy publication that
meant that there is often some lack of analysis in their writing. Although there is
reference to the trepangers and their influence on Aboriginal societies in many of
the Berndts multifarious books and articles, the most sustained account is to be
found in their book, Arnhem Land: Its History and Its People, which was published
in Melbourne in 1954.24 This is a treasure trove of information of all kinds:
the published literature, archival sources from the South Australian records,
and direct testimony from local informants. Whereas Tindale and Warner had
been content to note that many men had travelled back to Makassar with the
trepangers, the Berndts provide the detailed account of Charley Djaladjari with
the names of many localities and words for specific items.25 For anyone familiar
with Makassar, many details are instantly recognisable. For example, among the
islands near Makassar listed by Djaladjari is Djamaluna island with its gardens
and large water tanks.26 Samalona is a small coral cay, about seven kilometres
off the coast directly in front of Makassar. Its main use these days is for recreation
and there are no gardens, but tanks are still needed for water.
The Berndts are largely responsible for introducing four elements into the
study of the trepangers which have, ultimately, proved unhelpful. The first is
the word Macassan. This term appears to have been first used in an article
published in 1947, but deriving from their fieldwork in 1945 before they went to
Arnhem Land. They write, Before white settlement, Chinese, Malayan, Javanese
and Macassan traders in search of trepang, bche-de-mer, dugong oil, cowries,
23
See Tindale 192528: 132. The reference is to GP Rouffaer and JW Ijzerman (eds), De Eerste
Schipvaart de Nederlanders naar Oost-Indi onder Cornelis de Houtman 15951597 (Linschoten
Vereeniging VII), Martinus Nijhoff, s-Gravenhage, 1915, pl. 2728. The second plate does indeed
show a vessel from South Sulawesi with a large rectangular sail among others seen by the
Dutch along the north coast of Java. The then Public Library of South Australia, next door to the
museum where Tindale worked, was one of only two subscribers in Australia to the Linschoten
Vereeniging at the time; it registered its copy of the volume on 25 June 1915, about three months
after publication.
24 In fact, my copy has the date of 11 December 1953 under the name of its first owner, so it may
have been available a little before 1954.
25 Berndt and Berndt 1954: 5158.
128
etc., visited parts of the northern coast.27 This context suggests that they then
knew little of the history of contact between north Australia and the archipelago
and casually invented this new term. It has persisted.28 In part, this is because
it helps to have some term by which to refer to those involved in the trepang
industry and Macassan serves easily as noun and adjective. Moreover, it does
make the link with Makassar which was port of origin and return for the praus.
The difficulty arises from confusion with the name of the cultural and linguistic
group which provided most of the crew and which also gave its name to the
city which is officially known today as Makassar. To itself, this group is known
as Mangkasara; in Bugis, it is Mangkasa; the most usual form in Malay or
Indonesian is Makassar or Mengkasar; the modern Dutch form is Makassaars;
while in English one finds Macassarese, Makassarese, Macassar and, my current
preference, Makasar. It is important to state clearly that the term Macassan (or
Makassan) has no currency in an Indonesian context; it should not be used as
an equivalent for Makasar.29
The second difficulty introduced by the Berndts was to suggest, however
tentatively, that the trepanging voyages began in the early sixteenth century.30
While many previous authors had offered guesses on when the industry began,
this estimate looked more definite, although the tentative calculations on
which it was based were not given. Such a date before European contact with the
continent has two consequences: it suggests that the observed effects of contact
in Aboriginal societies arose over about 400 years and it serves the rhetorical
purpose of distancing the industry from European contact. The matter of dating
is further discussed below.
Thirdly, the Berndts described an overarching structure to the relationship
between trepangers and Aborigines. They write:
With the coming of the Europeans, to which Flinders visit served as a
prelude, Macassan contact began a second phase that lasted until 1907.
It was during this time that the traditional trading relationships between
the Indonesians and the Aborigines became seriously strained.31
27
28
Berndt and Berndt 1947: 249.

The similarity in handwriting between the final -n and -r has also led to many examples of
mis-transcription of nineteenth century manuscript sources. See, for example, my own error in
Macknight 1969b: 66, note 3 and in Mulvaney and Green 1992: 135 and 163. I am confident that
other examples, when checked against the original manuscript, would show the same mistake.
29 I myself have used the term Macassan extensively, though I limit its meaning with some
precision (Macknight 1976: 12). I now try to avoid it in all contexts. In the 1960s I took over
the term from Mulvaney who, in turn, derived it from the Berndts. It is also widely used in the
publications of the Records of the American-Australian Expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948, but note
that McCarthy and Setzler offer a definition not very different from mine: By Macassan and
Malayan we refer to the fishermen and traders from the islands northwest of Australia who
visited the shores of Arnhem Land They came from Macassar in Celebes and from other
Indonesian localities. McCarthy and Setzler 1960: 287 note 67.
129
Several previous ethnographers had generalised about the nature of these

relationships. Tindale, for example, wrote that the attitude on Groote Eylandt
towards the Malays was one of hate.32 This view was confirmed by Worsley,
though he noted that the passage of some three decades had softened and
idealised the memory.33 I have argued that such generalisations are not
sustainable and, indeed, some of the evidence presented above illustrates the
variety of relationships.34 The element introduced by the Berndts, however, was
to suggest two generalisations: generally good relations followed by generally
bad relations. The lure of this narrative structure has proven hard to resist.
Lastly, there is a failure in much of the Berndts writing from this period to
distinguish clearly between material about which they have been told by
informants and conclusions based on credible evidence; in other words, between
myth and fact. A simple case is the manufacture of earthenware pottery in
Australia. As the Berndts reported, the manufacture of pottery is described in
songs they recorded, but this is not evidence to say, unequivocally, this happened
in Australia.35 In fact, there is very strong evidence that most earthenware
pottery found in Australia was manufactured in South Sulawesi, though some
may come from elsewhere in the archipelago. It is highly improbable that any
was made in Australia.36
A more complex example is the question of the Baijini. While Mountford too,
working at the same period as the Berndts, heard stories of the Baijini,37 the
Berndts built an elaborate narrative which assigned contact with these people
remembered particularly for the golden copper colour of their skin38 to a period
before Macassan contact. The Baijini, it is claimed, settled on the coast; they
built houses, grew food, wove cloth, as well as gathering trepang.39 As the Berndts
themselves realised, much of this material is conflated with observations of the
later trepangers and a thorough analysis would require detailed knowledge
of the realities of language and culture in Makassar, at least in the first instance.
The Berndts offered a few hints only. While it has long been clear that the Baijini
stories as such do not reflect any historical reality in Australia, their presentation
by the Berndts, and especially the claim of contact before the sixteenth century,
has led to much confusion.40
In 1948 as part of the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem
Land, that is at more or less the same time as the Berndts were beginning their
work in Arnhem Land, Fred McCarthy and Frank Setzler undertook the first
significant archaeological investigation of sites associated with the trepangers.
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
130
Tindale 192528: 131.

Worsley 1954: 912.
Macknight 1972: 285290.
Macknight 1972: 309310. Bulbeck and Rowley (2001) report further confirmation of this.
Mountford 1956: 333338, 440442.
The recent work of McIntosh on this material is discussed below.
They excavated two graves on Winchelsea Island and recorded the usual signs of
processing sites there and at two sites in Port Bradshaw. While they recognised
the overall purpose of the sites, they did not analyse how the remains reflected
the processes involved and, despite consulting the best available experts, they
could get no useful dates for the pottery they collected.41 Although there is a
general awareness of the former trepanging industry and the local influence
of the trepangers throughout the publications from the 1948 expedition and
McCarthy refers to an Indonesian publication relating to rock art in South
Sulawesi,42 nowhere does McCarthy mention that he himself had been in
Makassar ten years before.
This lack of awareness of the background to the industry in South Sulawesi
was addressed in two magisterial articles in 1952. AA Cense, who had lately
returned to the Netherlands after a long career in Indonesia and, as secretary
to the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, had access to its
excellent library, reviewed the historical references to the industry and discussed
the ethnographic publications from Australia, including the early articles of the
Berndts. He also appended an account of the route taken by the praus from an
old trepanger whom he had known in Makassar in the 1930s.43 In a note, Cense
mentions that he had just seen an article by HJ Heeren, covering much the same
material.44 Both articles analyse the evidence for cultural and other influences
by the trepangers on Aboriginal societies on the basis of an excellent knowledge
of the background of the trepangers themselves. It is unfortunate that their
publication in Dutch has prevented many later researchers consulting them.
Among Australian scholars of the period only Manning Clark seems to have
engaged seriously with the Dutch sources and, in a slightly confused account of
the industry, he refers to both these articles.45
Modern understandings
In 1961, John Mulvaney in his first overview of Australian prehistory discusses
the trepangers under the title proto-historic influences.46 In 1963 and 1965
he visited various places around the coast of Arnhem Land to investigate the
potential for archaeological research. A lecture on the industry he gave soon
after returning from the second trip is full of insights, based on a remarkably
41
42
43
44
45
46
McCarthy and Setzler 1960: 220223, 228229, 287294. It is important to note that in 1969, with
further knowledge, Kamer Aga-Oglu amended her opinion on the date of one critical sherd
(Macknight 1976: 162, n 22). Although not published until 1960, the text of McCarthy and
Setzlers chapter on archaeology had been completed very much earlier, according to Dr Martin
Thomas.
McCarthy 1960: 400.
Cense 1952. An English version of the account of the route appears in Macknight 1969b: 180185.
Heeren 1952.
Clark 1962: 3738.
Mulvaney 1961: 99100.
131
wide reading of the sources and the initial results of his fieldwork.47 When I
began my PhD research under his supervision in 1966, he most generously made
all his previous material available to me.
My doctoral thesis, which was submitted to the Australian National University
in December 1969, described the trepanging industry conducted around the
coast of Arnhem Land by men from Makassar; its chief point of originality, at
least within the Australian literature, was to view the enterprise from the deck
of a prau going south to Arnhem Land or Marege as they called it, rather than
looking from the beach at what was coming over the northern horizon. This was
a move which, I remember, took some intellectual effort to achieve and it is not
by chance that the book which eventually resulted from the thesis is entitled The
Voyage to Marege.48 In large part, I set about a thorough reading of the sources
already known from the work of those just mentioned, with a view to drawing
these together into an overall account. Seasons of fieldwork in 1966 and 1967,
however, added new aspects to my understanding.
It was a magic time to be doing fieldwork in coastal Arnhem Land: the various
settlements could be reached by regular air services and small boats were
available to reach nearby sites; the centralisation of control in the then Welfare
Branch of the administration and the practical assistance of the Methodist
Overseas Mission made many practical matters much easier to arrange than
they have been more recently; to my surprise, delight and education, enough
old men were still alive and willing to pass on significant information about
the industry to an eager young listener; and the Australian National University
provided adequate funding and many other resources.
Coming at the matter with a strongly archaeological approach, there were
several questions that I managed to resolve. One was to understand the layout
of a processing site and the actual processes involved.49 By visiting several dozen
sites between Groote Eylandt and the Cobourg Peninsula and excavating on
many of them it became clear that the trepangers had arranged their activities
on a site in a standard pattern. Moreover, the artefacts collected on the surface and
by excavation, including abundant earthenware, high-fired Chinese stoneware,
Dutch gin bottles, copper fish-hooks, and Dutch coins, were remarkably similar
from site to site and confirmed Makassar as the home port of the praus.50 Lastly,
the sheer range of the sites emphasised the geographical spread over which the
industry was conducted and the extensive opportunities for interacting with
local people.
By the happiest of ironies, in 1969 Mulvaney followed up McCarthys initiative
from 1938 in investigating prehistoric sites in South Sulawesi with the hope
47
48
49
Mulvaney 1966.
Macknight 1969a, 1976.
My understanding of the processes involved has been much helped more recently by observing
the modern methods in South Sulawesi and, more importantly, by information from friends at
Tasmanian Seafoods Ltd, the firm which has resurrected a significant export industry in trepang.
50 These collections are now held in the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery in Darwin.
132
of establishing links with Australia. With RP Soejono, he led a joint team of

Australian and Indonesian archaeologists to revisit and re-excavate key sites.
Even if nothing came of the hope of establishing prehistoric links between South
Sulawesi and Australia, the 1969 expedition did open up collaboration with
Indonesian archaeologists that has continued until the present. It also allowed
me to visit Makassar for the first time and I met Mangngellai Daeng Maro who
had come to Arnhem Land with his father in 190506 and 190607. I also went
sailing on a prau very similar to those that had come to Australia and was able
to check many details of my understanding of the general background.
This first visit inspired me to embark on a long-term research interest in the
past of South Sulawesi. The subsequent growth in historical, archaeological and
sociological understanding of the area much more from the work of others
than from my own efforts has been spectacular. We know in very great detail
about the place from which the trepangers came and about their intellectual and
cultural world. We can now see the historical and cultural circumstances into
which the industry fits both in general and in particular detail, such as burial
practice or the nature of the earthenware pottery.51
One matter about which, for many years, I was not entirely happy was the
question of the date at which the industry began, that is, when did trepangers
from Makassar first start working along the coast of Arnhem Land and down
into the Gulf of Carpentaria. In successive statements, I have gradually changed
my position on the answer to this question. In the 1960s, I was concerned to
argue against early dates, such as the Berndts guess of the early sixteenth
century quoted above. Given some evidence from the eighteenth century
and unwilling to make too great a distinction between the industry along the
Kimberley coast and in Arnhem Land, I opted for about the beginning of the
eighteenth century.52 By 1976, I had discovered the Dutch report from Timor
in 1754 referring to occasional voyages to the Southland to collect trepang and
wax and I had heard from Mangngellai Daeng Maro a legend about Makasar
leaders escaping to the Gulf of Carpentaria after a defeat in 1667 and eventually
bringing back the first cargo of trepang. I was then willing to suggest a date
between about A.D. 1650 and 1750 with the most probable period within this
century [being] the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Moreover [the
industry] may well have begun in a small, irregular and secretive way.53 Ten
years later and with Heather Sutherlands encouragement and guidance, I had
begun to explore the Dutch archives and I suggested
subject to confirmation by more detailed archival work, that the whole
trepang trade through Macassar was on a small scale and locally based
in the mid 1720s. It had probably begun only a decade or so before [and]
51
52
Bulbeck and Rowley 2001.

Macknight 1969a: 391. I have never accepted at face value several early radiocarbon dates from
my excavations. On this question, see Bulbeck and Rowley 2001: 5960 and the sources they
quote. Daryl Guse has recently taken some new samples from the same context at the Anuru Bay
site as that which yielded one early date, but no results are yet available.
53 Macknight 1976: 97.
133
as we know from other documentary sources, Macassan trepangers

had certainly reached the north Australian coast by the middle of the
eighteenth century.54
My current opinion is based on that more detailed archival work as reported by
Gerritt Knaap and Heather Sutherland. We now have a remarkably full account
of the whole trade of Makassar through the eighteenth century which places the
trade in trepang within its context. Not only was Makassar the point of trade
for trepang from Australia, but it was and remains the centre of the trade
for the whole archipelago. This new research confirms my suggestion that the
trepang trade began a few years before 1720 and was initially very small. Up to
the 1760s most trepang came from relatively close at hand and was exported first
to Batavia, and thence to China. In the 1760s the average annual export was 3469
pikul (210 tonne). In the 1770s, by which time a large proportion of the trepang
went directly to China in an annual junk, the export had grown to 4568 picul (276
tonne) and then in the 1780s to 7068 pikul (428 tonne).55
If we combine the sudden jump in the quantity exported around 1780 with
Pobassoos statement to Flinders in 1803 that he was one of the first to come to
Arnhem Land about 20 years before, backed up by later information obtained
by Flinders in Kupang, it seems highly probable that it was Arnhem Land which
provided the new quantities. I now believe that the industry in Arnhem Land
began around 1780.56 The evidence indicating earlier activity in Australia, in
particular the 1754 report from Timor, applies to the Kimberley coast, a point I
did not realise clearly enough before.
Despite all the new evidence about the trade in trepang and other marine
products during the eighteenth century, some puzzles remain. One is the lack
of explicit mention in the eighteenth century records of praus bringing trepang
from Marege,57 or for that matter, Kayu Jawa, the name used for the Kimberley
coast. I previously suggested that Buton or Bonerate, as the nearest known ports
on the route to Australia, might disguise the eventual destination, but the figures
on the trade with these two places, though they do include significant quantities
of trepang, make it clear that this explanation will not work.58 Yet the name,
Marege, was certainly known in the late eighteenth century as it is applied to
a type of trepang in a 1788 list.59 A possible explanation may lie in the wide
gap between the import figure and export figure for trepang and other marine
products as recorded. Thus of the 428 tonne of trepang annually exported, on
average, in the 1780s, only 167 tonne is identified as import.60 In this systematic
under-reporting of imports which is seen throughout the century in the figures
for other maritime products as well there is plenty of room to accommodate
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
134
Macknight 1986: 70.

Knaap and Sutherland 2004: 99102.
This point is argued more fully in Macknight 2008a: 136137.
This name is used in the comparable records from the 1840s. See Macknight 2008a: 138.
Macknight 1986: 70; Knaap and Sutherland 2004: 142143.
very large quantities of cargo from Arnhem Land, though it is not clear why
such items were not noticed.61 Since a large proportion of the export went on
a single junk to China, it seems likely that the export quantity is reasonably
accurate. If so, the considerable quantity of trepang must have been imported
from somewhere.
Another puzzle is what to make of the legend that some of the Gowa fleet from
Makassar, defeated by the Dutch at Buton in 1667, made their way to the north
Australian coast.62 While there could be an element of truth here, it is strange
that no one has yet noticed a reference to the matter in the abundant and much
studied written sources for the period. It is also difficult to see any link with the
beginning of the trepang industry in Australia, given what we otherwise know
about the history of the trade.
In 1972 I published a review of all the claims which had then been made of
ways in which the trepangers had influenced Aboriginal people in the Northern
Territory.63 It is now worth asking how the new precision in our understanding
of the nature and date of the industry affects the question of influence. The extent
of that influence has continued to receive considerable scholarly attention.
Some of this work has filled out, but not significantly changed, the points I
made in 1972. The best example is in the matter of language where far greater
expertise and experience in Aboriginal linguistics has been matched by access to
modern sources from across the archipelago.64 By a remarkable stroke of good
fortune, however, we have in the works of BF Matthes, the nineteenth-century
Dutch Bible translator, and especially in his Makasar dictionary, a detailed,
contemporary account of the main language used by the trepangers, along with
many other details of their life.65
In two areas, further work has significantly transformed and extended my earlier
understanding. Both involve the long-term ramifications, within Aboriginal
societies, of changes and material deriving from contact with the trepangers.
While the initial outcome of the contact has long been apparent, it is now clear
that there have also been more complex consequences.
61
62
63
64
65
Knaap and Sutherland (2004: 98) offer some suggestions to explain the discrepancy relating
to trepang specifically and especially that not coming from regular centres of trade. As their
work continually makes clear, the figures merely reflect the records and are averages; particular
circumstances and arrangements may often have made the reality somewhat different from year
to year. In addition, policy and implementation differed across the decades. Yet whatever the
problems of detail, there can be no question of the cogency of their main conclusions drawn from
sources across the century, in this case the steady growth of the trepang export and import
from the 1720s, with a marked rise in the 1780s.
Macknight 1976: 96.
Macknight 1972.
Walker and Zorc 1981; Evans 1992, 1997. Some of the suggestions by Urry and Walsh (1981)
seem excessively speculative.
Matthes 1859. Much later work on the language confirms the value of this dictionary and
associated materials.
135
Over many years, Ian McIntosh has developed an analysis of the Baijini
stories of north-eastern Arnhem Land, mentioned above. Whereas the Berndts
presented the stories as evidence for actual historical events in a pre-Macassan
phase of contact, McIntosh accepts the difficulties with this interpretation and
sees the specific material as deriving from Aboriginal experience with the
trepangers, especially on visits to Makassar.66 He then moves on, however, to
consider what Aboriginal thinkers have done with this material and describes
the sophisticated intellectual structure they have developed to account for the
relations between outsiders and themselves. This takes the question of influence
far beyond the mere transference of particular cultural items from one group to
another. McIntosh traces the ways in which the memory of historical events in
this case the well documented visits to Makassar and elsewhere by Aboriginal
men in the nineteenth century can produce outcomes which ramify through
the thinking of succeeding generations. The analytical task for research on these
stories is to tie particular elements to the observed nineteenth-century reality
and trace out the transformations.67
A good example of the richness of this approach can be seen in McIntoshs
treatment of the Aboriginal and more specifically his informant and friend
Burrumarras understanding of Islamic matters. He shows how the wurramu
ceremony, as described by Warner and the Berndts and observed by himself,
has both an outside meaning with various relatively straightforward historical
references and an inside meaning referring to underlying power relationships
and their transformations. Various songs are based on Arabic prayers, though
their meaning as understood by any pious Muslim is now not recognised. What
makes this material of particular interest is the excellent chronological control
over the three stages of the process. It is highly unlikely that anyone in Arnhem
Land has heard the Muslim prayers since the last trepangers from Makassar
went home in 1907 at least until very recent times and in a completely different
context. Next, we have Warners record of the songs from the early 1920s,
confirmed by the Berndts material from around 1950. Though the Berndts knew
Burrumarra as a young man, McIntosh is reporting his mature reflections on the
material from the 1990s. There is no reason to suppose that this is the end of the
process of re-working and re-interpretation.68
In a similar way, but with very different materials, Scott Mitchell has traced out
the economic ramifications of contact with the trepangers, especially for the
people of the Cobourg Peninsula. While Rose had long ago hypothesised that
the availability of dug-out canoes had transformed the economic possibilities
and allowed a larger population on Groote Eylandt,69 Mitchell shows, with
some very elegant archaeology, how more recent middens in his study area
66
67
68
This is essentially my position over many years. See Macknight 1972: 313; 2008a: 144.
See McIntosh (2008) for his most recent account, with references to earlier papers.
See McIntosh 1996. Both Cense (1952) and Heeren (1952) have dealt in detail with the derivation
of the songs and expressions in question and on the basis of a good understanding of the Islamic
originals. McIntosh seems not to have consulted them.
69 Rose 1961.
136
reflect an economy more focussed on marine resources only accessible with

reliable watercraft.70 Again, we can see the consequences of influence, as well
as the simple observation that dug-out canoes and their making were derived
from contact with the trepangers. Since the widespread use of the canoes by
local people must derive from considerable contact that is, from a period
when the industry was reasonably well established this must be after about
1780. By 1839 at the latest, however, Aborigines on the Cobourg Peninsula
were manufacturing the canoes.71 The speed of the Aboriginal response is both
impressive and instructive. While Thomson had proposed that access to certain
material goods had given a special impetus to the ceremonial exchange cycle,72
Mitchells material suggests the transformative effect of new technology, rather
than merely the intensification of existing features of the economy.
In one area, I quite failed in 1972 to see the implications of the data; that is the
introduction of smallpox. Although I listed the evidence suggesting that this
disease was derived from contact with the trepangers,73 I did not then link this
with the widespread smallpox epidemics which afflicted most of the continent.
The whole topic is now definitively covered by the work of Judy Campbell.74
There can be no serious doubt that the several epidemics in the nineteenth century
began in northern Australia and spread southwards and, though much work
remains to be done in elucidating the history of the disease in the archipelago,
there is no difficulty in sourcing the infection back to Makassar. Indeed Robert
Brown, with Flinders, noted traces of smallpox among the men he met in 1803.75
Much work is also needed to trace the limits of the epidemics and the scale of
mortality in different parts of the continent.
There has been much debate in recent years about the origin of the smallpox
observed in Sydney in April 1789 and no little ingenuity displayed to suggest that
it could have been derived from the British settlement.76 Such a conclusion seems
to me both far-fetched and unnecessary. The overwhelming probability must be
that it was introduced, like the later epidemics, by trepangers on the north coast
and spread across the continent to arrive in Sydney quite independently of the
new settlement there. If, about 1780, the trepang industry brought large numbers
of men from the archipelago to Arnhem Land for the first time, the date of the
epidemics arrival in Sydney, with its terrible effects on a relatively dense, but
entirely virgin population, makes a great deal of sense.
70
71
72
73
74
75
Mitchell 1994, 1995, 1996.

Cameron 1999: 55.
Thomson 1949.
Macknight 1972: 292293.
Campbell 2002. See also Macknight 1986.
Browns journal 18 February 1803 British Museum (Natural History). In view of the interest in
this question, it is worth transcribing all that Brown says on the matter: In the small pox they
use the cold affusion. The water is procurd as cool as possible & during the eruptive fever is
pourd on the patient 3 times a day, viz early in the morning, at noon & at 6 PM. If this practise
is not regularly followd with a strict attention to the hours the patient commonly dies. Among
the people we saw very few were pitted by the small pox & those very slightly. See also Brown
2001: 373, but I have worked from the original.
76 Butlin 1983; Warren 2007; Mear 2008.
137
I recently had the pleasure of returning to western Arnhem Land where Daryl
Wesley is re-investigating some trepang processing sites to understand more
details of the conditions of contact between the trepangers and local people.
He and his team are also systematically studying the rock art of the Wellington
Ranges, some 10 to 20 kilometres inland, which shows much evidence of this
contact. Here again, it may be the abundance of such art, as well as the motifs
themselves, which reveals changes in Aboriginal ways of thinking.
Conclusion
There sometimes seems to be no end to the possibilities of tracing the eddying
whirlpools of the trepangers influence in indigenous societies. In 1972, I used
another metaphor when I summed up their impact:
Macassan influence contributed merely an exotic colour to the cultural
fabric of certain Aboriginal societies. While this colour might well
have become more marked had the contact been more prolonged,
the underlying pattern was still very clear, even in areas of strongest
influence.
In essence, this remains a valid assessment. Within a traditional context, the
people of the Cobourg Peninsula, or Groote Eylandt, or north-eastern Arnhem
Land, or anywhere else across the continent whose lives were changed either
directly or indirectly as a result of the trepangers visiting the north coast retained
the essential character of their languages, economy, social organisation, religious
belief and symbolic system.
The metaphor, however, is too simple and too static. It misses the sense of
agency and the complexity of process that we can now discern. It fails to notice
the importance of Aboriginal response immediately, or over time, and it has
no space for the role of the individual. Moreover, if we consider the history of
northern Australia into the non-traditional present, many more agents and
externally-driven processes need to be taken into account. Within this history,
the memory of the trepang industry from Makassar can be, and has been, put to
a wide variety of uses for a diverse set of interests.77
Flinders account of his meeting with the trepanging fleet made the industrys
existence known to a very wide audience and this now passes for general
knowledge, especially in northern Australia. In particular, for contemporary
historians of Aboriginal experience, the story of the trepang industry and the
outcome of interactions between the trepangers and Aborigines is a well-known
theme. Today, we can also, with some assurance, place these matters within
an emerging regional history. Modern Australians look north-west towards
to Makassar with considerable understanding of the history and present
circumstances of that area. It is not true to say, however, that the wheel has come
77
138
See Macknight 2008a.
full circle since Flinders and Brown asked Pobassoo about the ippo poison; we
know far more than they or any of their contemporaries did. What we can do,
two centuries later, is to share their expansive and inclusive view of the regions
affairs.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the two anonymous referees, Greg Lockhart, Elizabeth Macknight
and, especially, David Bulbeck for comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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The privilege of employing natives:

the Quan Sing affair and Chinese-Aboriginal
employment in Western Australia, 18891934
Victoria Haskins
In September 1921, two permits to employ Aborigines were forwarded to the

Western Australian Chief Protector of Aborigines, AO Neville. The permits
allowed Miss Yuanho Quan Sing of Derby in north-western Western Australia to
engage the services of two individuals: Bobbydol and Roebourne Annie. The
permits had been authorised by the Resident Magistrate and local Protector of
Aborigines, William Hodge. Miss Quan Sing was told you could not grant
her a permit to employ [A]boriginals, explained the covering note, but not
withstanding this & the cancellation of her permit last year, she persists in her
endeavour to obtain the privilege of employing natives.1 Neville immediately
directed Hodge to cancel the permits, telling him, Quan Sing and his family
have made numerous efforts from time to time to employ natives, all of which
have been frustrated.2
Indeed the privilege of employing Aboriginal workers had been fought hard
for by the Quan Sing family, initially by Quan Sing snr, and subsequently by his
eldest daughter Yuanho Quan Sing, who was, as she would repeatedly point
out, Australian-born. Tracing the long-running confrontation of this ChineseAustralian family from a remote north-western township with the racial
politics of Western Australias Aboriginal administration offers a rare, detailed
glimpse into the significance of Aboriginal employment control for constructing
categories of inclusion and exclusion in the Australian colonising project. Quan
Sings affair, as one official termed it, also highlights how local politics of race
played out on the frontiers of white Australia in the early twentieth century,
revealing the instability and fragility of colour-coded citizenship, and the role of
Aboriginal protection in the development of Australian citizenship in the early
twentieth century.
It is a story that might be considered the most marginal of histories. Chinese
people, and Asians generally, were explicitly prohibited from employing
Aboriginal workers in Queensland (from 1902), Western Australia (from 1907),
1
2
Initials illeg, Memo to CPA, 19 September 1921, Quansing Employment of Natives, series 2030,
consignment 993, item 1939/0793, State Records Office of Western Australia. Unless otherwise
stated all further references to the Quan Sing case are drawn from this file.
Copy, telegram Chief Protector Aborigines to Resident Magistrate Derby 20 September 1921;
Copy, Chief Protector Aborigines to Resident Magistrate Derby 20 September 1921.
145
and the Northern Territory (from 1910); elsewhere in Australia, one looks in
vain for any documented Asian-Aboriginal employment relationship amongst
the detailed records of the various state bodies regulating Indigenous workers
in the twentieth century. A rich body of historical scholarship on AsianAboriginal relationships suggests that legislation restricting Asian employment
of Aborigines was driven largely by the authorities concern with controlling
interracial sexuality and reproduction, even where other concerns, such as the
desire to secure white economic advantage over Asians, or simple anti-Asian
racism, were evident.3 Histories of Aboriginal labour emphasise the control and
advantages these permit systems provided to white employers. However, the
material and symbolic impact upon the Asian community of being denied access
to Aboriginal labour by the same permit system is not considered.4 Nor have these
restrictions been analysed in any depth in broader discussions of discriminatory
anti-Asian policies passed from the late nineteenth century, although it has
been understood that Chinese issues were central to the development of an
ambiguous and contradictory legal framework for Australian citizenship.5 The
popular image of the degrading, corrupting Chinese that seemingly justified such
restrictions, a stereotype generally dismissed with ease by historians,6 might yet
reveal more about the importance of declaring Chinese exclusion by refusing to
admit them as employers of Aboriginal workers. As Claire Lowrie has recently
highlighted, the evidence that Chinese people could and did employ domestic
servants both Chinese and non-Chinese suggested to white colonists and
officials that the Chinese were as capable of exercising colonial mastery as
the British. This was a threatening concept. The response was the discursive
construction of the corrupting Chinese master, that worked to deny even
powerful and wealthy Chinese the status of legitimate colonisers.7 Prohibiting
Chinese men and women from employing Aboriginal workers pointedly and
quite unequivocally excluded them from the colonial project.
The Quan Sing story does not provide much insight into the nature of
relationships between Chinese employers and Aboriginal workers. The voices
of the Aboriginal people are entirely missing from the archival records, while
neither Yuanho Quan Sing nor any of her family expressed their opinions on the
individuals they employed, or about the Aboriginal community more generally.
Those who refused to countenance the Quan Sings employment of Aborigines
also never ventured any criticism or comment on the way they managed their
relationships with their employees. Yuanho Quan Sing was supported at times
by local officials who commented favourably enough on her treatment of
Aboriginal people she employed, but provided little detail. For these reasons it
3
4
5
6
7
146
May 1984; Evans, Saunders and Cronin 1988; Choo 1994, 1995, 2001; Ganter 1998, 2006; Yu 1999;
McGrath 2003; Martinez 2000, 2006; Stephenson 2007; Lowrie 2009: 199203.
For Western Australia see Hetherington 2002; Jebb 2002. For Queensland see Robinson 2008;
Kidd 2007.
Atkinson 1995; Ryan 1995; Chesterman and Galligan 1997: 8081; Markus 2001; Rubenstein 2004.
For instance see Ganter 2006: 78, 126; Evans et al 1988: 310311; Stephenson 2007: 6264, 66.
Lowrie 2009: 200201.
THE PRIVILEGE OF EMPLOYING NATIVES
is not possible to reach any real conclusions about the nature of the employer/
employee relationship in this specific case, nor understand whether, and why,
Aboriginal people might have been prepared to work for this family.
The insights the story does provide are into the mentality of the government
and officials, both local and in Perth, at the time, in administering policies that
prevented Asian people from employing Aboriginal workers in any capacity.
Insight can also be gained into the significance of the exclusions for Asian
families like the Quan Sings, along with an understanding of why they, and
others, might have sought the privilege of employing natives. More generally,
the story of the Quan Sing affair provides an opportunity to contribute to the
historicisation of Australian citizenship.8 If Asian exclusion was the flipside of
Aboriginal protection,9 together these processes combined to constitute the unexcluded, un-protected white Australian citizen.
Quan Sings Affair10

When Quan Sing snr was first charged with working an [A]boriginal Boy at
Derby Local Court in April 1908, and fined 1 and ordered to pay 18/- court
costs, he was annoyed. He had, he asserted, a recently acquired and valid general
permit to employ Aborigines. Suspecting malice on the part of a local policeman
and the Court Clerk, Quan Sing snr wrote to the Western Australian AttorneyGeneral to protest against the charge and to seek reinstatement of his permit.
[A]ll I ask for is Justice as is due to any Respectable Citizen, he appealed.11
Quan Sing snr had been convicted under new regulations to the 1905 Act to make
provision for the better protection and care of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Western
Australia. Introduced in December 1907, these included directions that no further
employment permits to Asiatics were to be issued whatsoever, and that all
existing permits or agreements were to be cancelled, at the discretion of the
local Protectors. Asians were classified as undesirable employers of Aborigines,
alongside hotelkeepers, for whom permits were also no longer allowed, under
the same regulations.12
The Western Australian permit system dated back to 1886 legislation that
instituted a voluntary contract system for employers of Aborigines.13 In 1905 the
Aborigines Act had made it unlawful to employ any [A]boriginal, or a male half-
8
9
10
11
12
See Chesterman and Galligan 1997; Irving 2000; Dutton 2002; Rubinstein 2004; Holland 2007.
Ganter 2006: 93.
Arthur Adams, Resident Magistrate and Protector, to Chief Protector, 16 October 1909.
Quan Sing & Co to Attorney-General, Perth, 28 April 1908.
Aborigines Department Circular to Protectors of Aborigines, 17 December 1907, Extract from
Government Gazette (WA) 20 December 1907, emphasis added.
13 Aborigines Protection Act 1886(WA). For discussion see Hetherington 2002: 149; Crowley 1954;
Biskup 1973: 36.
147
caste under the age of fourteen years, or a female half-caste, except under permit,
requiring employers to produce their permits on demand to police or appointed
Protectors of Aborigines.14
Nevertheless there had been no explicit racial restrictions on permits in 1905.
This was despite the fact that the legislation had arisen in the wake of a 1904
Royal Commission, which had heard the then Chief Protector Henry Prinsep
complain that contracts could be entered into without his knowledge, that he
had no power to prevent any Asiatic or European from being an employer under
the Act nor could he prevent Europeans or Asiatics allowing an [A]boriginal
to enter, remain in, or reside on their premises (unless they were European
publicans), and indeed, that he could not prevent the greatest scoundrel unhung
from employing an [A]boriginal under contract.15
The omission was even more remarkable given that the Commission had been
headed by the new Queensland Chief Protector of Aborigines, Walter Roth,
who had been involved with the passage of a 1902 amendment to Queenslands
Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 specifically
excluding Chinese employers from holding permits to employ Aborigines in
Queensland. As Northern Protector in Queensland in 1898, Roth had given
explicit directions to local Protectors not to allow Chinese permits and had
explained during the Queensland debates on the anti-Chinese amendment
that without such restrictive legislation my hands are forced to allow the
[A]boriginals to be employed by Chinamen.16 But perhaps the experience in
Queensland, where the 1902 amendments had been a contentious matter of
public discussion, and restrictions against all Asians were not able to be secured,
explains the more discreet approach taken in Western Australia.17 The restrictions
against issuing permits to Asiatics were ushered in very quietly indeed, as
regulations announced in the government gazette at the very end of 1907.
Certainly the regulations appear to have caught Quan Sing by surprise. After he
interviewed the then Chief Protector of Aborigines, Charles Gale, on the matter,
leaving with him a copy of his letter to the Attorney-General and information
that others, including an Indian man and a Chinese baker, were employing
Aboriginal workers, Quan Sing applied for an exemption from the regulations.
This being refused, he persuaded Gale to agree he could re-engage the Aboriginal
worker originally contracted to him, for the balance of the term of the contract, if
14
Act to make provision for the better protection and care of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Western Australia
1905 (WA).
15 Roth 1905: 32, 40.
16 See Evans et al 1988: 311, 252; Ganter 1998: 16; 2006: 77.
17 In fact reference to Chinese people, specifically, during the course of the Commission had been
limited and relatively innocuous, see Roth 1905: 53, 83, 101, 50. Ganter 1998: 16, notes Roths
reluctance in the Queensland case to jeopardise royal assent. Other research by Ganter suggests
that the 1907 Western Australian regulations may have been originally framed to restrict only
Afghan employers, but extended to all Asians under the new Chief Protector, Gale, in 1908:
Ganter 2006: 108.
148
he could find him. When Quan Sing could not re-locate his former worker Gale
directed the local Resident Magistrate Adams to allow him to employ someone
else instead, to Adams chagrin.
Six months later no doubt when the term of his original permit had expired the
Derby police initiated proceedings against Quan Sing for the illegal employment
of an Aboriginal man and woman. Quan Sing then insisted that he had been
given verbal authority by both the Chief Protector and the Minister of Works,
who was, incidentally, also the State Premier. Quan Sing was, however, charged
and fined again. And the following day, he was charged again. Quan Sing
threatened to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court, but to his dismay both
the Chief Protector and the Premier refused, awkwardly, to provide statements
in his defence.
Despite being warned that he would be dealt with severely if he came before
the court again, it is evident that Quan Sing continued to employ Aboriginal
workers. In February 1910 he complained of police interference with Aborigines
in his employ.
An oral history recorded by the descendant of an Aboriginal woman who was
washing and ironing for the Quan Sings, dated to 1910, provides a clue into what
might have happened. The interviewees grandmother had told her children to
play while she was working, when a police buggy and horse appeared, and
two Aboriginal police boys sang out to them in their language if they like to go
for a ride:
the girls didnt understand the meaning of that joy ride they were
taken away forever.
They could hear my grandmothers voice from that boab tree [the Prison
Tree in Derby, where the children were held overnight] calling out in
Nyikina but they couldnt answer.
Next morning the boat was coming in from Wyndham. Mum said that
the last thing they can remember they put them on the train. And from
there that train went straight down to the jetty. By the time Granny
got down to the water, this old jetty, they put them already down in the
cabin.18
Possibly, the children were taken in retribution for Quan Sings persistent
defiance. However, as the removal and institutionalisation of mixed-descent
Aboriginal children in the region dramatically intensified in this period,19 it is
just as likely that the children were taken as part of a broader general sweep of
18
Speakers name withheld, Oral history recorded by Mary Anne Jebb, Derby, undated, pers comm
(email) Mary Anne Jebb, 1 June 2010; and abbreviated version dated to 1910 in text on current
display at Old Derby Gaol Interpretative Centre, Derby, Under the Act, nd; see also transcribed
version, Dunnybudgies, derby gaol, 13 February 2002, <http://www.kuramancreative.com/
dunnybudgies/states/derbygaol.html> accessed 28 May 2010.
19 Haebich 2000: 242; Choo 2001: 151152.
149
child removal in the area. Indeed, it would have been more remarkable if they
had not been taken. Whether the mother had been targeted specifically because
of her employer, or a blind eye had been turned to Quan Sings employment of
her, Quan Sings demand for an investigation into the removal of her children
would have antagonised the local police.20
Towards the end of 1910 Quan Sing wrote once again to Gale, asking for the
recovery of his permit to enable him to employ a native woman to assist his
wife, who was due in a month to give birth to their seventh child. All of their
children except one infant were at school and when the new baby arrived it would
be a necessity that his wife had help in the house.21 His request was refused.
In September 1911, however, Quan Sing had managed to secure a permit, from
a new, apparently sympathetic Resident Magistrate, named Gurdon, at Derby.
By the end of the month, the police at Derby had reported this breach of the
regulations, and under instructions from the Aborigines Department Gurdon
was forced to cancel the permit.
In April 1913, Quan Sing wrote again to the Attorney-General requesting a
permit to employ someone to assist his wife, as it extremely hard for her to do
the whole of the washs the single hand with so many childrens (7 childrens) after
my elder daughter to go to the Claremont Methodist ladies college.22 Again,
refused.
In September 1915, some months after the appointment of a new Chief Protector,
AO Neville, Quan Sing called on his offices in Perth to ask if the boy he had
previously employed could be returned to him, and again, some seven months
later, to point out that two hotelkeepers, an Indian man and a Chinese baker all
employed Aboriginal workers in Derby, and to request a general permit. Quan
Sings efforts resulted in a desultory investigation by Neville into his claims but,
once again, a refusal to provide him with a permit.
It was at this point that Quan Sings daughter, Yuanho Quan Sing, made her first
application for a permit to employ [A]borigines womens in August 1917. She
explained that as she was born in Derby, she understood that she was entitled as
a natural born British subject to such a permit, and she asked the Protector to
oblige her to have fair place same as anybody in Derby.23 The current Resident
Magistrate at Derby, a man by the name of Elliott, sent an anxious telegram to
Neville pleading that he not grant her a permit, as it was just a subterfuge by
her father and would create a lamentable precedent. It seems the police in
20
In the end, the Police Investigator only recommended that Quan Sing should see the Chief
Protector Gale about the matter, according to Quan Sing: annotation, WO Sallenger to Quan
Sing, 28 March 1910.
21 Quan Sing to CF Gale, 5 November 1910.
22 Quan Sing to Attorney General, Perth, 14 April 1913.
23 Miss Y Quan Sing to the Protector of Aborigines, 27 August 1917.
150
Derby were threatening to prosecute Quan Sing, yet again, for employing an
Aboriginal worker at this time, and Quan Sing had engaged a solicitors firm to
forestall them.24 Yuanho Quan Sings application was refused.
Yuanho Quan Sings response was defiant. Pointing out as her father had done
that others were infringing the regulations in Derby, she again requested a permit,
and was again denied. In October the following year, she was given a permit
by Sergeant Crowe of the Derby police, which Neville immediately directed be
cancelled. However, at the end of 1921, when Neville ordered the newly arrived
Resident Magistrate Dr William Hodge to cancel the two single permits he had
issued to Yuanho Quan Sing, he would encounter unexpected resistance.
A natural-born British subject

The argument that she was entitled, as a British subject, born in Australia, to
employ Aboriginal labour, was at the centre of Yuanho Quan Sings case for a
permit, and it would be this argument that would perplex and indeed divide the
authorities. That it was an argument her Cantonese-born father could not have
made was not lost on Derbys Resident Magistrate, Elliott, who considered her
application a ploy by her father. Nor was it lost on the authorities in Perth. The
Aborigines Department sought advice from the Solicitor-General of Western
Australia, who replied that while the grant of a permit was discretionary, it was
definitely not to be granted to an Asiatic. Although there was no definition of
Asiatic as such, the question does not turn on whether the applicant is a British
subject or naturalised. At any rate, he opined, I think a person born of [C]hinese
parents should be deemed an Asiatic. And finally, given that her father had been
refused a permit, I do not think it should be issued to his daughter living with
him.25
Quan Sing snr had protested to the Attorney-General at the time of his first
conviction that he had been a respectable resident of Derby since 1889 and as
an employer of Aborigines under permit every year since, he had never been
subjected to such annoyance before.26 His application for an exemption from the
regulations set out his respectable status as an importer and merchant. He was a
married man residing with my wife and six children; had been a law abiding
resident since his arrival in the colony; and could provide character references
from leading Government officials at Derby.27 His application was probably
made on the advice of the sympathetic Chief Protector Gale, who forwarded it to
the Colonial Secretary with a covering note pointing out that: These regulations
24
Telegram, Elliott to Chief Protector Aborigines, received 24 September 1917; Memo, Secretary to
Chief Secretary, 25 September 1917.
25 Solicitor General, Western Australia, memo, 29 September 1917.
26 Quan Sing & Co to Attorney-General, Perth, 28 April 1908.
27 Quan Sing to Chief Protector of Aborigines, 4 June 1908.
151
were made to prevent Afghans encouraging native women about their camps, it
was never meant to apply to a respectable married man with a wife of his own
country.28
An exemption constituted no threat to the new system, but on the contrary,
endorsed the power of the authorities to decide who could and could not be
permitted to employ Aboriginal workers. While Quan Sings application for
exemption was refused by the Colonial Secretary, it seems Gale was able to
manoeuvre a limited kind of informal permit for him anyway much to the
aggravation of the local Resident Magistrate at the time. As the course of the
Quan Sing story makes clear, the way the system functioned allowed local
authorities a degree of latitude in their discretion to both dispense permits and
to turn an unseeing eye where they chose. Having suspected local malice from
the outset, Quan Sings refusal to defer to the local police and officials unsettled
the usual method of regulating Aboriginal employment. His repeated insistence
that other non-white employers were being allowed Aboriginal workers in
Derby what Magistrate Elliott would describe with annoyance as his idle
carping29 resulted, eventually, in Neville asking Elliott for a report on Asiatics
employing Aborigines. Elliotts response is fascinating for the insight it provides
into the operation of the permit system at the local level.
Elliott denied knowledge of any Asians employing Aborigines in the West
Kimberley. He stated he had only issued permits to those who applied through
the Derby police, and were recommended by them as fit, and proper persons
to employ Natives. The Indian man whom Quan Sing alleged employed
Aborigines to drive carriages was Joseph Griffiths, government contractor and
wood carter. He was, Elliott informed Neville, born in Barbados, and therefore a
British subject, entitled to all the privileges of a Britisher.30
Elliotts response highlights the contemporary understanding that being born
in a country under British rule conferred all the rights and privileges of British
status. No doubt this would have been salt in Quan Sings wounds. Three years
earlier he had lost a different (though related) battle, when the local Derby court
refused his application for renewal of his license to sell liquor on the grounds
that legislation passed in 1911 disallowed the issue of such licenses to any person
not a naturalised British subject. Quan Sing had taken the case to the federal
authorities, claiming to be born in Hong Kong and thus a British subject, but as
he could not produce a birth certificate, and had given his birthplace as Canton
on all his childrens birth certificates, the license was not granted.31
28
29
30
31
152
CF Gale to Under Secretary, Colonial Secretarys Department, 11 June 1908. See footnote 17.
F Elliott to Chief Protector of Aborigines, 20 September 1916.
F Elliott to Chief Protector of Aborigines, 20 September 1916.
A Chinese Puzzle: The hard case of Quan Sing, The Advertiser (Adelaide), Friday 25 July 1913:
10.
But Elliotts spirited defence of Griffiths permit went further. Clearly, the right
to employ Aborigines was a measure of acceptance and inclusion in the white
community, at the local level as much as at the state. Griffiths was, admitted
Elliott, what you would term a Colored Man, but not necessarily an Asiatic:
Color cannot be the line of demarcation in his case, and I would remind
you that, that Great and Good Man who lived some two thousand odd
years ago Jesus Christ was a colored man, but no one has ever presumed
to dub him an Asiatic. Moreover I can assure you, that if a petition were
got up on his behalf, it would be signed [illeg] by all the inhabitants.32
Quan Sings claim that the Chinese baker, Ah Chee, employed an Aboriginal
woman, was never directly addressed. Elliotts denial of any knowledge of Asian
employers suggests that this employment was carried out without a permit,
but tolerated nevertheless. As Ganter observes with regard to the Northern
Territory, there had always been exemptions to the rule of Chinese exclusion
from employing Aborigines,33 but it was not only a matter of formal exemptions
evidently, the employment of Aboriginal workers by both hotelkeepers and
Asian employers was a hazy part of the everyday reality of life in north-western
Australia, and tolerance depended very much on the sympathies of local
authorities.
Yuanho Quan Sings determination to acquire a permit must be seen in this
context. The regulation of Aboriginal employment was clearly being utilised to
structure a tiered social order. By asserting her rights as a natural born British
subject, Yuanho Quan Sing was both claiming her fair place, and challenging
the power of the authorities to decide where she should be located. Indeed, in her
first letter to Neville she stated that hotelkeepers in Derby were circumventing
the permit system by organising associates to take out permits on their behalf,
and that her fathers friends were prepared to do the same: she trust[ed] he
would not object to this, but would oblige our [family] as same as you oblige
everybody at Derby.34
On learning she was not to be given a permit, Yuanho Quan Sing then sent a
carefully worded letter by registered post to Neville:
I desire to bring under your notice the following clause which I have
noticed in the Aborigines Act, reading viz No permit is shall be granted
for employment of any [A]borigines or any half caste under the age of
fourteen or female half caste to any premises licensed for the sale of
intoxicating liquor. and wish to point out to you that practically all the
licensed premises here have been and are still employing [A]borigines
contrary to this clause.35
32 F Elliott to Chief Protector of Aborigines, 20 September 1916.

33 Ganter 2006: 154.
34 Miss Y Quan Sing to the Protector of Aborigines, 27 August 1917.
35 Y Quan Sing to Protector of Aborigines, Perth, 10 October 1918 (original emphasis).
153
The Department must have overlooked that particular clause, she continued,
or have allowed an infringement of the Act for Derby. Therefore, she argued,
the Department should also allow an infringement of the clause referring to my
case & grant permit to me to have the matter justified.36
Rejected again, Yuanho Quan Sing wrote to Neville in May 1918 declaring that
every hotel and wine shop, as well as other Chinese premises and gardener,
had been employing Aborigines for both inside and outside work. Now I will
also employ Aborigines as same as everybody in the town I trust that you
will not objection [sic]. Now I beg to ask you to protect me same as everybody.37
Neville replied that he regretted he was unable to comply with her request.38
It is clear that Neville considered the advice the Department had received from
the Solicitor-General in 1917 an unshakeable rebuttal of any claim that Quan
Sings daughter might make as a natural born British subject, and he clung
tenaciously to the notion that the categories of Asiatic and British subject were
mutually exclusive as his justification for refusing to consider her application.
But not all would find the reasoning compelling. Late in 1920, the Police
Sergeant at Derby, WS Crowe, decided that Yuanho Quan Sing was indeed a
fit and proper person to employ Aborigines, and informed the Chief Protector
he had issued her with a permit. Neville explained, in a tone of weary patience,
that many applications by this girl and her father had been refused, and
the Crown Law department had ruled that these people were deemed to be
Asiatics within the meaning of the law and the Solicitor General said that if a
permit had been refused to Quan Sing he did not think it should be issued to his
daughter. He informed Crowe that the permit had to be cancelled. At the same
time, interestingly enough, Neville mentioned that he had directed the Resident
Magistrate to cancel a permit issued to a Nellie Ah Chee at Derby: the Ah Chee
family were the bakers to whom Quan Sing snr referred in 1908 and again in
1916.39
It would seem that Yuanho Quan Sing had decided to make her application
through Crowe, evidently a newcomer, and had spent some time making her
case. Miss Quan Sing was born in Derby WA and is therefore a natural born
British Subject and is recognized as such & her name is on the Commonwealth
& State Electoral Rolls & she votes at every election, Crowe replied. The
Aboriginal Natives she employs are well treated and should you desire me to
cancel the permit please let me know on what ground as Miss Quan Sing will
36 Y Quan Sing to Protector of Aborigines, Perth, 10 October 1918.

37 Miss Y Quan Sing to Chief Protector of Aborigines, Perth, 16 May 1919.
38 Copy, Chief Protector of Aborigines to Miss Y Quan Sing, 29 May 1919; copy, Chief Protector of
Aborigines to the Resident Magistrate, Derby, 29 May 1919.
39 Copy, Chief Protector of Aborigines to Officer in Charge, Police Station, Derby, 29 October 1920.
154
take the matter up.40 Neville was resolute, insisting that while the regulation
continues in force, no Asiatic whatsoever should receive a permit,41 and Crowe
complied with his orders.
The newly arrived Resident Magistrate, Dr William Hodge, who granted two
individual permits to Yuanho Quan Sing at the end of 1921, was less amenable.
Neville had forwarded copies of his previous correspondence with Crowe
when directing Hodge to cancel these two permits, but Hodge took exception,
retorting that he failed to see how the Solicitor-Generals reading of the law
applied to Miss Quan Sing. The dictionary definition of Asiatic, Hodge told
Neville, was one that is born or belongs in Asia. Miss Quan Sing was born in
Western Australia and had never been out of the state in her entire life, and
therefore is not an Asiatic. She had the vote in both federal and state elections
as an Australian citizen by right of birth. Indeed, he went on:
If Miss Quan Sing is to be counted an Asiatic because her Parents were
Asiatics there is no Australians except perhaps the Aboriginals as if the
children born in Australia take the Nationality of their parents they
would all be Europeans Africans or Americans.42
Neville forbore from engaging with that line of argument, instead retreating to
the line he had taken previously: that he was bound to observe the ruling of the
Crown Law authorities, and so it was not possible to sanction employment
of natives by the Quan Sing family. Informing Hodge that the previous Resident
Magistrate had been very much averse to granting such a permit and had said it
would create a lamentable precedent, Neville tried to persuade Hodge against
sanctioning Chinese employment by slyly calling him on side against the race.
Quite apart from the legal aspect, he coaxed, it is most undesirable that any
association be permitted between Asiatics and Aborigines. This Department is
constantly meeting trouble which arises through such association, and it was for
this reason that the Regulation was instituted in the first place.43
But Hodge would not have it. The ruling of the Solicitor General does not touch
on the point of Australian born persons of Asiatic parentage, he wrote back.
Children of all other nationalities born in Australia were Australians, Hodge
insisted, and the children of Quan Sing were Australian by birth also. Refusing
or cancelling Miss Quan Sings permit would set a much more lamentable
precedent of injustice Dont admit Chinese if you dont like them [sic], he
snapped, but if admitted give them justice. I have not cancelled this permit nor
do I intend to do so, the Magistrate continued.
40
WS Crowe, Sergt S/C Protector of Aborigines to the Chief Protector of Aborigines, 12 November
[1920].
41 Copy, Chief Protector of Aborigines to Sergeant Crowe, 22 December 1920, quoting Dr Stow.
This is not the same advice given by the Solicitor-General in 1917. No copy of the 1916 ruling
Neville quoted exists in this file.
42 W Hodge to Mr Neville, 10 October 1921.
43 Copy, Chief Protector of Aborigines to the District Medical Officer, Derby, 4 November 1921.
155
Rather than do so I would resign the position of protector of Aborigines

and will do so if you wish, but I decline to have any hand in a proceeding
which appears to me grossly unjust and think that these injustices are of
national importance at the present time and detract from the honour of
Australia as a nation.44
No doubt startled by his vehemence, and perhaps also stung by Hodges contempt,
Neville did not know how to reply and sent a lengthy memo to the Minister for
the North-West instead. For years Quan Sing of Derby has consistently applied
to us for permission to employ [A]borigines, and has just as consistently been
refused, he explained. After the father found it was no use to apply further,
his daughter began to plead, but was likewise refused. Neville recommended
that Police Sergeant Douglas, presumably Crowes successor and possibly
the person who had forwarded the permits authorised by Hodge to the Chief
Protector, should take Hodges place should he decide to resign his appointment
as a local Protector over the matter. Incidentally, Neville concluded, a native
recently under illegal engagement to Miss Quan Sing has proved to be a leper.
(A very clear example, indeed, of how negative stereotypes of the Chinese were
manipulated to enforce their exclusion as employers.)45 Colebatch advised
Neville to explain to Hodge that he was not taking issue with him on the matter
but that it was simply a matter of obeying the law. Neville then wrote to Hodge
again explaining that he had been directed to tell him that it is not a question
of the Department disagreeing with your view but a question of carrying out
the law and asking him to kindly comply and notify me accordingly.46 Hodge
continued to serve as Resident Magistrate at Derby until his death in 1934,47 but
it was Sergeant Douglas who informed the Quan Sing family that they would
never be issued a permit in future.
There was nothing further in the Quan Sing file until 19 years later, when an
aging but still vindictive Neville queried the issue of two single permits to a
man called Quan Sing at Carnarvon. The terse reply of the Carnarvon sergeant
who issued the permits confirming that Quan Sing was, indeed, both Australian
born and of the Derby family All Quan Sings now living are Australians I am
quite aware that Asiatics should not be given permits marked the end of the
Quan Sing file.48 By 1939 Neville had to accept the principle Yuanho Quan Sing
had argued for in 1921, at least when it came to Chinese-Australian citizenship.
Recognition of Aboriginal citizenship was, of course, still decades away.
44
45
W Hodge to Chief Protector of Aborigines, 24 November 1921.

Chief Protector of Aborigines to Minister for the North-West, 9 December 1921. There is nothing
on the file and no reference to any other record to corroborate Nevilles claim.
46 Copy, Chief Protector of Aborigines to the Resident Magistrate, Derby, 13 December 1921.
47 According to a newspaper report he died by accidentally drinking sheep dip on the eve of his
retirement, and despite attempting his own remedies: Doctors Death: Sheep Dip Drunk by
Mistake, Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 21 November 1934: 14.
48 Sergeant Page, Protector, to Commissioner of Native Affairs, 20 September 1939.
156
Privilege and the permit system

Knowing what to make of the Quan Sings quest is problematic. While testifying
to the practical and symbolic significance of access to Aboriginal labour, the
eagerness of the family to acquire this badge of coloniser status also signifies
their eagerness to join the colonising project. Yet we must also recognise that
Quan Sing and his daughters determination was matched by the resolution
of the Aboriginal authorities particularly, Neville not to provide them with
this privilege. This contestation demonstrates that being allowed to employ
Aboriginal labour actually defined Australian citizenship.
As a potent marker of inclusion in the community of colonisers, the reservation of
the right to determine who was given official endorsement to employ Aboriginal
workers was critical. The negotiation of the two Chief Protectors with the various
local authorities in Derby gives us an indication of the classic colonial tensions
that this produced. On the multiracial frontiers of white Australian settlement
the authority of the centre to control race relations was to some extent weakened,
and clearly local powerbrokers resented the Chief Protectors overbearing
interference.
Hodges rather fierce response may well highlight the start of a shift within white
Australian attitudes regarding the meaning of citizenship. The Magistrates
insistence that people once permitted to enter the country and raise families were
entitled to citizenship rights signalled a crucial move from the earlier concept of
British subject status, as elaborated by Elliott. (In pointing out that under the
birthright formulation presented by Neville only Aboriginal Australians could
be considered genuine Australians, Hodge was trying to show how absurd this
was, not making a radical case for Aboriginal citizenship let alone Indigenous
birthrights.)
Nothing in this story suggests that the Quan Sings were any better or worse
employers of Aboriginal people than others. Instead, what emerges from the
large file on Quan Sings affair is that the status of Chinese residents, and
especially Australian-born Chinese, was a particular problem for White
Australia in the early twentieth century. If the issue of their employment of
Aborigines was so controversial, what does this mean for our understanding
of the Aboriginal permit system? The use of the term privilege is especially
revealing. Privilege connotes a thing that might be granted or withheld. To
interpret the Quan Sing story usefully, it might be read most productively for
its absences, and what it tells us about those for whom such privilege was
not controversial. By excluding Chinese Australians on the basis of race, and
race alone, the permit system underlined that race was the first and foremost
condition of the privilege of employing natives.
157
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Primary sources
Quansing Employment of Natives, series 2030, consignment 993, item
1939/0793, State Records Office of Western Australia, Perth.
Newspapers
The Advertiser (Adelaide)
Sydney Morning Herald
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Atkinson, Anne 1995, Placing restrictions upon them: controlling free Chinese
immigrants and capital in Western Australia, Asian Orientalisms: Studies in
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Australia 18981954, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland.
Chesterman, John and Brian Galligan 1997, Citizens without Rights: Aborigines and
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Ganter, Regina 1998, Living an immoral life coloured women and the
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Children in Nineteenth-century Western Australia, University of Western
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citizenship and rights in inter-war Australia, Historicizing Whiteness:
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Fifty Years of Australian Citizenship, Kim Rubinstein (ed), Australian Scholarly
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Jebb, Mary Ann 2002, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and
Aboriginal Pastoral Workers, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley.
Kidd, Rosalind 2007, The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs the Untold Story,
University of Queensland Press, St Lucia.
Lowrie, Claire 2009, In service of empire: domestic service and colonial mastery
in Singapore and Darwin, 1890s1930s, PhD thesis, School of History and
Politics, The University of Wollongong, Wollongong.
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Australia, 18551975, in The Overseas Chinese in Australasia: History, Settlement
and Interactions. Proceedings from the Symposium held in Taipei, 67 January
2001, Henry Chan, Ann Curthoys and Nora Chiang (eds), National Taiwan
University and Australian National University, Taipei and Canberra.
Martnez, Julia 2000, Plural Australia: Aboriginal and Asian labour in tropical
white Australia, Darwin, 19111940, PhD thesis, History and Politics
Program, University of Wollongong, Wollongong.
2006, Ethnic policy and practice in Darwin, in Mixed Relations: AsianAboriginal Contact in North Australia, University of Western Australia Press,
Crawley: 122139.
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University Press, Townsville.
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160
A double exile: Filipino settlers in the outer

Torres Strait islands, 1870s1940s1
Anna Shnukal
Surprisingly little has been published about the early Filipinos in northern
Australia and their relationships with local Indigenous people, compared
with their Japanese, Indonesian and even Chinese contemporaries.2 Despite
their origins in the 19th-century marine industries, each community manifests
different characteristics, composition and historical trajectories. Examining the
similarities and differences among them sheds light on early Australian history
and the role played by government policy and powerful individuals in regions far
from centres of power and poorly served by communications. The early Filipinos
of Broome and Darwin were in general more socially and legally constrained
and hence relatively less prosperous than the Filipinos of Torres Strait. Most
of the latter lived on Thursday Island, the regional commercial centre, while
others established majority Filipino communities on adjacent Horn Island (from
1889) and Hammond Island (from 1929). The subject of this article, however, is
the small group who chose to live for an extended period on the outer (more
remote) islands with their Torres Strait Islander wives and children and were
thus doubly exiled both from their homeland and the Filipino communities
of Thursday and Horn Islands. It also examines the link between ancestral
identity and land, arguably the topic of most interest to their descendants, and
demonstrates the tenuousness of land claims made by contemporary Torres Strait
Islanders of Filipino descent on the sole basis of orally-transmitted accounts of
land acquisition.
Exile denotes prolonged absence from ones native land or former community;
it may connote forceful expulsion, nostalgia or regret but this is not its core
definition, otherwise one could not refer to voluntary exile for economic,
political, social, religious, artistic, even financial reasons (witness the wealthy
United Kingdom tax-exiles of the 1970s). For Australian writer, Kate Jennings,
and others of her generation, the experience of exiling ourselves it was more
Sources for this paper include the Somerset and Cooktown registers of births, deaths and marriages;
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart register of baptisms 18841894; Murray Island register of births,
deaths and marriages 18851961; alien registration cards 19161917; Queensland Department of
Native Affairs correspondence; Thursday Island court records; tombstone inscriptions, divers
registers, newspaper reports and Torres Strait field research notes from interviews 19802010.
See, however, Austin 1992; Chase 1981; Cubillo-Carter 2000; Hennessy 2004; Ileto 1993, 2004;
Nailon 2005a, 2005b; Nailon and Huegel 2001; Puertollano 2008; Ruiz Wall and Hunt 2008;
Shnukal 2004.
161
serious than expatriation was one of gain, of wholeness.3 The Filipinos under
discussion were self-exiles, both pushed by endemic poverty and pulled by
economic, social and political opportunities to seek their individual destinies in
the strait.
Those who settled in the outer islands chose their double exile for personal
reasons, yet they shared with their countrymen those social and psychological
characteristics that bind a group together. Although not a culturally homogeneous
or cohesive group, the Filipinos were perceived as such in Australia: they came
from similar island backgrounds, their ages, physical appearance, education and
economic interests were similar, as were their understandings, values, prejudices
and ideals. Their islands were distant colonial outposts of the Spanish empire;
the islands they found were distant colonial outposts of the British empire.
Spanish rule bestowed Spanish names, a lingua franca and a deep Catholic belief;
and as Christians, they were an anomaly among the straits Asian communities,4
although this did not lessen the prejudice of the European Protestant majority.
Whatever their differences, the Filipinos recognised their mutual bonds as
countrymen and their lives were as intertwined at sea as on shore: they lived
cheek by jowl both on the boats and in the cottages and boarding houses of
Thursday Island. Almost all of them continued to work in some capacity in
marine occupations until physically unable to do so.
Filipinos in the Torres Strait marine industries

Filipino seamen arrived in Western Australia to join its pearl rush from the
late 1860s, moving across northern Australia as opportunities arose. Payable
quantities of pearlshell gathered on Warrior Reef in early 1870 set the Torres
Strait industry in train but, as in Western Australia, it depended to a large extent
on unskilled, local Indigenous swimming divers, who took shell from shallow
waters or reefs close to shore. A few years later the industry was transformed by
adoption of the divers dress: corselet, helmet and air hose. Divers could now
descend to previously inaccessible depths in search of more productive beds and
diving was no longer a minimally-skilled, individual occupation but a far more
hazardous and uncertain undertaking. The rewards for experienced divers and
tenders were prestige and high wages, almost comparable with Europeans, and
far outstripping those of ordinary boat crews.
From the late 1870s mass indenture began to replace individual recruitment and
large numbers of seaman signed shipping agreements in Asian ports for terms of
between 18 months and three years. Pearling provided the impetus for Thursday
Islands development and supported its various businesses either directly or
indirectly. As a resource-based industry, it was hostage to volatile prices in an
3 Jennings 2010: 24.
4 A small number of adult Japanese became Anglicans from the mid-1890s, the early converts being
instructed by the honorary catechist, Taira Kashiwagi, until his departure from Thursday Island
in c1912. In time, many locally-born children of Japanese and Indonesian heritage also became
Christians.
162
A DOUBLE EXILE
overseas market it could not control, the constant pressure of shell bed depletion
and, equally, the serendipitous discovery of fresh fields. The Filipino population
fluctuated in line with demand for shell, external forces determining the mass
movements of Filipinos to other parts of north Australia, New Guinea, Dutch
East Indies or back to the Philippines.
The first enumeration of the Torres Strait Filipino population was made in 1884
by the newly-arrived Catholic priest, who found about forty Filipinos living
on Thursday Island and about four hundred Catholics from Manila scattered
amongst the various islands. They were there fishing for pearls.5 The following
decade marked the height of Filipino participation in the marine industries but
by the mid-1890s Filipinos without strong ties to Australia were beginning to
leave the region, particularly after the introduction of restrictive race-based
legislation from 1901. Overseas markets for shell collapsed in 1905 and again
during the First World War.
1912 was the last year in which Filipinos were employed as divers and personsin-charge in Torres Strait. They comprised around 20 per cent of the total between
1895 and 1898, with a slow decline from 1898 to 1901. The fleets with their
Filipino divers and crews left depleted Torres Strait for the Dutch Aru Islands in
1905; others moved to Darwin, Broome and the New Guinea coast and thereafter
Filipinos declined precipitously both in numbers and as a proportion of the total
workforce. By contrast, the Japanese increased their participation to the point
where, in 1906, they completely dominated the industry and continued to do so
until the Second World War.6
As marine industry profitability rose and fell and the Filipinos finances, physical
capacities and family circumstances changed, they alternated between the more
capital-intensive pearling industry and the less capital-intensive bche-de-mer
(trepang), trochus and tortoiseshell industries. During the 1880s and early 1890s
they gained a reputation for raiding Cape York mainland camps for labour,
abducting women and illegally employing Aboriginal men without signing
them on articles. In response to these well-documented abuses and the disease
and violent reprisals that followed, the government implemented a series of laws
and regulations to constrain the activities of coloured men, including blameless
Filipinos who fished from their small cutters along the coast of Cape York with
their wives and children, taking on their affinal kinfolk as seasonal labour. The
most significant was the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium
Act 1897 and later amendments, which made it illegal to carry locally-born
women or minors on boats, no matter what their relationship was to the owner.
The Pearl-shell and Bche-de-Mer Fishery Acts Amendment Act 1898 prohibited nonBritish subjects from renting or purchasing boats; the Immigration Restriction
Act 1901 prevented them from bringing younger relatives and countrymen to
Australia; and The Aboriginals Protection Act 1901 placed restrictions on marriages
5
6
Dupeyrat 1935: 68.

Bach 1955: 279.
163
between Indigenous women and non-Indigenous men. These laws, however, were
insufficient in the eyes of the local European shellers, who called for even more
stringent legislation to curb alien employment of Aboriginal people.
Marriages
The marriage and naturalisation patterns of early Filipinos (and to some extent
Indonesians) in Torres Strait are unique among its Asian communities, in that
they contracted many stable unions with local Indigenous women and were
encouraged to become naturalised by the then government resident, John Douglas,
who wrote approvingly that they were the only Asiatic people who have become
thoroughly domesticated among us. When they have made a little money, they
send an order home for a wife; they then marry, beget children, and frequently
become naturalised.7 A mans choice of wife based on his individual values,
personal aspirations and economic circumstances was, in hindsight and based on
his Australian-born descendants biographies, the chief determinant of their fate
until the 1970s.
Contemporary documentation of the earliest unions between Filipino men
and local Indigenous women is fragmentary, since Catholic marriages were not
performed on Thursday Island until October 1884 and only legal marriages were
registered. Vital registration and baptismal data also provide evidence of a few
unmarried couples and their offspring, as do tombstones and incidental details
in court documents. From this admittedly incomplete record, I have identified 20
Filipino men with Cape York Aboriginal partners and 40 with Torres Strait Islander
partners. Judging from the names and birthplaces of the Aboriginal women, many
of them were related and they, their children and their extended kinfolk were
crucial to the success of the mens fishing enterprises, fetching water and wood
from the mainland or small islands, cooking, gathering trepang from the reefs and
smoking it for packing and export. These small family businesses were profitable
enough to support everyone involved and maintain the boats and equipment.
Table 1 lists only those marriages between Filipinos and Torres Strait Islanders
of non-Filipino descent mentioned in subsequent discussion. 11 of the wives are
the daughters of European, Pacific Islander, Sri Lankan or West Indian fathers.
A devastating series of introduced diseases, culminating in the 1875 measles
epidemic, halved the original population of some 30003500.8 By the 1880s the
ethnic composition of the Torres Strait Islander population was significantly
altered through intermarriage between local women and immigrants of diverse
origin. Later marriages also took place between Filipinos and the Torres Strait-born
daughters of Filipino fathers. These comprise arguably a separate ethnological
category and are listed in Table 2, again limited to the families referred to in the
paper. Without statistical analysis I cannot say how this rate compares with other
immigrant groups but I assume such marriages were encouraged, even actively
initiated, by the womans father on cultural and religious grounds, since he
generally decided his childrens marriage partners.
7
8
164
Queensland Legislative Assembly Votes and Proceedings 1896, Annual report of the Government
Resident, Thursday Island 18941895: 2.
Mullins 1992.
A DOUBLE EXILE
Table 1: Filipino men with Indigenous wives (Aboriginal wives marked with an
asterisk)
Name
Dates
Birthplace
TS/
Aboriginal
wife
Dates
Birthplace
BLANCO, Juan
c1864-1911
Capiz
*Annie
DUPAR
c1878-1945
Escape River
CANENDO, Matteo
c1854-1922
Leyte
*Katie
WANTO
c1870-1920
Cape
Grenville
CARABELLO,
Thomas
1848-1935
Cebu
Morabisi
c1871-1920
Yam Island1
CADAUS,
Augustino
c1860-1952
Santa Iloco
Lavinia
WARE
c1887-1924
Yam Island
DELACRUZ, Lopez2
c1876-1915
Manila
Anna
RANDOLPH
c1884-1964
Nepean
Island
DELGARDO,
Isidoro
1860-1940
Algal
Guni Maria
Louisa
c1868-
Yam Island
FABIAN, Gregorio
c1853-
Capiz
Kuruwara
Philomena
KADOBA
c1864-1933
Two Brothers
Island
FRANCIS, Juan
(Johnny)
c1853-1925
Capiz
Yadh Ellen
GARCIA
FRANCIS, Juan
(Johnny)
c1853-1925
Capiz
Lenwath
Nellie
MATAU
c1881-c1914
Skull Island
FRANCIS, Juan
(Johnny)
c1853-1925
Capiz
Uludh
Patagam
GARIBA
IKUL
c1874-1930
Skull Island
GALORA, Pedro
c1840-1920
San Aciento
Clara
GONELAI
c1866-1909
Jervis Island
GUIVARRA, Pedro
c1867-1899
Masbate
Wazan Annie
PITT
1881-1933
Murray
Island
LLOREN, Magno
c1881-
Leyte
Felicia
Magdalina
PITT
LOSBANES
c1886-1912
Halfway
Island
LOHADO, Antonio
c1868-1918
Antique
Nancy SAKI
c1871-1916
Burke Island
LOSBANES, Cyriaco
c1878-
Iloilo
Felicia
Magdalina
PITT
c1886-1912
Halfway
Island
MONMARILE,
Firmino
c1877-
Lingayan,
San
Fernando
Margaret
Mary
c1886-
Yam Island
RAVINA, Pedro
1862-
Zambales
Siau LIFU
c1884-1911
Darnley
Island
REMIDIO, Pablo
c1865-1941
Vigan
Caroline
Maria LIFU
c1871-1902
Murray
Island
GARCIA, Andrew
Coconut
Island
Yadh Ellen
Skull Island
165

Name
Dates
Birthplace
TS/
Aboriginal
wife
Dates
Birthplace
ROAS, Ramon3
c1856-1926
Zamboanga
Kias Mary
Ann
c1866-1940
Banks Island
SPAIN, Claudio
c1868-1928
Marianas
Jane
c1872-1912
Darnley
Island
SUECO, Sabelo
c1862-1902
Cebu
Mary
WALTON
1871-1918
Warrior
Island
Although Morabisis birthplace is recorded as Yam, she was the daughter of a Sri Lankan seaman
and Konai from Darnley Island; she is elsewhere referred to as a halfcaste, Kemuel Kiwat, pers
comm, 1996.
Descendants took the surname Lopez.
Descendants anglicised their surname to Raymond.
Table 2: Filipino men with Torres Strait Islander wives of Filipino descent
Name
Dates
Birthplace
TS-Filipino wife
Dates
Birthplace
DORANTE,
Santiago
c1865-1948
Samar
Wasada
NAPOLEON
c1887-1945
Murray
Island
IRLANDES,
Raymundo
1896-
Leyte
Victorina (Nina)
LOPEZ
1902-
Thursday
Island
KANAK, Joseph
c1866-1939
Guam
Raphaela
FRANCIS
c1898-
Darnley
Island
LLOREN, Magno
c1881-
Leyte
Luisa
CARABELLO
1902-
Darnley
Island
REMIDIO, Pablo
c1865-1941
Ilocos
Nicolossa
HIERONYMO
MORALES
1885-
Banks
Island
SABATINO
Nicholas
1871-1948
Iloilo
Johanna
LOHADO
1898-
Darnley
Island
SIM, Eustacio
c1864-1931
Panay
Maria Eusebia
GALORA
1889-
Thursday
Island
XEROMENES,
Domingo
c1874-1914
Cebu
Eleanora ROAS
c1889-1939
Thursday
Island
Women traditionally married young, soon after puberty, and there can be
a considerable age difference between husband and wife. Ages are generally
approximate but among the Filipino-Torres Strait Islander wives for whom we
have recorded birthdates, the youngest was Maria Eusebia Galora, who married
Eustacio Sim, then 24, when she was just 13 years and 11 months old; Eleanor
Roas was 15 when she married Domingo Xeromenes aged 30. Another marked
trend is the number of marriages among the children of Filipinos seen in the
Blanco, Bullio, Canendo, Dorante, Elarde, Garcia, Guivarra, Irlandes, Kanak,
Lopez, Manantan, Pasquale, Raymond (Roas), Remidio, Sabatino and Sueco
families.
166
A DOUBLE EXILE
During the early years, there were relatively few constraints on the young mens
movements and sexual relationships must have been common with women
on the islands close to the pearling grounds. Before 1884, however, the only
negotiation was with the woman herself and her kinfolk. The authorities labelled
these unregistered unions prostitution and suspected the men of entering into
them for the basest of motives. In 1901 the state began to interfere in marriages
between Indigenous women and non-Indigenous men: under section 9 of the
Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Acts 1897-1901, they
could not marry without written permission from the chief protector, acting
on advice from the local protector. The then chief protector, however, took the
enlightened position that, since it was a practical impossibility to prosecute all
the men Europeans, Asiatics, and [Pacific] Islanders living with aboriginal
females, under the harbouring clauses of the Act, he encouraged marriage
rather than lay my department open to the reproach of sanctioning concubinage
and prostitution.9
This original tolerance (though not approval) of interethnic marriage was
overtaken by a growing ideological commitment to racial purity and a revulsion
from miscegenation, which swept the Anglo-Germanic world (including
Australia) during the interwar years. The local protector sought to extend his
control over the marriages of the previously exempt half-castes of Thursday
and adjacent non-reserve islands, including the children of Filipino-Indigenous
marriages, who were technically Australian-born Filipinos. In the early
1920s Santiago Remidio (Filipino father and New Caledonian-Murray Island
mother), was refused permission to marry Nazareth Ansey (Rotuman father and
Rotuman-Murray Island mother) unless both became permanent residents of
Murray Island and Santiago agreed to relinquish his unprotected status and
become subject to full departmental control as a native.10 There was, however,
no attempt to control the Filipino-European children or others of mixed Filipino
heritage.
Land tenure in the outer islands

Land and kinship are the interlinked foundations of Torres Strait Islander
traditional society: both were necessary for survival and both continue to be a
source of conflict. Among issues raised during the native title claim process were
the ownership/custodianship distinction and the status of unwritten agreements
giving immigrant heads of families in the outer islands rights of access to and use
of anothers land. Surviving documents, as well as oral accounts by descendants
and others, throw light on such issues and, despite their disparate provenance
and viewpoints, confirm each other in many details. In addition to agreements
allowing an outsider to build a house and establish a garden on a particular
9
Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1906, Annual report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals
1905: 15.
10 Chief Protector of Aboriginals to Protector of Aboriginals, Thursday Island, 29 May 1923,
Queensland State Archives [hereafter QSA] A/58773.
167
piece of land in exchange for money or goods, families might equally well
establish themselves on land inherited by the wife from either parent, which
was then passed to her children. However, while the occupational, special or
informal leases granted by the authorities for specific purposes were officially
registered, informal land tenure agreements generally went undocumented.11
Some Filipino-heritage families complain of being disinherited by the native
title process but the settling of most Torres Strait claims means that evidence
can be considered more dispassionately and in a less litigious environment than
previously. The following case studies illustrate the family context in which
land transfer was negotiated and the limitations of unwritten agreements and
inherited memories.
Eastern islands
Murray, Darnley, Stephens and Nepean Islands comprise the eastern islands,
inhabited by the Miriam people originally from the Kiwai region of New Guinea.
Foreigners who married local women lived on their wives land and children
born on the island were considered to have certain rights to small parcels of
land. The nature and extent of those rights, however, are strongly contested.
Pablo Remidio and Juan Blanco and their families lived for a period at Murray
Island on their wives estates: Caroline Maria Remidio inherited land from
her mother and the Blancos presumably lived on land owned by the family of
Annies first husband, a Murray Islander named Ned Dupar. Santiago Remidio,
born in 1888 at Murray Island, inherited a portion of land at Mas from his
mother. On 5 July 1924 he officially made Sagigi caretaker during his absence.
On 15 November 1924 Epseg, appointed caretaker for Carolines land, Gazir,
when she left the island, officially handed back the land to Santiago, although he
remained caretaker until the land was required. These agreements were signed
by the parties, witnessed by the local schoolteacher and recorded by the Murray
Island court. Further entries minutely describe the shape, extent and boundaries
of the land.12
Darnley, Stephens and Nepean Islands were all settled from Murray Island.
They are intervisible, tiny Nepean lying between larger Darnley and smaller
Stephens Islands. In 1885, after the removal of Pacific Islanders from Murray to
Darnley Island, the Indigenous population became a minority, although they
retained almost all of the land. After the discovery of the Darnley Deeps shell
beds in 1893, Darnley became a centre for pearling operations and for about a
decade hosted a small Filipino community. Giving evidence into the death of
Cyriaco Losbanes, in December 1903, Juan Blanco stated plenty my countryman
there.13 They included Blanco himself, Thomas Carabello (Thomas Manilla),
Louis Castro (Louis Manilla), Juan Francisco Garcia (Johnny Francis), Pedro
Guivarra, Joseph Kanak, Magno Lloren, Cyriaco Losbanes, Pedro Ravina, Sabelo
11
For example, land for a bche-de-mer or pearling station could be granted under section 10 of
the Pearlshell and Bche-de-Mer Fishery Act 1881.
12 Murray Island court records 1924; Colin Sheehan, pers comm, 2003.
13 Inquest into death of Ceriaco Losbanes, QSA JUS/N317/384/03.
168
A DOUBLE EXILE
Sueco and their families. Most of them left for Thursday or Horn Islands during
various closures of the beds but others remained. The children of Thomas
Carabello and the Dane, Thomas Randolph, grew up with the Pau children at
Sebeu, part of Isem on Darnley Island, on Pau family land.14
In August 1982, a few months after Koike Mabo launched his eponymous court
case, Joseph Sabatino spoke to me about the land belonging to his grandfather,
Joseph Kanak, at Darnley Island, which was being used by Charlie Gela. He
explained that, because he and his wife had moved to the Hammond Island
Roman Catholic mission after their marriage in 1954, they had lost that land.
Land was under the control of the council and could not be sold.15 He was
referring to Egriu Village, which Francis leased from the biggest landowner,
the mamus (chief) Bogo Pilot. According to descendants, Francis gave Egriu
to his daughter, Raphaela, after her marriage to Joseph Kanak but handwritten
letters from Francis to the chief protector indicate that the agreement with Pilot
was in the nature of a lease rather than a purchase: in the first, he writes I rent
the ground from Mamouse and in Darnley for 20 years; in the second that the
agreement is up now, with me and Bogo and he hand over this property to my
daughter Rafila.16
Joji Ohshima, leader of a Japanese ethnographical research team to the strait in
the late 1970s, relates the history of ownership of Village Z on Darnley Island. He
chose to study land, because it is the most important asset of Darnley Islanders
and land tenure indicates how island social relationships work and because, in
this particular village, the history of land ownership and inheritance of land
is relatively clear. Although he names neither the place nor the individuals
concerned, it is possible, from information from the families concerned, to
reconstruct the relevant early sequence of events. I have inserted names and
dates in square brackets.
Up to about one hundred years ago the area where Village Z [Egriu] is
now located belonged to a native Erub Island man [Bogo Pilot]. Around
19001910 a Filipino fisherman [Johnny Francis] bought a block of that
land for 50, married a woman of Erub [actually from Skull Island] and
lived there. The couple had a daughter [Raphaela] and they gave the
land to her and moved to Auridh [Skull Island]. That daughter has since
moved to Hammond Island, so she married out [to Joseph Kanak]. She
gave the ownership to a friend, P [Charlie Gela], who lived in Keriam
Village on the north side of the island, which is now abandoned. P took
his children and nephews and moved to Village Z. It was at that time
when Christian missionaries were coming into the area [1915].17
14
The connection was through Eti, the Pau family ancestor, whose sister, Konai was the maternal
grandmother of the Carabello and Randolph children, Kemuel Kiwat, pers comm, 1996.
15 Joseph Sabatino, pers comm, 1982.
16 John Francis to Chief Protector of Aboriginals, 17 November 1911 and 8 June 1915, QSA A/58658.
17 Ohshima 1983: 495. Ohshima must be referring to the handover from the London Missionary
Society to the Church of England in 1915. Margaret Lawrie was told in the 1960s that the owner
169
However, the local protector had the power to ignore such agreements and send
any immigrant-headed family away from a reserve island. This was supposedly
the case for Guam-born Joseph Kanak, who, his family claim, was evicted from
Darnley Island to Hammond Island for inciting the natives and asked the Gela
family to caretake the land.18 In 1915 Kanak left the diving fleet after his marriage
to the convent-educated Raphaela Francis and the couple made their home at
Egriu, Raphaelas birthplace, where their first seven children were born.19 Kanak
served as a local policeman for the next 15 years while also tending his gardens,
which were at once the pride and envy of the natives and half-castes.20 There
is no written evidence that Kanak was evicted from Darnley Island but the
authorities certainly kept an eye on outer island half-caste families for signs
of dissent. The Kanak familys decision to relocate to Hammond was probably
prompted more by the priests urging, the prospect of freedom from government
protection and regular access to the sacraments, the promise of good land for
gardening and closeness to their two daughters who were then boarders at the
Thursday Island convent.
As to Stephens Island, it had lost most of its Indigenous population by the late
19th century, when Claudio Spain, a whaler from the Marianas, took a Darnley
Island woman, Jane, to live there with him. Claudio died on the island in 1928.
He and Jane had a daughter, who married a son of Bogo Pilot, and two sons,
one of whom took the surname Cloudy, the other Stephen after the name of
the island. Nepean Island was uninhabited when Bogo Pilot permitted Santiago
Dorante to settle there with his family. It is said that the argumentative Dorante
originally settled on Darnley Island, where several of his nine children were
born, but came into conflict with local residents and Pilot may have leased him
Nepean to avoid further confrontations and/or possibly through a relationship
with his Murray Island wife, Wasada.21 Dorante family members moved away
in the early 1930s, some to Stephens Island and others to the Hammond Island
mission and the island is again uninhabited.
Central islands
Yam Island, near Warrior Reef, was another centre of pearling operations.
When I lived there briefly in 1982, I was told that it was once the site of a small
Malaysian community and shown a Malaysian childs grave. Juan Blancos
second child was also born on Yam Island (his first was born at Darnley Island)
and the Cadaus, Delgardo and Sabatino families lived there for a considerable
18
19
20
21
170
of the fishtrap at Egriu was Francis (Manila man, Aurid), Lawrie, Folder on eastern island
fishtraps, MS MLC 1791334, John Oxley Library (now Queensland Memory), State Library of
Queensland.
Angie Ross Akee, pers comm, 1988.
His last entry as a holder of a man-in-charge licence is in February 1915, Register of men in
charge licences, 19151957, QSA SRS721/1.
Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, 1 December 1939: 415.
Alma Pilot, pers comm, 2008.
A DOUBLE EXILE
time. At Yam Island in September 1931, Fr Doyle gave communion to three

old Manila men, possibly Augustino Cadaus, Isidoro Delgardo and Nicholas
Sabatino.22
Cadaus had married a Yam Island-born woman, Lavinia (Nellie) Ware, the
daughter of a New Caledonian fisherman and a Yam Island woman in a Catholic
ceremony in 1906, and their two daughters were born at Yam. Cadaus, who
worked as a tender and trepanger, is described in one record as half Filipino,
which usually indicates that his father was Spanish. He settled permanently on
Yam Island with his two daughters and their families and died here in 1952, the
last surviving Filipino settler.
The diver, Isidoro Delgardo, married another Yam Island woman, Guni Maria
Louisa, again in a Catholic ceremony on Thursday Island in 1890. Their child,
Francesca, was baptised on 9 June 1886, suggesting that the couple had been
together since at least 1885 and through that relationship Delgardo would have
had rights to settle on his wifes land.23 There appear to be no surviving children
and Delgardo eventually moved away to Hammond Island.
Iloilo-born Nicholas Sabatino married Johanna Lohado, the daughter of a Filipino
father and Burke Island-born mother. Their first child was born at nearby Warrior
Island, five subsequent children at Yam (one being Nicholas Florentino, whose
grave was shown to me as evidence of the islands Malaysian community),
and the last two at Hammond Island. His descendants claim that Sabatino was
given land at Yam by the traditional landowner, Baluz, in recognition of the
close (possibly sibling) relationship between his wifes mother and Johannas
grandmother. Johannas grandsons explained that her land is located on the
shoreline and the almond tree she planted as a marker is still there.24 At least
two of her children, Florentino and Mary, were born under that tree and we
may assume that their placentas are buried there, as required by custom. There
was once an old bche-de-mer pot on the shore but it has been replaced by a
store, fish factory and fuel depot. Neither of Johannas surviving children were
acknowledged as having rights to the land, the council explaining that land on
the island was scarce and that, being women and no longer residents, they did
not have to be consulted.
Unlike Yam Island, the other small central islands were not major pearling
centres but Skull Island was for many years home to the renowned diver, Johnny
Francis (Francis Cranky) from Capiz.25 The island had supported an Indigenous
population in the mid-1830s but was uninhabited when the ni-Vanuatu Matau
and two countrymen took an occupation lease over it early in the 20th century.26
Lenwath Nellie, one of Mataus children by Yarka from Skull Island, was
22 Deere 1994: 23.
23 Algal may be a suburb of Manila or possibly Algar, a Spanish place name. Francescas birth
was not officially recorded.
24 Ambrose Bin Juda and Bora Bin Juda, pers comm, 2005.
25 Francis arrived in Torres Strait in 1884. Kranki means crazy in Torres Strait Creole.
26 Queensland Pearl-shell and Bche-de-mer Commission 1908: 268.
171
Francis second wife.27 Francis and his third wife, Uludh Patagam, moved to
Darnley Island around 1895, possibly for their childrens schooling.28 The chief
protector had given Francis written permission to stay on Skull Island for life
on 6 September 1889 but in 1911 the new protector refused to allow Francis
to return to Skull Island from Darnley, because the islands were about to be
proclaimed Aboriginal reserves.29 However, Francis and Uludh did return after
his daughters marriage to Joseph Kanak. The Anglican priest, Rev MacFarlane,
described their life there in 1925, not long before his death, in a composite ironand-coconut-leaf dwelling. From his three central island-born wives Francis
has inherited some family estates. But as far back as the [18]80s he was
given permission by the then Administrator, the late Hon. John Douglas,
to settle there, and with scrupulous care preserves the documents giving
him the right of residence. Wrapped in old official envelopes and tied
with thick cord, Johnny is confident that they are quite safe stowed away
in a worn-out leather schoolbag. His will is there also, as well as his
papers of naturalisation and some fishing licenses ... Just now he spends
his days, hobbling along with the aid of a long stick, in planting coconut
trees and making his garden.30
John Francis Kanak, who stayed with his elderly grandparents in the early 1920s,
recalls that they
lived from their garden and Uludh made bread from coconut tuba
[coconut wine]. They never felt hungry. There was lots of water and
there was a plantation of coconuts and he also planted taro, sweet potato
and corn. Uludh made yeast with tuba her husband showed her how
to do it and she made bread with it They ate a lot of fish and never
wasted anything. Passing divers who knew him from the early days or
by reputation would bring them rice and flour. Recognising Uludhs
ownership of the island, visitors always asked her permission to anchor
a boat or go onshore.31
Francis died on the island in June 1925. Uludh dressed him and put him inside
the house and sat down outside to mourn. She made smoke signals to let her
relations, who were trochus fishing near Roberts Island, know that something
had happened to her husband. He was buried by hurricane lamplight and
Uludh then went and sat outside in a small boat. She was too fearful to remain
on the island and resettled on nearby Yorke Island. When Joseph and Raphaela
27
28
29
30
31
172
There is no official record of Francis marriage to Yadh from Skull Island, which may have
occurred before 1884. Yadh was probably the mother of Cornelio Garcia, whom Francis raised
as his son and whose father may have been a relation. Francis himself wrote that his three wives
came from Skull Island.
John Francis to Chief Protector of Aboriginals, 8 June 1915, QSA A/58658.
Chief Protector of Aboriginals to John Francis, 11 October 1911, QSA A/58658.
MacFarlane 1925: 11.
Maria Johnson Gebadi, pers comm, 2000.
A DOUBLE EXILE
Kanak moved to the Catholic mission at Hammond Island, they took the ailing
Uludh with them. She died shortly afterwards at Thursday Island, where she is
buried.32
St Josephs Roman Catholic mission at Hammond Island (Keriri)

The Hammond Island Catholic mission became the third Torres Strait community
of predominantly Filipino character, when a number of outer island families
exchanged departmental for church control and moved there after its opening in
1929. The mission was originally conceived of as a home for the Catholic halfcastes of Torres Straits, who, being emblematic of the local failure of the white
Australia policy, were proving an embarrassment to authorities.
Hammond Island belongs to the Kaurareg from south-west Torres Strait, who
in 1922 were removed at gunpoint to Banks Island. The Catholic church then
negotiated government permission for a mission station which would give its
residents the opportunities of practising their religion and their own homes
with garden plots, [where they could] enjoy a measure of independence and
detachment conducive to their general well being.33 By late October 1928 Fr John
Doyle had obtained a government grant and pledges from a few old Manila
men to settle there and train the young men to work the land, look after poultry
etc.34
The first applicant was Joseph Kanak, then aged about 65 and living with his
family on Darnley Island. Persuaded by consideration of their present and future
welfare, he set about transferring his home to the mission.35 The Sabatino and
Dorante families followed, as later did the elderly widowers Pablo Remidio and
Isidoro Delgardo, and the population grew to 130 before the 1942 evacuation.36
Other pre-war residents with Filipino connections include Annie Blanco and her
third husband, the Aboriginal Bob Quetta; Annies son and daughter-in-law,
Silverio and Josephine Blanco; Annie Randolph Lopez with some of her children
and their families; Alfonso and Marcellino Canendo and their wives. Only a
minority of the original inhabitants returned after the war and the missions
pre-war Filipino character survives only in photographs and the memories of
its residents.
Contemporary identity
Examples from three documents a decade apart demonstrate the changing legal
classification of the wives and children of Filipinos. Until at least 1920, their
32
33
34
35
36
Maria Johnson Gebadi and Dulcie William, pers comm, 1999.

Deere 1994: 17.
Fr Tom Mullins, pers comm, 1988.
173
status was unambiguous: when Luisa Carabello Lloren, the Darnley Islandborn daughter of a Filipino father and Yam Islander mother, left Australia with
her Filipino husband and Thursday Island-born step-children in 1920, each
was categorised as an Australian-born Filipino.37 In 1912 the outer islands
were designated as reserves and the children living there became Aboriginals,
whereas those living on and around Thursday Island were increasingly known
as Filipino half-castes, whatever the legal classification of their fathers, on the
basis of their Indigenous maternal ancestry: in 1930 Gregorio Galora, son of the
naturalised Pedro Galora, referred to himself as a half caste Filipino.38 On the
mainland in 1941, however, Isabella Ravina, daughter of Pedro and Siau Ravina,
is referred to as an Island girl.39
Stones description of the wellsprings of political action could equally well be
applied to the construction of personal identity:
The individual is moved by a convergence of constantly shifting forces, a
cluster of influences such as kinship, friendship, economic interest, class
prejudice, political principle, religious conviction and so on, which all
play their varying parts and which can usefully be disentangled only for
analytical purposes.40
The third and fourth generation, especially those born on the mainland and
who are well-educated professionals, emphasise their Indigenous rather than
Filipino family connections, which in many cases are barely remembered or
acknowledged. Changing legislation and ideology have influenced their selfidentification: while aware of their Filipino ancestry, they grew up identifying
as Torres Strait Islanders, more familiar with their maternal Indigenous heritage,
knowing the Philippines only through inherited stories. They were enculturated
not as Filipinos but as Torres Strait Islanders, surrounded from babyhood by
extended kin, their only difference being their physical appearance, Catholic
religion and familiarity with a repertoire of songs and (at that time) exotic dishes
and musical instruments. With the exception of Dorante, Kanak and Sabatino,
their names and stories are largely forgotten today, with daughters assuming
the surnames, religion and custom of their Torres Strait Islander husbands
and sons remaining on the mainland post-war. Thus, Adam Lees, a descendant
of Juan Blanco and a senior Indigenous Affairs Advisor at Mount Isa Mines,
previously employed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, identifies
himself only through his ancestral connections with Mer Island (Peibre Clan)
and with the Indigenous people of Cape York Peninsula. The Torres Strait
Islander identity of Maria Dorante Mene, who works for the Queensland Health
Department, lies in her knowing her unique place in the world. Secure in that
37
Certificates of Exemption from Dictation Test, NAA J2483 287/100, J2483 288/1, J2483 288/2,
J2483 288/3, J2483 288/4.
38 Rex v Victoriano Blanco, Walter Busch and Casimero Manantan for assault, Circuit Court,
Cairns, 1 April 1930, QSA A/28874.
39 Inquest into death of Milko Yovanov, QSA JUS/N1094/30/41.
40 Stone 1971: 65.
174
A DOUBLE EXILE
identity, which is at times questioned by Indigenous clients, she tells me: When
I cross the water from Horn Island to Thursday Island I know who I am and
where I belong.41
Conclusion
The Filipino outer island settlers arrived in Queensland before federation,
attracted to Torres Strait by employment opportunities and good wages. They
came from great upheaval in their homeland to a no less turbulent Torres Strait,
as its traditional society, religion, economy and politics were overwhelmed by an
influx of foreigners. At a time of relatively free movement of people the Filipinos
managed to exert a good deal of control over their lives before they and other
coloured aliens were targeted by economic, social, legal and administrative
restrictions.
The men chose a different fate from the majority of their countrymen.
By committing to a new home and immigrant identity among a different
people, they were doubly exiled, a choice made less wrenching in places so
geographically and topographically similar to their islands of origin (and by
their frequent absences for work among compatriots). They all knew each other,
with some connections being forged in the recruiting ports, others in the strait
itself through shared work, recreation and worship. Despite the overwhelmingly
Protestant character of the strait, they kept their Catholic religious faith, married
their baptised Torres Strait Islander wives in the Thursday Island church and
sent their locally-born children to the Thursday Island convent for education.
They witnessed each others marriages and became godparents to each others
children. Their children often intermarried.
The intangible legacy of the men and their families consists of stories, recipes and
songs, the memories of older inhabitants and the skills in diving, tuba-production
and music-making they passed on to their descendants and privileged others, as
they did their first names and their parents names. The Dorante familys tenure
at Nepean has passed into local folklore: the fiery Santiago is said to have beaten
his wife and, desperate to escape to the safety of her family, she swam through
the shark-infested waters to Darnley Island. Wasadas totem was Beizam (Shark)
and sharks formed a line on either side of her to keep her safe. The Filipinos
tangible legacy consists of graves in local cemeteries, coconut plantations
Johnny Francis claimed to have planted a couple hundreds of Cocoanut trees
on Skull Island and elsewhere42 fruit trees (pawpaw, banana, mango and
pineapple), stands of bamboo and sisal hemp (to make Manila rope) and the
first freshwater wells dug by Filipino divers and their crews. When they left their
outer island homes, they generally sold their chickens, ducks and goats; their
houses were torn down and any building materials of value, such as galvanized
iron and nails, were salvaged for further building; their household gardens were
41 Adam Lees, pers comm, 2000; Maria Dorante Mene, pers comm, 2010.
42 J Francis to Chief Protector of Aboriginals, 20 December 1915, QSA A/58658.
175
taken over by later residents or are now overgrown and untended, like Thomas
Carabellos rice plantation on Darnley Island. Only some of their wells are still
in use, among the few physical survivals of the Filipinos decades-long sojourn
in the outer islands of Torres Strait.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Angie Ross Akee, Alison Bell, Fr Scotty Bob, Ambrose Bin Juda
(deceased), Bora Bin Juda, Rosemary Sabatino Bin Juda, Fr Anthony Caruana
MSC, Dorothy Dorante, Francis Dorante, James (Jimmy) Dorante, Orepa Peter
Dorante, Barbara Erskine, Kathy Frankland, Maria Johnson Gebadi, Mapoo
Gela (deceased), David Lawrence Guivarra, Denise Guivarra, Francis Guivarra
(deceased), Dolores Dicen Hunt, Florence Savage Kennedy, Charlene Kennedy
Lee, Kemuel Kiwat, Lizzie Thaiday Lui, Maria Dorante Mene, Vonda Moar,
Fr Tom Mullins, Eva Salam (Mingo) Peacock, Alma Pilot, Harry (Oroki) Pitt,
Margaret Reid, Anastasia Kanak Ross, Joseph Sabatino (deceased), Veronica
Dorante Sabatino, Lila Sebasio Reuben, Colin Sheehan, Henry Stephen, Michael
Stubbins, Jim Thaiday (deceased), Dulcie Alfred William and James Williams.
References
Primary sources
Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, 1 December 1939, Sacred Heart Archives, 1
Roma Rd, Kensington, New South Wales.
Certificates of Exemption from Dictation Test for Lloren family 1920, files J2483
287/100, J2483 288/1, J2483 288/2, J2483 288/3, J2483 288/4, dated 4 April
1920, National Archives of Australia, Queensland Branch, Brisbane.
Lawrie, M nd, Folder on eastern island fishtraps, MS MLC 1791-334, John Oxley
Library (now Queensland Memory), State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.
Queensland Legislative Assembly Votes and Proceedings 1896, Annual Report
of the Government Resident, Thursday Island 1894-1895, Queensland
Government Printer, Brisbane.
Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1906, Annual Report of the Chief Protector of
Aboriginals 1905, Queensland Government Printer, Brisbane.
176
A DOUBLE EXILE
Queensland State Archives (QSA)

Queensland Circuit Court, Cairns 1930, Evidence from Rex v. Victoriano Blanco,
Walter Busch and Casimero Manantan for assault, 1 April 1930, A/28874,
QSA, Brisbane.
John Francis to Chief Protector of Aboriginals, 17 November 1911 and 8 June
1915, A/58658, QSA, Brisbane.
Chief Protector of Aboriginals to John Francis, 11 October 1911, QSA A/58658.
Chief Protector of Aboriginals to Protector of Aboriginals, Thursday Island, 29
May 1923, A/58773, QSA, Brisbane.
Queensland Justice Department inquest file into death of Ceriaco Losbanes held
7 December 1903 at Thursday Island, file JUS/N317/384/03, QSA, Brisbane.
Queensland Justice Department inquest file into death of Milko Yovanov held 10
January 1941 at Mossman, file JUS/N1094/30/41, QSA, Brisbane.
Thursday Island Court House 1915, Register of men in charge licences, 19151957, entry for Joseph Kanak dated 2 February 1915, file SRS721/1, QSA,
Brisbane.
Secondary sources
Austin, M 1992, The Quality of Life: A Reflection of Life in Darwin During the Postwar Years, Maisie Austin, Darwin.
Bach, JPS 1955, The Pearling Industry of Australia: an Account of its Social and
Economic Development, Department of Commerce and Agriculture, Canberra.
Chase, AK 1981, All kind of nation: Aborigines and Asians in Cape York
Peninsula, Aboriginal History 1: 615.
Cubillo-Carter, I 2000, Keeper of Stories: Delfin Antonio Cubillo, Inez Cubillo Carter,
Alice Springs.
Deere, TC 1994, Stone on Stone: Story of Hammond Island Mission, Our Lady of the
Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Thursday Island.
Dupeyrat, A 1935, Papouasie: Histoire de la Mission (18851935), Dillen, Paris.
Hennessy, NB 2004, A Journey in Antipodean Land: The Filipino Heritage in Australia,
Seaview Press, Henley Beach, South Australia.
177
Ileto, RC 1993, Philippine Australian interactions: the late nineteenth century,

in Discovering Australasia: Essays on Philippine-Australian Interactions, RC
Ileto and R Sullivan (eds), James Cook University of North Queensland,
Townsville: 1046.
2004, Heriberto Zarcal: the first Filipino-Australian, in Navigating Boundaries:
the Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, A Shnukal, G Ramsay and Y Nagata (eds),
Pandanus Books, Canberra, 123137.
Jennings, K 2010, Everywhere and nowhere: [edited version of] the 2010 Ray
Mathew lecture, The National Library Magazine, December 2010: 2326.
MacFarlane, WH 1925, When shadows lengthen, yarns of the old identities of
Torres Strait islands: a call at Aureed, The Queenslander, 30 May 1925: 11.
Mullins, S 1992, Torres Straits pre-colonial population: the historical evidence
reconsidered, Queensland Archaeological Research 9: 3842.
Nailon, B 2005a, Emo and San Salvador. Book 1: Broome and Beagle Bay, Brigidine
Sisters, Echuca.
2005b, Emo and San Salvador. Book 2: Cygnet Bay, Drysdale River and Lombadina,
Brigidine Sisters, Echuca.
and F Huegel (eds) 2001, This is your Place: Beagle Bay Mission: Birthplace and
Cradle of Catholic Preserve in the Kimberley, new edition, Beagle Bay Community,
Broome.
Ohshima, J (ed) 1983, Toresu Kaikyo no hitobito: People of the Torres Strait, Kokon
Shoin, Tokyo.
Puertollano, K 2008, Filipino history in Broome, Kasama 22(3), July-September:
9.
Queensland Pearl-shell and Bche-de-mer Commission 1908, Report of the
Royal Commission, Queensland Government Printer, Brisbane.
Ruiz Wall, D and D Hunt 2008, Filipinos contributions honoured in Broomes
39th Shinju Matsuri Festival, Kasama 22(3), July-September: 1014.
Shnukal, A 2004, They dont know what went on underneath: three littleknown Filipino/Malay communities of Torres Strait, Navigating Boundaries:
The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, A Shnukal, G Ramsay and Y Nagata (eds),
Pandanus Books, Canberra: 81121.
Stone, L 1971, Prosopography, Daedalus 100: 4679.
178
Indigenous Australian-Indonesian
intermarriage: negotiating citizenship rights
in twentieth-century Australia1
Julia Martnez
This story of Indigenous Australian-Indonesian intermarriage is one that sheds

light on the changes to citizenship entitlement in Australia and the struggles of
Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Asian peoples to lead their lives free from
government intervention. Indonesian-Australian contacts remain relatively
unknown in Australian history. Early Macassan relations with the peoples of
Northern Australia, brought to light by Campbell Macknight, stands out in
Australian history as a significant first contact with Asia. More recently Regina
Ganter has continued the Macassan story into the twentieth century exploring
encounters with northern communities across Australia.2 But the story of
wartime disruption faced by the families of Indonesian men and Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander women and their long wait for citizenship rights has yet
to be told.
In Australia, the history of Indonesian migration has tended to be overshadowed
by European preoccupations with the larger numbers of Chinese immigrants
and, in the context of the pearl-shell industry, with the skill and status of Japanese
divers. In the 1981 special edition of Aboriginal History, Athol Chase wrote of
encounters with Asians in the Queensland pearl-shell industry describing the
influence of Japanese language and culture.3 He mentioned the presence of
Malays on Thursday Island but gave little sense of the significance of their
legacy for the Aboriginal peoples of northern Queensland. It would be almost 20
years before historians would begin to piece together these stories. My aim here
is to focus on Indonesians in an effort to shed light on their experiences. This
article builds on Regina Ganters discussion of Indonesian families from Badu
and Thursday Islands in the Torres Strait.4 The terms Malay, and more specific
terms such as Macassan and Koepanger, have been used to refer to people from
the Dutch East Indies.5 The term Indonesian, which relates to the post-colonial
period after 1949, is used here as a general term.
1
2
3
4
5
Thank you to the anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions. This research was supported
under Australian Research Councils Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP0771117).
Macknight 1976; Ganter 2006.
Chase 1981.
Ganter 2006: 193.
See Campbell Macknights discussion of terminology in this volume.
179
While the Queensland case study is significant, it should be acknowledged

that this story could be told of communities in both Western Australia and
the Northern Territory. Western Australias Kimberley coast was the site of
generations of intermarriage between Indonesians and Aboriginal peoples.
Sarah Yu has written of these experiences, critically exposing the stereotypes
imposed on Malay-Aboriginal encounters including the notion that Asian fathers
did not care about their children. She points to the fact it was the government
policy of deportation that forced Malay fathers to leave their children behind.6
Christine Choo has explored the restrictions imposed by missionaries in their
effort to curtail contact between Aboriginal women and Malay men.7 In Darwin,
another of the pearling ports, Malay-Aboriginal families such as the Pons and
Ah Mats were well-known and respected. Further post-war immigration led to
more Indonesians marrying into local communities.8
In exploring the lives of just a few Indigenous Australian-Indonesian families, I
hope to demonstrate that their experiences, far from being marginal to Australian
history, were central to post-war challenges to the White Australia policy. In the
context of the immigration policy, marriages between Indigenous Australians
and Indonesians highlighted inherent flaws in Australian immigration policy
and the fact that citizenship legislation took little account of marriage status.
The fact that these marriages also came under the jurisdiction of state-based
administrators of Aboriginal affairs added a level of complexity to an already
fraught issue of public interference in private lives.
The 2003 publication of Lost in the Whitewash: Aboriginal-Asian Encounters in
Australia highlighted the need for Australian history to move beyond the blackwhite binary of the colonisers and the colonised.9 Ann McGraths contribution
demonstrated the degree of government control over intermarriage, noting that
the Northern Queensland Protector, Walter Roth, was opposed to Aboriginal
marriage to coloured aliens. His chief concern was that Chinese men, who had
been barred from employing or cohabiting with Aboriginal women under the
Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, were marrying
to get around the Act. By 1901 new regulations forced those wishing to marry
to apply to the local police officer, who would then refer the matter to Protector
Roth.10 Each case was considered individually and in 1901 several Javanese and
Malay men were granted permission to marry. McGrath also notes that in 1927
in Queensland four Malays were issued marriage permits.11
The level of government control over marriage demonstrates that the White
Australia policy was far more than a matter of immigration restriction. It
was the basis for internal population control including the criminalisation of
miscegenation. In the first two decades after Federation, steps were taken to
6
7
8
9
10
11
180
Yu 1999: 66.
Choo 2001.
Yu 1999: 66; Choo 2001; Martnez 1999: 49. See also Stephenson 2009.
Edwards and Shen 2003: 9.
McGrath 2003: 44.
McGrath 2003: 45.
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN-INDONESIAN INTERMARRIAGE
limit the growth of the so-called half-caste Aboriginal population because of

fears that population growth would undermine the work of government officials
towards achieving a predominantly white population. In Darwin, where the
Federal government had authority from 1911, anthropologist Baldwin Spencer
advised against allowing intercourse between Aboriginal women and men of
other races.12 He was mostly concerned to prevent Chinese men from having
sexual relations with Aboriginal women but the policy was also aimed at white
men.
The official stance on miscegenation was stated in section 53 of the Northern
Territory Aboriginals Ordinance 1918:
Any person (except an aboriginal or a half-caste not living with his wife)
who
(a) habitually consorts with a female aboriginal or half-caste ; or
(b) keeps a female aboriginal or half-caste as his mistress ; or
(c) unlawfully has carnal knowledge of a female aboriginal or halfcaste,
shall be guilty of an offence.13
Men found guilty were liable for up to three months imprisonment. As in
Queensland, interracial marriage was only permitted with the permission of the
Protector.
Katherine Ellinghaus, in her study of interracial marriage, refers to national
policies of biological absorption.14 It was not until the 1930s that biological
assimilation was considered as an official policy. Dr Cecil Cook, Chief Protector
of Aboriginals in the Northern Territory and AO Neville, Chief Protector in
Western Australia, advocated the absorption of half-castes into the white
population.15 Cooks policy was to encourage the mating of white male and halfcaste female, thereby gradually eliminating colour.16 This was a controversial
plan in the 1930s, not because of humanitarian objections, but because of the
lingering belief in white racial purity. But this shift in racial policy made little
difference to Asian men. Asian-Aboriginal relations continued to be policed and
prevented in the context of immigration concerns, using the excuse that Asian
men were a morally degrading influence.17 For those few relationships that were
permitted, it was on the understanding that minor exceptions would have little
impact on broader population goals.
12
13
14
15
16
17
Northern Territory Marriage with Aboriginals, National Archives of Australia [hereafter NAA]
A1/1 1912/3519.
Ordinance No 9 of 1918, Government Gazette, 26 October 1918.
Ellinghaus 2006: 208.
Anderson 2002: 246.
Cook to Morley, 28 April 1931, NAA A1/1 1936/6595.
Martnez 2006: 142.
181
Indonesians arrive in Thursday Island

This account of Indigenous Australian-Indonesian intermarriage begins in the
1870s when pearling stations were established on the islands adjacent to Thursday
Island, Kaurareg territory, and thousands of Asian men were brought to work
in the pearl-shell industry.18 The first Malay divers were introduced shortly after
1874. Some men, from the western regions of the Dutch East Indies, were brought
to Australia via Singapore, recruited by coolie brokers and shipped under
three-year contracts of indenture. Others, from the eastern islands of the Dutch
East Indies, were recruited from Kupang in West Timor, Ambon, and Dobo in
the Aru Islands. They came from islands in Timor and Maluku, including Babar,
Roti, Alor and Sawu Islands. The cultural heritage of these islands, with animist
traditions and Christian influences, had more in common with the Torres Strait
Islands than with the Javanese culture most often associated with Indonesia.
There were some obvious differences however. Jeremy Beckett has argued that
the Asian men had a marked impact on Torres Strait society, as they introduced
marriage payments in the form of cash and manufactured goods which in turn
prompted Torres Strait Islander men to offer matching payment for wives.19
The first census taken at Thursday Island in 1885 indicated a resident population
of 139 Europeans, 77 Malays, 49 Filipinos, 20 Sri Lankans, 16 Aboriginal people,
and a handful of Chinese, Japanese and Arabs. In that same year there were 257
Malays engaged in the marine industry and this peaked at 270 in 1886.20 Apart
from Malays, the pearling masters employed Pacific Islanders and Manilamen.21
In 1896 the population was 1354, including 626 Europeans, 233 Japanese, 119
Filipinos, 115 Malays, and Chinese, Pacific Islanders, Aboriginal Australians,
Cingalese, and Javanese. There was a small second generation of Malays with
the census recording three Malay women and 14 children. The number of Malays
on fishing vessels remained steady with 270 Malays employed.22 By 1902 there
was a reduction in the number of Malays with the pearl-shell crews including
172 Malays compared with 397 Pacific Islanders and 246 Torres Strait Islanders.23
After 1901 the pearl-shell industry was granted an exemption from the
Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and permitted to import Asian workers on
yearly Certificates of Exemption. This exemption came under question in the
1910s and was only made official after a Royal Commission.24 The decision to
allow Asian indenture was made on the proviso that Asian indents would not
remain in Australia permanently and that they would have limited contact with
Australian society. Intermarriage defied both those objectives.
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
182
Shnukal and Ramsay 2004: 35.

Beckett 1977: 85.
Beckett 1977: 82.
Brisbane Courier, 24 November 1897: 5.
Dashwood 1902: 4.
Ganter 1994: 112.
The Commonwealth Naturalization Act 1903 replaced the Queensland Aliens Act
1867. Under the Queensland Act, Asians had been able to apply for naturalisation
provided they were married and had lived in Queensland for three years.25 The
new Commonwealth Act denied naturalisation to any aboriginal native of
Asia.26 Marriage, therefore, was no longer relevant to naturalisation.
While marriage may not have helped to secure permanent residence for
Indonesian husbands, it did afford their wives a greater degree of freedom. If
Torres Strait Islander women had been subject to the letter of the law, then by
virtue of the 1903 Naturalization Act, which specified that a married woman took
on her husbands nationality, then these women would have become citizens
of the Dutch East Indies. But full citizenship was available to neither party as
colonised subjects. Even so, these marriages did lead to the wives becoming
exempt from the controls placed on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders under
the Act. This, however, remained a legal grey area throughout Australia. It
apparently did not apply in the Northern Territory Aboriginals Ordinance 1918, in
which Aboriginal included a female half-caste not legally married to a person
who is substantially of European origin or descent and living with her husband.
As in Thursday Island, however, in practice married women in Darwin were
more likely to be permitted to live independently.
In 1904 Torres Strait Islanders were classified as Aboriginal and the children
of Asians and Torres Strait Islanders were classed as half-caste and subject to
the Act if they lived with or habitually associated with Aborigines and Torres
Strait Islanders.27 In order to avoid these restrictions, Asian-Torres Strait Islander
families moved to Thursday Island. Here they were apparently disconnected
from their Aboriginal families, who were not permitted to move to Thursday
Island under legislation aimed at segregating Asians from Aboriginal people.28
One such example was Ahwang Dai, a Dayak, who came to the Torres Strait in
the 1880s from Singapore and in 1891 married Annie from Badu Island and had
11 children.29
As Asian men and their families congregated on Thursday Island, the next
generation of Asian-Aboriginal children were more likely to marry newly
arrived Malays. Those children deemed to be half-caste and under the age of 21
were still subject to the rule of the Protector. In 1914 the Protector of Aborigines,
William Lee-Bryce denied Atima, the daughter of Ahwang Dai, permission to
marry a Malay man. Instead, Atima was married informally in Malay fashion.30
In another case, Cissie Malay, who was designated as a half-caste Aboriginal
woman and under the age of 21, was also forbidden to marry when Drummond
Sarawak applied for permission in 1916.31 Despite this, the couple were married
25
26
27
28
29
30
31

An Act relating to Naturalization, No 11 of 1903, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers: 91.
Ganter 2006: 83.
Ganter 2006: 8384.
Faulkner 2007: 67.
183
unofficially and their son Ali Drummond was born in 1917. Cissie Malay was the
daughter of a Yadhaigana woman, Nara Para from Red Island, and a Javanese
man known as Jimmy Malay.32
In some cases marriages were permitted. Bora Bin Juda, who was born in Macassar
in 1895, came to work on Thursday Island aged 19.33 On 29 December 1922, he
married Mareja Doolah, who was born on Badu Island in 1902. In a letter to
the Sub-Collector of Customs on Thursday Island, JG McLaren, Secretary of the
Department of Home and Territories wrote that the Protector of Aboriginals had
recommended that no further objection need be raised to the marriage in this
case.34 He agreed to allow Bora Bin Juda to remain in Australia and to re-engage
as an indent for further service subject to good behaviour. The exception was
made because Mareja Doolah was officially categorised as a three-quarter caste
Malay. But McLaren wrote that he would be glad if the Sub-Collector would
inform employers that:
the marriage of indents to local women is to be discouraged and that
serious consideration will be given to the question of refusing to allow
the re-engagement of any indent who in future marries locally.35
That is to say that after the marriage had taken place the men would be deported.
An investigation showed that there were six other Malay indents married to
or living with half-caste Aboriginal women, namely Bagu Bin Amat (with
two children), Olie Daybees (Willen Dewis), (two children), Hadji Salem (two
children), Doola, (one child), Sayed Bada (five children), Tommi Loban (two
children), and Subden Bin Osane (two children).36
It would appear that at this time the governments first priority was to prevent
Indonesians from gaining permanent residence and that the prospect of a child
being left without a father was justified on these grounds. McLaren wrote:
it is realised that if an indent gets a lubra into trouble, it is reasonable
to expect him to recognise his responsibilities in the matter; but if such
a person were permitted to marry at Thursday Island and thus be
practically assured of permanent residence, there would appear to be
some danger that other indents might follow his example for the purpose
of securing like concessions, and the question arises as to whether it
would not be preferable on the whole to prevent marriage in such cases
and to require the indent to leave the Commonwealth as soon as his term
of engagement expires.37
32 Faulkner 2007: 512.

33 Application for Registration, 17 February 1940, NAA J25 1957/4689.
34 McLaren to Sub-Collector, 10 November 1922, NAA A1 1922/19013.
35 McLaren to Sub-Collector, 10 November 1922, NAA A1 1922/19013.
36 Customs and Excise Memo, 17 October 1922, NAA A1 1922/19013.
37 McLaren to Sub-Collector, 15 September 1922, NAA A1 1922/19013.
184
Given that marriage no longer served to make Malays eligible for naturalisation,
it was a curious reading of the law, to suggest that marriage to an Aboriginal
Australian would practically assure them permanent residence.
In another case, in Western Australia, there was no such assumption. In 1936,
after a Malay indent married a half-caste woman, the Broome Pearling
Inspector stated that despite the marriage he would have to leave the country
when he ceases to be employed on pearling vessels.38 Despite this, the man was
permitted to remain in Australia in yet another example of officials bending the
rules.
In 1939 with the review of the Protection Act by Chief Protector Bleakley two
separate Acts were promulgated in Queensland: the Aborigines Preservation and
Protection Act 1939, and the Torres Strait Islanders Act 1939. While Torres Strait
Islanders were described as a distinctive group, and believed to be living in a
more developed way than mainland Aboriginal people, they were still subject
to similar government surveillance and control of work and wages.39 Torres
Strait Islander women who had married Malay men and were living outside the
Protection Act on Thursday Island were relatively free from this control, but that
was to change during the Second World War.
War-time evacuation
On 24 January 1942, fearing that Japan was about to attack Australia, the
government gave the order to evacuate Thursday Island.40 The evacuation ships
made their way south to Cairns and the Orminston disembarked a number of
Aboriginal-Indonesian families. Afterwards there were claims of an adverse
public reaction to the new coloured arrivals. The Army and the Deputy
Director of Native Affairs, Cornelius O'Leary, decided to send the next shipment
of approximately 200 Thursday Islanders on the Katoora and the Britha to the
Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement located 272 kilometres north-west of Brisbane.
Once there, the men were signed up to work in a range of jobs including
sugarcane-cutting, cotton-picking and cattle work.
While the Malay men were sent out to work, the women and children mostly
remained in Cherbourg. They found themselves alone, cold, and unable to leave
because they were now being treated as wards under the Act. From 1911 to 1940
nearly 6000 mainland Aboriginal people had been removed to settlements such
as Cherbourg as part of an attempt to segregate the Aboriginal population. Their
first experience of this regime was shocking to Thursday Island families.41
38
Pearling Inspector to Chief Pearling Inspector, 2 April 1936, State Records of Western Australia
(SROWA) 477 245/1936.
39 Ganter and Kidd 1993: 553.
40 Osborne 1997: 16.
41 Osborne 1997: 3135.
185
In June 1942 Willem Dewis (known as Olie Daybees), an Indonesian from

Thursday Island, went to Cherbourg to try to get the Indonesians released with
the idea that they could move to Brisbane. Dewis was born in Tepa on Babar
Island in Maluku in 1893. His wife, Noressa, was born on Badu Island. They had
eight children, the youngest, Josephine being born in 1945. OLeary supported
racial segregation to an extent that was unfamiliar to Thursday Islanders and
condemned Dewis attempt to get every Malay to Brisbane where, OLeary
argued, they would become a menace to health and objectionable residents of
any suburb.42 He claimed that all the Indonesians were employed in Cherbourg
whereas in Brisbane they would be unemployed.
Dewis had already contacted Police Sergeant Holly at Thursday Island in an
attempt to gain his help. Living in Red Hill, Brisbane, Dewis wrote that they
had been forced to go to Cherbourg which he described as not a nice place and
only good for the aboriginal not for us because you know for yourself Sir how
we lived up T.I. He complained about the quality of the food they were given,
being fed with bread and jam but no butter. They were given meat every second
day but no vegetables. He said he had complained to Mr OLeary but to no
avail. Dewis wrote that he did not wish the Department of Native Affairs to be
in charge of them. Demonstrating the extent of their lack of personal freedom, he
wrote that the families at Cherbourg had been split up with husbands and wives
sleeping apart in dormitories, and boys and girls also sleeping apart. He wrote
that they are like prisoners because they are not allowed to sit with their family
and have their meals.43
OLeary was adamant that the Thursday Island evacuees were not to leave
Cherbourg. He wrote to the superintendent of Cherbourg stating that: Under no
circumstances must any evacuee leave your Settlement without my permission.
His concern was that Palos Annidlah, stepfather of Sammy Lewin, had apparently
been given permission to leave by the superintendent. Sammy Lewin had come
to Brisbane and had been admitted to Wattlebrae Hospital suffering from typhoid
fever which they presumed he had contracted at Cherbourg Settlement. The
superintendent was ordered to arrange for inoculations immediately.44 Given
that typhoid fever is usually contracted from contaminated food or water, this
points to the dire state of hygiene in the Cherbourg Settlement.
Bora Bin Juda was living at the Cherbourg with his wife Mareja and their four
children. He worked there until he broke his arm when breaking in a horse. In
January 1943 Bin Juda left to look for work but his wife remained at Cherbourg.
He was employed in a range of short-term jobs: as a builders labourer for 4 per
week, as a sugarcane cutter; and then in the Farleigh Sugar Mill for 5 per week.
Later in 1943 Bin Juda went to Red Hill, Brisbane and was employed by the Civil
42
Deputy Director of Native Affairs, 24 June 1942, Queensland State Archives [hereafter QSA]
IF/44.
43 Dewis to Sergeant Holly, 19 May 1942, QSA IF/44.
44 Deputy Director of Native Affairs, 22 May 1942, QSA IF/44.
186
Construction Corps on the New Dock at Bulimba for 15 per fortnight. He paid
1 per week to rent a house that he shared with his son Saul Juda who was then
15 years old.45
Whilst the men were able to leave Cherbourg to seek employment it was another
matter to get their wives and children out. There was some suggestion that the
government was paying for their accommodation but according to the Director
of Native Affairs the fee for accommodation at Cherbourg was 1 shilling per
person per day, payable by the husband. In the period from March to October
1942 the accommodation of one wife and six children was calculated as 64/1/or several months wages. The men were sent letters demanding payment before
their wives and children could be released. A poignant record of this troubled
time was a simple telegram from Dorsena Bin Garape to her husband Assan
Bin Garape stating: Cant leave here unless you pay settlement, love Dos. In
December 1942, Bin Garape, who was employed at the Mackay aerodrome,
sent money for fares to Mackay and agreed to pay the rest of the money in
instalments. Dorsena was given approval to join her husband in Mackay on 14
December 1942.46
The war years must have been extremely difficult for those who had large
families, even after they were permitted to leave Cherbourg. Hassan Bin Awel,
who was born in Amboina, Maluku in 1891, was married to Saia Ah Wang, born
on Badu Island in 1909. They were married in 1926 and had seven children. Before
the war Hassan was working on-shore in connection with the pearling industry.
During the war years, Hassan was moved around Queensland. He shifted from
Mackay to Chermside in February 1943 to work in the Civil Construction Corps
camp and after one month was transferred to Tamborine for another five months.
After that he went on to Meeandah for a few months and then to the Banyo Civil
Construction Corps to work for the Main Roads Commission. In January 1944
he was living in Kelvin Grove with his wife and children. By the end of the
year he had moved to live in Paddington, though he was still employed by the
Banyo Civil Construction Corps. The government files that so carefully track
his whereabouts have very little to say about the difficulties that his wife and
children must have experienced during these years of constant moving. Two of
their children were born during these years so they had small babies to look after
as well. In February1947 Hassan moved again to live in Red Hill where he was
employed by the City Council. The government then requested that he return
to Thursday Island where he worked until his retirement in 1956.47 His story is
typical for the Indonesians who were evacuated from Thursday Island.
45
Reports by Constable 3142 Red Hill Station, 29 July 1943; Constable 3295, Rosalie Station,
Brisbane, 26 July 1943; Constable 3063 Farleigh Station 14 August 1943, NAA J25 1957/4689.
46 Evacuation Coloured People other than Islanders and Aboriginals, QSA IF/44.
47 Nulty, 20 November 1959, NAA J25 1957/12548.
187
Post-war Thursday Island towards naturalisation

Following the end of the war, the government was eager to reestablish the pearlshell industry in Queensland and most concerned that there were Asian indents
moving around freely in Australia against the terms of their contracts. The
Department of Immigration quickly located the men and demanded that they
return to work in the pearling industry or face immediate repatriation. For those
who were married to Torres Strait Islander women there was little choice. They
were forced to return to Thursday Island. A list of pearling indents employed on
Thursday Island during 1951 showed 22 Indonesians identified by their region
of birth and these men had some 50 dependents.48 The list included ten men
from Timor who had arrived in Australia between 1908 and 1934; four men from
Makassar, Celebes (Sulawesi) who had arrived between 1911 and 1936; six men
from Ambon, arriving between 1914 and 1944; and three others.
Having lived in Cairns and Brisbane during the war years, it was difficult for
many of the families to adapt to life back on Thursday Island. In 1950 a letter was
sent to Senator Courtice on behalf of H Joseph, Secretary of the Indonesian Social
Club protesting that they had been refused permission to visit Cairns with their
children for a holiday. He said that they had been on Thursday Island from 14
to 34 years and that they were not naturalised although a considerable amount
of money has been spent on legal costs in order to achieve naturalisation.49 This
was the first suggestion that the pearl-shell workers were seeking naturalisation
as a means to avoid deportation.
Historian Sean Brawley has explored a separate naturalisation case, which
appeared before the High Court in 1949. Indonesian woman Annie Jacob came
to Australia as part of the wartime evacuations from the Dutch East Indies with
her husband Samuel Jacob and their children. Her husband died in 1944 and
later Annie married white Australian John OKeefe. Despite their marriage, the
Australian government was not prepared to grant her permanent residency.
Instead she was granted a temporary Certificate of Exemption from the
Immigration Restriction Act 19011948. After Arthur Calwell tried to deport Annie
the case went to court and the High Court determined in 1949 that she was not
a prohibited immigrant on the basis of a technicality the authorities had failed
to administer the Dictation Test.50 This case demonstrated beyond doubt that
marriage to an Australia at this time did not help those seeking to circumvent
the White Australia policy.
The Thursday Island cases were different as these men were long-term
temporary residents with Australian-born children, but even these factors were
not sufficient in making a case for citizenship. Even so, these factors did sway
48
49
50
188
P Kersley to Commonwealth Migration Officer, NAA J25 1958/850.

Collins to Courtice, 26 March 1950, NAA J25 1958/850.
Brawley 2006: 49.
the local officials. In June 1950 CW Kirk, Sub-Collector of Customs, who had
been in contact with Joseph, wrote in support of their request to go on holidays
to the mainland, stating:
I might point out these people all have pretty large families all born
on Thursday Is, they had sons overseas on active service in World War
2, and themselves worked on Allied small ships or on defence on the
Island. The visits to the mainland for holiday purposes is requested that
all should be permitted to go at different times, and it was also suggested
at the meeting that the person going on a months holiday with his family
should put up a bond. The attached list shows 23 Men and 16 Wives,
including one De-facto, the number of Children would average five per
family.51
The fact that Indonesians were denied freedom of movement within Australia
reached the new Indonesian government. Indonesian independence in 1949
brought with it a review by the Indonesian government of colonial labour
practices, including conditions in Australia's pearl-shell industry. By March
1952, the Indonesian government was considering banning Indonesian pearling
indents from working in Australia.52 In 1955, after failing to agree with the
Australian government over rights of permanent settlement for Indonesian
nationals, the Indonesian government banned further indentured immigration.53
While the Indonesians on Thursday Island were lobbying against the restrictions
imposed on them by their status as indentured workers, in Canberra a broader
debate was taking place over the administration of the White Australia policy.
It is not clear to what extent the protests from Indonesians and their supporters
influenced government policy. More likely, it was the case of the Japanese wives
of returned soldiers that provided the initial catalyst for change. Mrs Cherry
Parker, the Japanese wife of Gordon Parker, a white Australian man who had
served with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan, was the
first Japanese war bride to be permitted to enter Australia in 1952. Her story,
which was splashed across the newspapers of the time, prompted a rethink of
the stringent restrictions of the White Australia policy. The media emphasised
the romance of their love story and made much of her personal beauty.54 The
front page of the Argus carried a photograph of their two young daughters and
their Australian grandmother with the caption: The happiest grandmother in
Melbourne.55 As Keiko Tamura observed: Their experience presented a case in
which faithful love could conquer all barriers: racial, cultural, linguistic and of
international relations.56
51
52
53
54
55
56
Kirk, 19 June 1950, NAA J25 1958/850.

Australian Embassy, Djakarta, to DEA, 15 March 1952, NAA A1838/2 1531/49.
Martnez 2005: 137.
Tamura 2001: 249.
Argus, 11 July 1952: 1.
Tamura 2001: 250.
189
The Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council was asked to review the

policy regarding non-Europeans in Australia and in 1954 the council voted
to grant Australian citizenship to Asians who have permission to remain in
Australia without any restrictions under the Immigration Act.57 A commitment
was made to grant permanent residence to Asians with professional qualifications
or distinguished in government or humanitarian service, but that admission
of lower class Asians should be prevented. When Harold Holt, Minister for
Immigration, presented his recommendations to cabinet in July 1956 they
included an additional proposal to adopt a more liberal attitude towards
non-Europeans already in Australia who had breached their entry conditions,
especially in relation to restrictions on their occupation.58 This recommendation
was intended to help those pearling indents who were no longer working in the
pearl-shell industry but might otherwise have been dismissed as lower class.
The shift away from the pearl-shell industry was an important step towards
achieving naturalisation. Once the Indonesian men were free from the restrictions
placed on indents, they could qualify for naturalisation as permanent residents
not under immigration restrictions. Non-Europeans seeking naturalisation
were required to have been resident in Australia for 15 years (as opposed to five
years for Europeans) but this was a minor matter given that most of the pearling
indents had been resident long before 1941.
The case of Cherry Parker inspired another important change, which was the
1956 decision to grant naturalisation to the Asian spouses of Australian citizens.
She was naturalised in January 1957.59 The term spouse of an Australian citizen
was soon applied to Indonesian men married to Aboriginal women. Since the
passing of the 1948 Nationality and Citizenship Act, Aboriginal peoples had been
formally Australian citizens, though this Act did not confer citizenship rights.60
For example, Esek Anaktotote, who was born in Tepa on Babar Island in 1910,
arrived in Thursday Island in 1926. In 1946 whilst living in Brisbane, Anaktotote
married Possa nee Usope, widow of Paolos Annidlah. She was born on Badu
Island in 1906. Possa had four children from her previous marriage to Timorese
pearling indent Henry Lewin who had died around 1935.61 Despite his marriage,
in January 1948 the Department of Immigration decreed that if Anaktotote was
not prepared to return to work in the pearling industry as an indentured labourer
then he would be given one months notice to leave the country. The Wanetta
Pearling Company had offered to sign him on but as they had no pearling boats
operating that year the government was not satisfied with this arrangement.62 In
1957 his status was changed from pearling indent to spouse of an Australian
Citizen. The Sub-Collector of Customs, HJ McMahon, reported in 1957 that he:
57
58
59
60
61
62
190
Tavan 2005: 90.

Cited in Tavan 2005: 94.
Tavan 2005: 9598.
Chesterman and Galligan 1997: 156.
Esek Anaktotote, NAA J25 957/3859.
Kersley to Sub-Collector, 7 January 1948, NAA J25 957/3859.
supports his wife, working on the waterfront as a casual labourer,

when available. He receives very good pay. He own and works a small
vegetable farm on one of the neighbouring Islands.63
At a time when the category of spouse of an Australian Citizen could apply
equally to a husband as to a wife, there was still the notion that his financial
support for his wife was a necessary factor in his qualifying for this category.
The most pertinent change for Indonesian indents who were officially in
Australia as temporary immigrants was the June 1957 recommendation to
extend permanent residence and citizenship rights to all non-Europeans who
had lived in Australia for 15 years but were still classed as temporary residents.64
The Minister for Immigration, Athol Townley, formalised further conditions,
that they were of good character; had not wilfully disregarded the conditions of
their admission; had an adequate knowledge of English; and had taken part in
normal Australian life.65
Having lived under the shadow of the White Australia policy the indentured
workers were finally offered the possibility of naturalisation, providing they
passed English language tests and demonstrated involvement in so-called
normal Australian life.66 In 1958 19 Indonesian nationals were granted
Australian citizenship and over the next eight years a total of 142 Indonesians
were naturalised.67 Bora Bin Juda, for example, returned to Thursday Island in
1947 and engaged in pearling until his advanced years forced him to retire from
the industry. In 1952 he was employed casually on the wharf.68 In 1958 he applied
to become an Australian citizen and was naturalised on 11 August 1960.69
While the new changes to the naturalisation legislation seemed to suggest that all
the Indonesians would now be able to qualify for citizenship, there was still some
degree of reluctance on the part of the administrators that suggested disapproval of
intermarriage still existed. The application for naturalisation of Albert Herwawa
in 1961 was one such case. Herwawa was born in Timor in 1906 and came to
Australia in 1926. He returned to Thursday Island after the Second World War
and married Ruth Ketchell. Following his application for naturalisation in 1961,
the Sub-Collector of Customs sent the Immigration Department a favourable
report. He noted that Herwawa had engaged in pearling part-time until 1956
and had worked as a casual wharf labourer since 1948. He was found to qualify
for the criteria of mixing with Australians given that as a wharf labourer he
constantly mixes with Australian workers and the Sub-Collector noted that his
63
64
65
66
67
68
Report, 22 July 1957, NAA J25 957/3859.

Tavan 2005: 99.
Tavan 2005: 102.
Markus 1994: 171.
Markus 1994: 172.
Nulty to Secretary, 20 November 1959, NAA J25 1957/4689; Draney, 10 December 1952, NAA
J25 1958/2442.
69 Bruce to Nulty, 4 September 1957, NAA J25 1957/4689.
191
home, which was very tidy, was amongst Australians, and that he was able to
converse freely in English. He also mentioned that Herwawa was a member of
the Malay Club and that his main hobby was fishing.70
A second report, however, was sent from the Thursday Island Police Station
stating that Herwawa had married a Thursday Island woman, Ruth Ketchell,
who is many years younger than he.71 This police report prompted the
Commonwealth Migration Officer, TM Nulty, to write to the Director of Native
Affairs seeking his view as to whether or not Herwawa should be granted
citizenship. Nulty wrote:
Asian pearling operatives, or former operatives, are only normally
eligible to apply for citizenship by virtue of their marriage to Australian
citizens but this in itself does not entitle them to naturalization, and
each case is considered individually. As the majority of these pearlers
qualify to apply for naturalization only by reason of their marriage
to native women, it is considered desirable to obtain the views of your
Department on their suitability to acquire citizenship of this country
before proceeding with the grant of naturalization to them.72
This request for the permission of the Director of Native Affairs reveals the
persistence of the Protector mentality. The Director simply pointed out that the
Sub-Collector was responsible for these reports and made no further comment
and Herwawa was granted citizenship in 1962.
The process of gaining naturalisation was not merely about freedom of
employment or movement. It also conferred a greater financial security for
these men as they retired after many long years of working for the benefit of
the Australian economy. The story of Karel Kaprisi born on Babar Island in 1907
demonstrates this. He came to Thursday Island in 1926 and married Sophia Takai,
a local Thursday Island widow, in 1948. Sophia was of Malay descent and during
her stay in Cherbourg she was already widowed with three Malay-Japanese
children. She and Karel had four children together and when she died it was
left to Karel to care for the large family. In 1955, with divers paralysis leaving
him crippled with arthritis, he was receiving workers compensation. In 1960,
just months before his naturalisation, he received a letter from the Department
of Social Services advising him that his benefits were liable to be terminated as
he was not an Australian citizen. DA Radke, the Sub-Collector of Customs on
Thursday Island, wrote to explain to the Commonwealth Migration Officer in
April 1960 advising him that Karel was distressed because he was supporting a
family. Thus Karels naturalisation in August 1960 was a timely intervention and
offered the prospect of a more secure financial future.73
70
71
72
73
192
Radke, 10 April 1961, NAA J25 1959/641.

Cavanagh, Senior Sergeant, 1 June 1961, NAA J25 1959/641.
Nulty to Director of Native Affairs, 27 June 1961, NAA J25 1959/641.
Karel Kaprisi, NAA J25 1959/156.
For some the 1960 naturalisation ceremony came too late. Bagu Bin Amat, who
was born in Pontianak, Borneo in 1891, was married to Raima Ah Wang, a Badu
Island woman. Together they had six children. The government finally approved
his naturalisation application on 27 January 1959 but sadly Bagu Bin Amat died
on 11 February 1960 before he could take up Australian citizenship.74
During the large naturalisation ceremony held in 1960 on Thursday Island nine
Indonesians, former pearling indents, were naturalised. The town clerk reported
that some 250 people attended the ceremony and the speakers were WJ Fulton,
MHR, HA Adair MLA, and T Gilmore, MLA, who had a special message of
congratulations from Dr Noble, the Minister for Health and Home Affairs.75
With the Malay men confirmed as Australian citizens they were now entitled to
vote in Australian elections. Ironically, their wives, the Australian citizens who
helped the men to qualify for citizenship, were, as Torres Strait Islanders, not
officially granted the right to vote under Queensland law until 1965 with the
passing of the Election Amendment Act 1965.
With no new Indonesian immigration after the 1950s there was a gradual decline
in the memory of Indonesian cultural heritage as the next generation tended to
identify themselves as Torres Strait Islanders.76 Samantha Faulkner wrote about
her grandfather Ali Drummond acknowledging his Malay heritage, but also
emphasising his current identification as a Torres Strait Islander, writing:
Today, Ali is a respected elder and recognised across Australia. Hes
a Cultural Ambassador for Thursday Island and the Torres Strait,
educating non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples about
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, which assists greatly in the
role of reconciliation.77
The stories of Indigenous Australian-Indonesian marriages are important
because they enable us to remember and celebrate the endurance of families
who survived the dual burdens of immigration restrictions and the so-called
protection of the various Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander acts. In the years
since these men gained citizenship, there has been remarkably little recognition
of their special place in Australian history. Theirs is a story of patience and
persistence in remaining in Australia as temporary residents for some 50 years,
hanging on by the tenuous threads of yearly Certificates of Exemption.
As a study of Australian citizenship and marriage law, this article has only
touched on some of complex problems posed by this grey area of the law, and
the often incompatible regulations imposed by the separate state and federal
systems. More work is needed to understand the diversity of the state systems
and more importantly the gaps between the letter of the law and its application.
74 Nulty to Adair, 13 July 1960, NAA J25 1958/3085.

75 Allen to Commonwealth Migration Officer, 18 August 1960, NAA J25 1959/1420.
76 Shnukal and Ramsay 2004: 46.
77 Faulkner 2007: 8182.
193
The history of Indigenous Australian-Indonesian intermarriage provides a

new, personal dimension to Australias historical relations with Indonesia.
While the histories of early Macassans have given us a sense of Indonesians as
temporary visitors who remained outsiders, here, we see Indonesians in quite a
different light, as settlers rather than sojourners and with close continuous ties
to Aboriginal and Torres Straits peoples and with experiences of Australia that
went far beyond their anticipated segregated role in the pearl-shell industry.
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Book Reviews
Digging up a Past by John Mulvaney, xiii + 348pp, University of New South Wales
Press, Sydney, 2011, ISBN 9781742232195 (hbk), $59.95
John Mulvaney begins this rewarding excavation of his own life and times by
noting a preference for AB Faceys autobiography title, A Fortunate Life. There is
no doubt that Mulvaney has had a fortunate life; certainly more so than Facey
whose chronic bad luck childhood work abuse, serious war wounds and close
family loss renders his title ironic. As he relates, Mulvaney considers his own
life and career to have been punctuated by a succession of fortunate alignments,
from his arrival at the University of Melbourne during its History Departments
golden age of the late 1940s, to his serendipitous presence at critical moments
in Australian archaeological history, at Lake Mungo and at Kutikina Cave on
Tasmanias Franklin River. But his emergence as a scholar versed in Old World
prehistory just as reliable carbon dating techniques were developed during the
1950s was probably the most critical conjunction. The dating breakthrough shifted
archaeology methodology from one based on analogy and deductive conjecture
to one of incontrovertible fact. As Mulvaney puts it, his probing of dusty
resources in the State Library during 1950, coincided with Willard Libbys testing
of the dating potential of radiocarbon 14, in America. Australian archaeology
grew in step with this revolutionary time machine. This new certainty gave
the principal impetus to Mulvaneys pioneering, paradigm-shifting role as
Australias foremost archaeologist, for at least three crucial decades. During his
active career the acknowledged span of Aboriginal occupation in Australia was
extended tenfold, from barely 5000 years to 50,000 where it rests today, give or
take a few millennia.
Archaeology became a race to the bottom. Stratified sites in landscapes which
had undergone demonstrable geomorphological and ecological change were
suddenly desirable, and by 1959 Mulvaney had pushed the earliest date for
Australias human occupation to 5000 years, based on his recent excavations at
the Fromms Landing rock-shelter on the Murray River. Just three years later,
a meticulously documented sequence of 16,600 years occupation at Kenniff
Cave in Queensland meant that Australia had a Pleistocene human past that
could be discussed meaningfully against an Old World context. Of course, luck
played a part in drawing Mulvaney to these sites, and in obtaining the dates;
but his substantial contributions as scientist and historian, scholar and public
intellectual, owe more to his formidable capacity for concentrated research, and
a certain doggedness. This has marked his commitment to many worthy projects
and a few lost causes. Digging up a Past provides the inside story on all these,
ranging from Mulvaneys creative partnership with Rhys Jones in the successful
199
archaeologically-inspired campaign to save Tasmanias Franklin River from

being dammed, to the disappointing fate of the Pigott Committees report on
the new National Museum. Mulvaney remains bitter, for good reason, about the
eventual result: a diminished museum on a cramped piece of land with no room
for expansion, housed in a structure that is reminiscent of a fun fair with
curved walls and constricted spaces that are unsuitable for exhibits.
As the eldest of five children, growing up in modest circumstances in a
south Gippsland town, before his schoolteacher father took up a position at
Rainbow in the arid Victorian mallee, Mulvaney learnt to make the most of
rare opportunities; instances of vacillation or moral dilemmas do not enter this
books script. Otherwise, the young Mulvaneys course towards the Academy,
and specifically the Humanities, was steered by a succession of good teachers
and his own innate abilities, signalled early and emphatically by his 1937 grade 7
examination results at Rainbow Higher Elementary School, ranging from eight
per cent for Arithmetic and a fail in Algebra, to 95 for English and Geography
and 100 per cent for History. From then on it seems that Mulvaney not only kept
a weather eye on his own academic performance, but was keenly aware of the
quality of education being offered to himself and those around him. This is as
true of his intensive training as a navigator in Canada and England during the
Second World War, as of his undergraduate studies and teaching at the University
of Melbourne, Cambridge University and the Australian National University.
In fact, aside from holding the readers interest in his own life and career,
Mulvaney has managed to deliver a fascinating intellectual history of several
university departments, introducing us in turn to a succession of characters who
helped to shape twentieth-century ideas and cultural life in Australia, including
Leonhard Adam and Kathleen Fitzpatrick, John OBrien and George Nadel, not
to mention Manning Clark (even banal material sounded profound). Similar
insights provide thumbnail sketches of some of the key figures of international
prehistory, such as Grahame Clark, Glyn Daniel, Abbe Henri Breuil or Charles
McBurney, whose lectures and supervision combined profundity with
impossible concepts. McBurney invited Mulvaney to join his 1952 expedition to
Cyrene in Libya, one of the great experiences in his life, and one which helped
to mould the archaeological methodology he would apply so successfully on his
return to Australia. It seems to have been Mulvaneys formative years spent in
the Melbourne department which equipped him with a sure and steady grasp of
his own culture, the signature basis of his confident interrogation of Australias
deep past and of the history of its anthropological thought and practice, perhaps
expressed most strongly in his masterly treatment of the life of Baldwin Spencer
and his network of Central Australian colleagues.
Mulvaney cites more than 90 of his own publications in this volume. Each
illuminates a moment or phase in his developing career; none of the works
are lightweight, and all illustrate his gift for rendering previously arcane
subjects accessible, even fascinating and compelling. The long series began
with his publications on the historiography of Aboriginal anthropology and
history, helping to finally end Stanners great Australian silence. The ground200
BOOK REVIEwS
breaking Prehistory of Australia (1968) was exemplary in that respect; the first
work of Australian archaeology to find a wider audience. Notably for readers
of this journal, Mulvaney was among a small group who founded Aboriginal
History, almost 35 years ago, a brave venture between linguists, historians and
prehistorians. This is, of course, just one small instance of Mulvaneys activism
in neighbouring cultural domains, evidence of an eclecticism he finds perfectly
natural. It has propelled him into several diverse roles, such as cultural heritage
protection, advocacy on behalf of the Australian Academy of Humanities and of
course, the vexed area of museums.
Digging up a Past began as John Mulvaneys modest attempt to construct a
readable memoir of his life for his own family, and there are passages in the book
which drop down a notch into the mode of a humble and unpretentious record
of events. These passages, such as the account of a boisterous family holiday
in Africa complete with safari adventures, as well as a guided tour by Louis
Leakey of his famous Olduvai site (Mulvaney had seen the Zinjanthropus skull
in Cambridge during 1961, when Leakey plucked it from its case, like a magician
with a rabbit), are constructed partly from the daily journal of events and family
movements kept by Jean Mulvaney. She, and the six Mulvaney children, are
never far from the main story and on occasion take centre stage. The book is
partly a tribute to Jeans memory, who shared and contributed to Mulvaneys
remarkable life and career for 55 years. Jean and the children feature in the
compelling selection of photographs chosen to illustrate the book. I hoped there
might be an image or two of the famous Mulvaney backyard cricket matches at
Yarralumla, but perhaps these are still to be dug from what must be a substantial
and immensely significant archive.
Philip Jones
South Australian Museum
201
An Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia edited by

Melinda Hinkson and Jeremy Beckett, xvii + 293 pp, Aboriginal Studies Press,
Canberra, 2008, ISBN 9780855756604 (pbk), $39.95
Melinda Hinkson and Jeremy Becketts An Appreciation of Difference: WEH

Stanner and Aboriginal Australia is a tribute nearly 30 years after his death to
one of the most esteemed anthropologists who worked in Indigenous Australian
contexts. It is also a reflection on what Stanner achieved in his lifetime and what
his work contributes to current Indigenous issues and Indigenous studies in
Australia today. The contributing authors to the volume have worked with
Stanner, the man, either as students and colleagues, or with Stanner, the intellect,
by reading and using his work to extend and develop their own ideas. Some
extrapolate from his contributions to policy-making in the past to critique it in
the present as Jon Altman (pp. 271280) quite brilliantly does in the final chapter.
This important book is both a poignant biography and something more. The
authors use Stanners work to think through the foundational issues concerning
what it is to be Australian. If Australian identity depends on the dispossession
of Indigenous Australians and subsequent interactions between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous peoples, as in my view it does, then this book ranges across
many of the key issues in the development of that identity to date. These include
the development and politics of policy-making in relation to land, social justice
and sustenance of culture for Indigenous Australians; the appreciation of
Indigenous Australian worldviews and life ways and the intellectual challenges
that all these issues raise. The various authors offer different perspectives of how
these challenges might be met by using and/or critiquing Stanners work.
The various transdisciplinary contributing authors of the volume draw from
Stanners body of work, published and unpublished, and on recollections
of working with him in his extraordinary career both within and outside the
academy. The chapters reflect on aspects of Stanners career in the British colonial
service in Kenya, in the British academy, his various positions in the Australian
army during the Second World War, his work as Chair of Anthropology at
the Australian National University, in founding the Australian Institute for
Aboriginal Studies and the Council for Aboriginal Affairs. Inevitably, however,
due to the productive nature of Stanners writing, the book is largely dedicated
to working with Stanners ideas. These ideas are arguably most accessible in his
famous 1968 Boyer lectures. Threaded through Stanners five Boyer lectures are
the arguments that non-Indigenous Australia had little interest in Indigenous
Australia, had almost completely wiped the history of interaction between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples from the public record, and that he had
little hope for change because the reasons for what he called the great Australian
silence were systemic.1 That is, as Ann Curthoys (pp. 235237) argues, a racial
structure was established in the first few years of contact whereby it was believed
that Aboriginal life ways were so damaged that they were doomed to extinction,
1
Stanner 1974: 27.

203
and this structure endured into the 1960s. Stanner argued in his lectures that
contrary to the beliefs of non-Aboriginal people, Aboriginal life ways, although
changing, were still alive in 1968 and that the people living in these worlds were
in Nancy Williams words, intelligent, even brilliant human beings (p. 211).
The contributing authors generally agree that, although Stanners assessment
did not take all Australian discourses operating over the history he discusses
into account, he was largely right, and his criticism of the treatment of
Aboriginal peoples in Australia was well justified. The consensus of the
authors is that although there have been significant steps in acknowledging
Indigenous interactions in Australian history and in some policies concerning
the improvement of Indigenous Australians circumstances, many if not all of
Stanners concerns are still current.
I first read the Stanner Boyer lectures in the late 1970s and found them to be
so moving and powerful that I decided to learn all I could about relations
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. After reading Stanners
Whiteman Got No Dreaming (1979) I wanted to become an anthropologist myself.
It is not an exaggeration to say that reading Stanner changed my life. I cannot
speak for the extent of Stanners influence on the authors of An Appreciation of
Difference, but it is clear from what they have written that Stanners work is still
current and significant to generations of scholars across disciplines. He is not,
however, an entirely heroic figure and An Appreciation of Difference is certainly
not hagiography. The various contributing authors reveal a man with flaws
and frailties in personality, body and intellect. Yet he emerges as someone
extraordinary in being able to express his appreciation of humanity in our
various manifestations and aspects. This book is a remarkable achievement in
being a rigorous critique of Stanners work that is simultaneously a tribute to it.
References
Stanner, WEH 1974, The 1968 Boyer Lectures: After the Dreaming, Australian
Broadcasting Commission, Sydney.
1979, Whiteman Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-1973, Australian National
University Press, Canberra.
Kristina Everett
Macquarie University
204
The Many Worlds of RH Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist by

Martin Thomas, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011, ISBN 9781741757811 (hbk), $59.95
This biography of RH Mathews (18411918) should go a long way to granting

him the recognition he so dearly craved in life. Although a professional surveyor,
Mathews was from a marginal Australian rural background (Mutbilly in New
South Wales) and came to anthropology late, at the age of 50. Perhaps as part of
his competitive ethnomania (Thomas apt term), he could also be pugnacious
as a scholarly rival. He was not of the caste, nor of the powerful social network,
of the doyens of the Australian branch of the discipline in his day, and ran foul
of Sir Baldwin Spencer and AW Howitt in particular. The role of colonial class
in this rift could have been explored further in this work. However, as Martin
Thomas shows, Mathews made his own contributions to the establishments
siege mentality. Still, like AP Elkin and others including myself, Thomas does
not believe Mathews deserved the degree of opprobrium, rejection and studious
ignore to which he was subjected in life, nor the post-mortem obscurity from
which he is only now escaping.
The rejections of Mathews by highly placed contemporaries, especially Spencer,
who made something of a career of making and breaking other peoples careers,
had their long legacies afterwards. Somewhere in the mid 1980s, when I was
combing Mathews papers for a detailed study of the Bora ritual complex in New
South Wales, I considered it was time his works should be facsimiled, translated
where necessary, pulled into logical groups, given a set of linking commentaries,
and indexed, as a single large volume. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies Council did not warm to this proposal and
it disappeared. In an abbreviated form a similar idea reappeared in the 2007
volume edited by Martin Thomas, Culture in Translation: the Anthropological
legacy of RH Mathews (ANU E-press). This and the present volume, and not
to be underestimated the post-1993 swathe of native title research projects in
south-eastern Australia, have made sure that Mathews will not slip back into
obscurity for some long time.
Thomas book begins with the onset of Mathews Aboriginal possession in 1892.
This foreshadows the fact that his approach to this particular life is thematic as
much as it is chronological in structure, and the narrative weaves back and forth
in time to an extent. If you are a strict chronologist you will get some vertigo
from this, but others will not mind.
Here and there the narrative settles in for a quiet stay among the infinitesimal.
Thomas has a taste for Mathews interest in the fine grain, the details, of Aboriginal
peoples traditions. This gives the book solidity, which will be welcomed by
many, if not by those drawn only to the glamour of the broad and abstract
sweep. Mathews was no grand theoriser, although he read theorists. Nor was he
much concerned, at least in his writings, with post-classical Aboriginal society,
nor with the politics of Indigenous affairs. In these ways he was much like most
205
of his colleagues of the time, an antiquarian. This narrowness of concern was to

be significantly abandoned by Australianists after the First World War, when a
younger and more politically engaged generation entered the field.
This book brings some of Mathews not always riveting papers to life, by telling
us here and there who were the historical individuals with whom he worked,
and at times showing us their photographs. Also here and there in the text are
photographs from places where he did not personally work, which dilute the
otherwise south-eastern consistency of the tale. The maps and plans are apposite
but several are too reduced to be readable.
Having lived before the post-1950s age of Western self-exposure and selfreflection, with its mixed blessings of the candid, the tumid, and the squalid,
Mathews left behind little that allows us to pry into his soul. On this score the
contrast between this biography and that of TGH Strehlow by Barry Hill (Broken
Song: TGH Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, Knopf 2002), is considerable, even
though Thomas does his best to give us some psychological insight into his sitter.
There are some errors of fact in the book that might have been weeded out
by circulating the manuscript among people who have specialised in relevant
subjects. For example, it is said that before and after Francis Gillens death
Baldwin Spencer continued to publish as Spencer and Gillen despite the latter
not having written a word of these books (pp. 262263). The corrective to this
urban myth was provided by Philip Jones in 2005.1
If I have a serious reservation about this work it is because of how much of it is
taken up with the authors own self-exposure and the narration of his journey of
discovery. Reflexivity and biography may not be antithetical in theory but one
can easily get into the way of the other unless autobiography is the genre. Even
there, a balance is still needed. Abundant self-analysis amid a thin scattering of
facts, or, on the other hand, a relentless listing of events in a working life in the
absence of any inner voice, can put the autobiographical project out of kilter and
kill off readers. In the case of a biography most readers will be interested in the
subject, not the writer.
It is to be hoped that this very finely produced new biography will stimulate
similar research on other figures in the history of Australian Indigenous studies.
We are still without major biographies of Donald Thomson, Ursula McConnel,
WEH Stanner, Norman Tindale, Ronald and Catherine Berndt and others who
came in the wake of colonial ethnographers like Mathews, and built on their
efforts.
Peter Sutton
South Australian Museum and University of Adelaide
1
206
Indispensable to each other: Spencer and Gillen or Gillen and Spencer? Collaboration and
Language, Strehlow Research Centre Occasional Paper 4: 625.
Aboriginal Darwin, A Guide to Exploring Important Sites of the Past and Present by
Toni Bauman, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2006, ISBN 9780855754464
(pbk), $34.95
Aboriginal Sydney: A Guide to Important Places of the Past and Present by Melinda
Hinkson (text) and Alana Harris (photography), Aboriginal Studies Press,
Canberra, 2001/2010, ISBN 9780855757120 (pbk), $29.95
These two books may be part of an Aboriginal Studies Press series on Australian
urban centres, as they are almost identical in design and to a point, in content.
Both describe historic sites, with details of how to get there, but they also include
recent or present day memorials to Indigenous people, and even noteworthy
events in which an individual takes priority over site. These include, in Sydney,
Laddie Timberys art and craft stall at La Perouse hardly history, but still
an important Indigenous site of the present; and in Darwin, a photo of the
Tiwi member Marian Scrymgour being danced into the Legislative Assembly
by Maurice Riolo. Both the books therefore edge away from place-centredness
towards the purely historical. Again, the Sydney text carries instructions how
to visit some but not all of the historic sites: Hinkson does not identify the
location of the Aboriginal Legal Service, or the Medical Service, or the Black
Theatre, for no very obvious reason. Bauman locates all her sites, though at times
I would have liked a photograph of what certain sites long demolished, such as
the Kahlin Compound, look like today. I would have appreciated a photo of the
spot where, for instance Dakiar Wirrpanda was brought ashore from Caledon
Bay, or, for that matter, the grave of his victim, Mounted Constable McColl. Even
the identification of the office of Cecil Cook, the pre-Second World War Director
of Aboriginal Welfare, or for that matter, of Harry Giese, the last (pre-Whitlam)
Director, would have been interesting, and also reminded readers of the intimate
connection between Darwin Indigenous life and the bureaucracy. Yet we can
note with gratitude Baumans recognition of the old Darwin Oval, Mindil Beach
Government House and the Museum and Art Gallery. We can thank Hinkson
for her researches on sites in Parramatta such as the Old Market Place where
Governor Macquarie held the first Native Conference and the site of the church
where the star Aboriginal pupil of Blacktown Native Institution, Maria Lock,
married the convict John Lock.
The Sydney text, however, has many more gaps. The author is drawing rather
a long bow in presenting Yarra Bay House at La Perouse as a signifier of Stolen
Generations incarceration. The Marella Home at Kellyville and the Anglican
Home at Mulgoa would have been much better choices, but neither of these
two places is noted at all. The Brickfields, the site of much Aboriginal colonial
social activity, near the present War Memorial in Hyde Park, and the notorious
Circular Quay camp, near todays Museum of Contemporary Art, would not
have been hard to research and identify. A serious omission is the reserve at
Sackville Reach on the Hawkesbury River, where scores of Koori people lived
for decades. The Aboriginal Inland Mission church, still standing at La Perouse,
207
was most important in the lives of Sydney Kooris, and beyond. To be fair, some
apparent omissions are not altogether the fault of Hinkson and Harris. A number
of important sites have only emerged publicly through oral history, which is not
easy to come by in a quick research tour evidently relying on what is publicly
available. Information on the Narrabeen town camp has only emerged from
Dennis Foley in the last decade, while the significance of Biddy Giles farm at
Mill Creek, on the Lower Georges River, and the Saltpan Creek community in
the same area, has not yet entered the wide public domain despite the efforts
of Heather Goodall and Allison Cadzow. Readers of Bauman, impressed by the
attention given to Aboriginal achievers through various public biographical
plaques, may wonder why are the analogous plaques in Sydney not equally
noted. In truth Sydney is not well endowed with plaques of any kind apart from
those attached to colonial buildings in the inner city. One of the few Indigenous
plaques on the Opera House walkway is to Oodgeroo Noonuccal, but none of
those dedicated to local identities embedded in Darling Street, Kings Cross, are
to an Aboriginal person. Joy Janaka Williams, who sued the state for wrongful
removal and subsequent institutional lack of care, and who spent a number of
years in the area, would be a likely candidate for recognition here. Other areas
important for medium or long-term residence in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries were the Field of Mars, on the Lane Cove River, and Quakers Hat Bay,
near the Spit, and Bungarees Farm on Georges Head. These do not appear even
in the later edition of Aboriginal Sydney.
An interesting difference between the two urban histories becomes apparent.
Because Darwins Aboriginal population was proportionately larger, almost
every public space and many buildings were, and are, highly significant to
Aboriginal people. The shared spaces of Fannie Bay Gaol and Darwin Hospital
come immediately to mind. Fannie Bay Gaol and the old Darwin Hospital are
highly relevant to the Larrakia people as well as Indigenous transit visitors, and
are cited in the book. Analogously, Sydneys Long Bay Gaol, the former Royal
Womens Hospital at Paddington, the Bidura transit depot in Sydneys Glebe
and the Parramatta Girls Home are surely equally significant, but Indigenous
numbers and associations are swamped by the association of people and other
histories. Thus it emerges that while very many of Aboriginal Darwins sites
are shared, almost all the Sydney places are Indigenous only. The cultures and
histories divided earlier and rather more deeply in Sydney.
Photographs, of course, are critical in tourist books. The work of professional
photographer Alana Harris has been reproduced fairly well by Aboriginal
Studies Press, and certainly much better than the presss photos decades ago.
Bauman has used pictures by a number of people, particularly Julie Wells. In
both books, though, many of the photographs are too small to be useful beyond
an aid in recognition.
Future editions, and the studies of other cities which I hope are to come, should
adopt modern technologies such as GPS referencing and on-line presentations
downloadable on i-pods. Both books are good starts, but there is much scope for
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BOOK REVIEwS
development. The 2010 edition of Hinkson and Harris might well have taken
advantage of new knowledges, but apart from one or two additions it is not
much more than a reprint of that of a decade before.
Peter Read
Director of the on-line historical source <historyofaboriginalsydney.edu.au>
209
Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim

Cities by Penelope Edmonds, 317pp, University of British Colombia Press,
Vancouver, 2010, ISBN 9780774816229 (pbk), CAD $35.95
In Australia, classical notions of the frontier and its associated histories of

invasion, displacement and violence would tend to point us towards the
outback or the bush rather than the urban centres where most of us live today.
Penelope Edmonds thoroughly unsettles this notion of a distant frontier by
moving it back to the edges of the continent, to the port towns where Europeans
first landed and where most of them remained. The frontier was not simply
out there, synonymous with the unruly boundaries of an expanding pastoral
economy, but very close to home. This reorientation recognises that our cities
were indigenous spaces from the time of European settlement and, in turn, it
understands Aboriginal histories as urban histories (p. 238). It also challenges
more conventional accounts in which Aboriginal people exit the scene in the
early nineteenth century, only to return to urban areas as new migrants in the
twentieth century.
But Urbanizing Frontiers does more than this. In the recognition that these themes
are not unique to Australia, Edmonds places the early colonial history of her
case study, Melbourne, in dialogue with Victoria, British Columbia, to produce
a comparative and transcolonial analysis of two sites at the edges of empire.
Melbourne and Victoria are valuable comparative case studies because both
cities were built on indigenous lands, both were imagined as Empires Edens,
lights of civilisation and Britishness on the Pacific Ocean (p. 20), and both were
vital economic hubs in expanding imperial webs, remade by gold rushes and
migration. Yet they differed in several fundamental ways. In Canada indigenous
people were more fully integrated into the fur trade, whereas in Australia the
pastoral economy marginalised Aboriginal people on their own land. Melbourne
began life as an illegal, outlaw settlement (p. 79), whereas the mercantilist
influence of the Hudsons Bay Company, the colonizing power by proxy in
Victoria (p. 102), kept renegade settlers in check. Approaches to treaty-making
diverged in both places, as did attitudes towards and patterns of interracial
intimacy between white men and indigenous women. Ultimately, Edmonds
concludes, there was a more favourable colonial impression of aboriginal people
in British Columbia because white settlers were far more dependent on them.
Yet, what is striking is the extent to which settler colonialism ultimately constructed
indigenous people in both cities as inconvenient, anomalous, and vagrant (p.
137). Edmonds makes a particularly productive reading of the contemporary
power of Enlightenment stadial theory, where progress was intimately entangled
with the human relationship to land. Cities were believed to stand at the pinnacle
of social and cultural evolution; they represented the apotheosis of civilization
and became a synecdoche for empire and its ideological paradigm (p. 61). In
Pacific Rim settler colonies the ideological and material investment in new cities
was explicitly racialized as the exclusive destiny of the Anglo-Saxon races (p.
211
62). The original inhabitants of the soil were deemed out of place, a danger to
health, order and governance. At the same time, the creation of cities created
new spaces for aboriginal people, usually on the urban margins, and Europeans
expected to see them living in their midst. In fact, they sought them out, and
their motivations for doing so varied from spectacle to sex. By attending to the
city as the scene of everyday life and not simply to the grand designs, Edmonds
moves us beyond triumphant nineteenth-century accounts of New World urban
development to interpret cities not so much as sites, but as processes of land
transactions, of mobility and its regulation, of interracial encounters, of the
generation of knowledge about race, class and gender processes, in sum, of
the transformation and reordering of bodies and spaces.
Urbanizing Frontiers is a fine example of comparative colonial history. This sort of
history requires research in multiple locations often separated by vast distances,
engagement with the historiographical contours of at least two countries, and
a conceptual language to bridge them. The challenges of structure where to
begin, what to put next and what to omit are magnified too, so in light of these
methodological and technical challenges there is certainly much to admire here.
There is some repetition in places and a tendency to overuse questions, but these
do not detract from the rich and compelling evidence or the insightful analysis
which is developed with reference to postcolonial, feminist and spatial theory.
Edmonds stresses that settler colonialisms urban histories were unique. Unlike
the inward-looking protective cantonments in established cites such as New
Delhi, or the sequestered hill stations in India (p. 65), settler colonial cities were
large and expansive, envisioned as transimperial Anglo-Saxon cognate space:
Melbourne and Victoria were both London reproduced. The scale and vision
of urban settlement and its relationship to the rural hinterlands in Australia and
Canada was distinctive, yet I kept hearing echoes from elsewhere in the empire,
particularly with respect to the relationship between indigeneity and urban
space. In Fiji, for example, which was never envisaged as a white mans country,
indigenous landownership was preserved under colonial rule, but, crucially, not
in the port capital. Fijians were displaced from Suva and their presence there,
along with a range of non-white others, was a continual source of debate and
anxiety. Maybe we need to ask further questions about the racialisation of urban
space per se, in whatever colonial context it comes. A wider comparative lens
would be fascinating, one which embraces the connections between colonial
formations we have more readily kept distinct. In the Pacific World this would
mean bringing these settler outposts on the Rim in closer dialogue with the sea
of islands that stretched in between. This would also entail a more extended
discussion of the material networks that linked them through travel, technology,
public speakers, newspapers and global performances, those things explored
briefly in Chapter 7.
To reiterate, Urbanizing Frontiers is a sophisticated monograph, carefully crafted
and impressive in scope. It deserves a wide readership in indigenous studies,
colonial history, urban history and historical geography, while also making an
important and timely contribution to both Australian and Canadian history. It
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shows us the extent to which the urban histories shared by indigenous peoples
and newcomers in the formative decades of the nineteenth century have left
unfinished business in our postcolonial cities today.
Frances Steel
University of Wollongong
213
Singing Saltwater Country: Journey to the Songlines of Carpentaria by John Bradley

with Yanyuwa families, xxiii + 301 pp, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2010,
ISBN 9781742372419, $39.99
John Bradleys Singing Saltwater Country:Journey to the Songlines of Carpentaria

provides a compelling account of the authors work with Yanyuwa people in
and around the town of Borroloola in the Northern Territory. As he describes
in this memoir/ ethnography (which is co-credited to Yanyuwa families),
Bradley came to Borroloola as a primary school teacher in the early 1980s. At
Borroloola, he rapidly become fascinated with the sacred songlines or kujika
which link the Sir Edward Pellew group of islands with the Australian mainland
in the south-west Gulf of Carpentaria. Indebted to his Yanyuwa informants for
teaching him language, country and kujika [italics added], the non-Aboriginal
Bradley describes the book as part of a reciprocal deal, translating Aboriginal
knowledge into a form that could be preserved for the future (p. xvi). With this
publication (alongside an ambitious attempt to animate Yanyuwa kujika for use
in the Borroloola school), Bradley proposes to deliver on that deal.
The book sits uneasily in between multiple genres. As a memoir even a
diary it provides a fascinating account of the authors attempts to explore the
phenomena of Yanyuwa kujika, and the broader multidimensional dynamic of
Aboriginal knowledge that surrounds it (p. 242). Like Bruce Chatwins Songlines
(1987), Singing Saltwater Country is as much concerned with the possibilities
of intercultural communication as it is with classical Aboriginal culture,
providing a detailed account of the authors own journey into understanding.
This is intensely personal and occasionally moving, conveyed in a simple
and straightforward style which strains towards lyricism on occasion, and is
accompanied by some hand-drawn illustrations and maps by Nona Cameron.
While Bradley arguably lacks the literary gifts of Chatwin, his engagement
with this material is much deeper and richer his journey with Yanyuwa
people stretching now across three decades making Chatwins exegesis seem
impoverished and even perfunctory in comparison. As such, it recalls the work
of the other great chronicler of Aboriginal songs, TGH Strehlow, as well as Bill
Harney and AP Elkins collaboration on Songs of the Songmen.1
As ethnography, the thickness of Bradleys writing is exemplary. In describing
his first meeting with key informants Jerry and Elma, Bradley writes:
They were sitting back to back, engaged in constant commentary on the
vehicles and people going past. They shouted questions to passing kin
on the whereabouts of other kin, and requests for tobacco, money, beef
and bread.
I was introduced to them, but sat down with Eileen [another informant]
so I could continue my Yanyuwa lesson. I was trying to make sense of
1
Strehlow 1971; Harney and Elkin 1949.

215
male and female dialects, as I had received comments that I was speaking
too much like a woman. Eileen, because we were at school together
every day, saw it as her task to get me to speak like a man.
As Eileen and I talked, Jerry said loudly and suddenly, Me! Im number
one singer [i.e. of kujika] myself! Without hesitation, Elma bluntly
responded Bullshit! (pp. 122123)
Interspersed with colourful episodes like this, Bradley provides his own
transcriptions and translations of kujika, laid out on the page like poetry. From
his number one singer Jerry, Bradley reproduces song verses associated with
the Dingo Dreaming:
Warrakiwarraki
Warrakiwarraki
Kakami kakamayi
Well-made stone blades
discarded flakes lie scattered (pp. 132133)
Those without access to Bradleys impressively encyclopaedic knowledge might
be surprised to learn about verses like these being sung for stone tools, as Bradley
himself was surprised at the time (p. 133). Rather than simply commenting on
this, however, Bradley explains the significance of these few lines at length,
connecting them to his understanding of kinship and Aboriginal Law, and
challenging the reader to come to feel something about it [i.e. the kujika] like
these old men [like Jerry] did (p. 134). Surpassing the generic constraints of both
memoir and ethnography, at these moments Singing Saltwater Country can be
seen as akin to the hermeneutical approach to the study of religion, discussing
Yanyuwa kujika the way Christian and Jewish scholars discuss the Bible and the
Torah. As well as this Dingo kujika, which is transcribed and translated in full,
Bradley also applies this approach to the Rainbow Serpent, Tiger Shark, Brolga,
Groper, Spirit People, Sea Turtle, Crow and Spotted Nightjar and Hammerhead
Shark kujika in the Gulf.
However, while Singing Saltwater Country offers much breadth, mystery and
intellectual satisfaction for readers, his unique approach combining multiple
genres will likely disappoint some. As a memoir, I wanted to know more about
how Bradley managed his movements into and out of what anthropologists call
the field. While he describes the impact of his learning on his experience of
place in Yanyuwa country calling out without embarrassment to a flock of
brolgas in Yanyuwa, as a kind of kinsman of these birds in Yanyuwa terms
(p. 249) he offers little insight into his life in Melbourne, and the intellectual
accommodation that his extraordinary experiences with Yanyuwa people
presumably entails. Similarly, Bradley offers little insight into Yanyuwa peoples
intellectual accommodation of others, including anthropologists.
Other anthropologists who have worked at Borroloola and throughout Aboriginal
Australia might be disappointed with Bradleys partial engagement with their
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BOOK REVIEwS
discipline, and many of its more pressing current concerns. Apart from a slight
index of Further Reading (pp. 289292), Singing Saltwater Country contains no
references to academic writing, ignoring the publications of those who worked
with Yanyuwa people before Bradley, such as John Avery.2 As ethnography, I
particularly wanted a more fulsome account of Yanyuwa life, including Yanyuwa
peoples engagements with the Australian state. Bradley offers no analysis of the
impact of large-scale state transfers of resources to Aboriginal people in the form
of welfare payments and funding for outstation developments and the like,
which arguably led to an efflorescence of ritual traditions like kujika at places
like Borroloola in the late 1970s and 1980s. There is also no analysis of the causes
of cultural knowledge loss beyond repeated references to radical and tragic
contemporary change (p. 248). While Bradley provides a superb account of one
aspect of Yanyuwa life possibly the central aspect of Yanyuwa life in the period
he describes those who come to this book hoping for further insight into the
issues which provoked the Commonwealth Governments declaration of a state
of emergency in Northern Territory communities in mid-2007 might well be left
wondering what all the fuss was about.
This partiality is both a weakness and strength of Singing Saltwater Country.
While it might enable idealists and romantics to ignore the problems in places
like Borroloola, it offers a useful corrective to those who would see contemporary
Aboriginal life solely in terms of pathology, reminding readers of the inheritance
of belief and value that infuses much of what we understand as Aboriginal
culture. As a contribution to a nascent hermeneutics of such culture and an
invaluable record of it Bradley has more than delivered on the deal he made as
a young primary school teacher struck by the beauty of the songlines.
References
Avery, J 1985, The Law People: History, Society and Initiation in the Borroloola
area of the Northern Territory, PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology,
University of Sydney, Sydney.
Chatwin, B 1987, Songlines, Jonathan Cape Ltd, London.
Harney, B and AP Elkin 1949, Songs of the Songmen, Cheshire, Melbourne.
Strehlow, TGH 1971, Songs of Central Australia, Angus & Robinson, Sydney.
Richard Martin
University of Western Australia
2 Avery 1985.
217
Mari Nawi: Aboriginal Odysseys by Keith Vincent Smith, 216 pp, Rosenberg
Publishing Pty Ltd, Dural, New South Wales, 2010, ISBN 9781921719004 (pbk),
$35.00
In writing this book, Keith Smiths aim was to reveal and celebrate the significant
roles that Aboriginal people played in Australias early maritime history. It is
based on research Smith carried out for his PhD submitted in 2008, and focuses
on the experiences and lives of Aboriginal people who sailed on ships that sailed
through Port Jackson/Sydney Harbour to destinations around the world in the
period 1790 to 1850. These destinations included not only places around and
close to the Australian coastline and England which are commonly referred
to, but also other countries entailing long distances such as New Zealand,
Macquarie Island, North and South Americas, South Africa, India, Tahiti and
Hawaii.
There are many people whose names are familiar Bungaree who is famous
for sailing with Mathew Flinders around Australia, and Bennelong who sailed
to England with Yemmerrawanne. However there are numerous other people
whose names are not so well known. Smith describes how these people became
guides, go-betweens, boatmen, sailors, steersmen, pilots, sealers, whalers
and trackers. Most of them went willingly on these voyages, but there are
descriptions about many others who were sent to penal colonies on Norfolk
Island and Tasmania because they were judged to be criminals (for example,
Musquito who was sent to Tasmania). Several Aboriginal women also went on
voyages, sometimes accompanying their husbands. Some of these voyagers also
settled in other countries, such as Thomas Chaseland (various spellings), who
lived in New Zealand and whose first and second wives were Maori.
Smith has undertaken much meticulous and detailed research in many
institutions around the world and the book is packed full of interesting
information, which provides details about the lives of the Aboriginal people
who went out on the ships and also provides contexts for the voyages on which
the Aboriginal people went. There is some repetition and there are also many
details which seem extraneous. I found these irritating as they detracted from
the fascinating overall story and stories of individual voyagers which Smith
has to tell about the opportunities Aboriginal people took to travel the world.
The non-essential details often made it difficult to follow the lines of argument
that Smith makes and are necessary where details come from a wide range of
disparate sources. The documents include not only the well-known published
journals and reports written by the British officers and settlers and visitors from
other countries (for example, the French and Russians), but also unpublished
ships logs and shipping records.
In the background details about Aboriginal life and activities, a shell fishhook
from the Sydney area is cited as being 600 years old and stone files at one of
the Curracurrang sites as being 2000 years old (p. 14). In a recent review of the
219
evidence for hook and line fishing along the New South Wales coast, I found the
earliest shell fish-hooks are ca 1000 years old and that they are almost always
made from Turbotorquatus. A date of 2000 BP for stone files at Curracurrang 2
cannot be supported as there is no clear association between the files and the
sample radiocarbon-dated to ~2000 BP and it is not possible to date the age of
these specimens; all other stone files along the New South Wales central and
south coasts are <=1000 years old.1
This is an interesting book about a little known aspect of the activities of
Aboriginal people who were associated with Sydney Town, Port Jackson, in the
early years of the British colony. Well worth buying by anyone interested in what
happened to Aboriginal people in the Sydney region after colonisation. There is
often a perception that there were few Aboriginal people living in coastal Sydney
in the early nineteenth century; this book clearly shows otherwise.
Reference
Attenbrow, V. 2011. Aboriginal fishing in Port Jackson, and the introduction of
shell fish-hooks to coastal New South Wales, Australia. in The Natural History
of Sydney 2007 Forum, P Hutching and D Lunney (eds), Royal Zoological
Society of New South Wales, Sydney.
Val Attenbrow
Australian Museum
1 Attenbrow 2011.
220
Singing the Coast by Margaret Somerville and Tony Perkins, xiv + 240 pp,
Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, ISBN 9780855757113 (pbk), $34.95
Singing the Coast by Margaret Somerville and Tony Perkins looks through the
eyes particularly of the present Yarrawarra community of Corindi Beach in
the north, and members of Muurrbay Aboriginal Language Centre and other
contributors in the south, to deep map connections in Gumbaynggirr society.
Through memories and stories, the authors connect in time the Gumbaynggirr
journey through the no mans land of the non-Indigenous contact period to
enduring elements of the Dreaming. Similarly they show connections in space:
Through law and custom Gumbaynggirr people learn about connections
across country made in linking trails and songlines. (p. 198)
At the same time this work recognises the changed sense of identity forged
through the stages of white contact.
The authorship is an interesting collaboration: The authorial voice is Margarets
in conversation with Tony (p. ix). The non-Indigenous Margaret Somerville is
meticulous in having the Indigenous Tony Perkins examine his contributions
to the work, for she is aware that: Writing in the space between Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal voices and identities is a risky business. However there is such
collaboration with several other presenters both from the north and the south. It
could therefore be argued that there is multiple authorship. In addition several
people from Jalumbo at Yarrawarra did research that helped in joining the dots
to obtain the final picture in this work. There is ambivalence as to whose goals this
work intends to serve. One aspiration that can be shared by black and white is:
How can we bring traditional understandings of singing the country,
singing for the renewal and wellbeing of people and places, into a
contemporary present? (p. 3)
However the following indicates possibly the central theme and purpose of this
work:
This writing is about the process of coming to know. It is about how
white people can learn to live in this country differently. Through many
years of working closely with Aboriginal people I have learned to think
through place. I call my work oral place story rather than oral history.
(p. 19)
Aboriginal people could have aspirations like this for non-Aboriginal people.
But it is clear that Somerville owns this purpose and so possibly the major
authorship of this work too.
The stories retold from the southern Muurrbay are regularly about the matter of
Dreaming song and story beginning with the story of the Women who made
the sea as told in Gumbaynggirr by Harry Tiger Buchanan.
221
This is contrasted with the northern lived experience of Yarrawarra and this
technique is used from the beginning of this work.
Starting with present day Yarrawarra the reader is rapidly taken back to the post
land-loss Aboriginal world at nearby Corindi Lake, an area called No Mans
Land, at the sea-margins of the new white-owned land of selectors. Over the
years for this Gumbaynggirr community much of the matter of traditional
story and language has been lost and practices modified. However the form
of Aboriginality has been retained. In the freedom to live outside the crushing
mission experience, the Aboriginal people here are depicted as adapting
willingly and without loss of identity.
Since plentiful food, especially seafood and building resources were at hand,
people could retain their lifestyle as well as incorporate elements of white
culture into their daily lives.
The estuary of No Mans Land / The Lake is in fact seen as the quintessential
in-between space where stories could be born. In this northern pole of the
Gumbaynggirr areas depicted, elders such as Clarence Skinner are seen as
holders of the Dreaming, through story, song and language.
However, the reader is then brought further back from this seemingly idyllic
transitional space to a cataclysmic event in the lifetime of Tony Perkins greatgrandmother: the massacre of several ancestors at nearby Red Rock, henceforth
called Blood Rock by the local people.
With terrible beauty we are given the description and interpretation of the
survivors escaping though a cave/ tunnel which is near to a womens birthing
place.
For Tony, the massacre and rebirth story became the conceptual
framework of the rebirth of his people. These stories locate Tony in
relation to the whole story of an ending and a new beginning. (p. 36)
The silence following this event, and a taboo on women visiting the massacre
site, is symbolically seen by Somerville as an adaptation of the traditional crying
song of women bewailing a tragedy.
A quarter of a century elapses between this tragedy and the re-birth of the people
at nearby New Farm. However this establishment is viewed as a song of rebirth
symbolised by the establishment of a community band replete with homemade
and refurbished instruments. Laughter and singing were born again as the old
people made music and sang (p. 40).
We encounter 25 charming historical and contemporary photos appropriately
located within the chapter Making home in No Mans Land. This era after
the massacre and the period of liminality following it, is a world of adaptation
symbolised by the tin and bark humpy shifting and adapting to meet the need; a
belonging place largely escaping the traumas of the stolen generations.
222
BOOK REVIEwS
A meditative sample of the varied and rich foods of this world is presented for
us for food-getting stories were the most common ones given to Somerville.
Thus, scenes of prawning in the estuary; getting gugumbal shellfish in the rockpools and pipis from the sand; seasonal sea fishing that evokes legendary stories
of dolphins obeying the call to drive fish shorewards; bush tucker from native
plums to carpet snakes; river food such as cobra (wood-worm) are all depicted
with the accompanying skills and prescriptive rules that apply to each. Thus
place is ingested.
There is a pervasive sense of the spiritual in this No Mans Land, although in the
present twilight world of the Dreaming, this spirituality is expressed in taboos
rather than the enlightenment Somerville seeks. She has become familiar with
the stories of spirits of particular places but finds it challenging to write about
this partial and incomplete knowledge (p. 122). And yet we are introduced to
various spirits such as those of deceased persons prevented from returning to the
young children whose faces have been masked by pipeclay, and to the spiritual
presences in healing and rainmaking.
The spiritual power of no longer performed initiation and ceremony is seen
by Somerville as being transferred, particularly through Tony Perkins, to oral
storytelling, memories of stone property, initiation scars and places to avoid.
In the absence of initiation, places of taboo came to stand for [sic] power of
initiation itself (p. 145). These translations are not seen purely as loss, however,
for:
In the embodied traces that remain in people, in places and in stories, lies
the possibility of transformation. (p. 152)
The focus of Singing the Coast now moves to the southern pole of the
Gumbaynggirr world at Nambucca Heads and Muurrbay Language Centre. It
moves from Yarrawarras transformed practice of Aboriginality in the modern
context, to viewing the active promotion at Muurrbay of the Gumbaynggirr
Dreaming in language and story and (through the associated Many Rivers
Language Centre) the facilitation of the revival of other coastal Aboriginal
languages. The reader is immersed in the Gumbaynggirr Dreaming stories
through which language is mapped onto country: for instance how the Ngambaa
Baga-baga: the Ngambaa mans knee on the river below Muurrbay became
Nambucca.
Here, as at Yarrawarra, adaptation and historical change are noted: for instance
the relationship of the people to Girr-Girr: Stuart Island and their removal from
it. But it is revival the language and story-based recapture of the Dreaming
(in contemporary form) that is here emphasised. Hero ancestors are celebrated
and linkages with the overlaid aspects of Catholic religion recognised; for
example, where the hero-ancestor Birrugan is recognised as Jesus and Birrugans
mother, Gawnggan, as Mary. The central place of the last Gumbaynggirr storyman, Tiger Buchanan, is acknowledged, as is the work of the Gumbaynggirr
Language and Culture group in publishing his stories.
223
Somerville describes how a process of deep mapping has been developed in

collaboration with researchers at Muurrbay and other contributors.
In deep mapping we map the storylines of the places where Gumbaynggirr
people live now and where they lived in the past, and the creation stories
of the ancestors. The story we produce here follows the same processes
as deep mapping, beginning with the present and moving back into the
deep past. The past is always partially visible in the present, it is never
completely erased. (p. 164)
Connecting the dots is the final chapter of this work, beginning with a meeting
of north and south: Yarrawarra and Muurrbay. This meeting is part of an effort to
broaden place knowledge beyond the regional, including boundaries, language,
movement, exchange, storylines and ceremony. Each of these categories is
accorded respect in this work. There is an emphasis on the linkages connecting
ones identity with fathers and mothers kin and country.
The work notes Tiger Buchanans section name as Wambuungga and initiation
name as Maruwanba. An extension of this theme, not covered in this book, could
be the links that these names entail beyond the Gumbaynggirr language groups.
For instance, the Dhanggati to the south have the same kinship and initiation
names as the Gumbaynggirr, although Gumbaynggirr and Dhanggati languages
differ markedly; and in living memory members of these language groups have
had shared initiations and have frequently intermarried.
The work concludes with clan linkages to miirlarl, special places. Poignantly,
though both the Muurrbay people and Tony Perkins, having lost much of
ceremony and site, live in the shadow of initiation (Gary Williams), the nunguu
(kangaroo) miirlarl which they both acknowledge, persists as a spiritual bond for
and between them.
The treatment of themes in this work is as tidal and circular as the spirituality
of the society described in it. This may come partly from the meditative style,
partly from the long passages where different speakers are quoted, treating
the same subject matter from their own perspective. Readers demanding
linear, dialectic or scientific presentations may find some parts repetitive or
unclear. The authors however are comfortable with liminality, with evoking the
interstices between the mesh. For the paradox is that not even a partial ability to
see the world through present day Gumbaynggirr eyes is possible without this
apparent obscurity. This is a thoughtful and respectful work that acknowledges
the validity of a refashioned Gumbaynggirr identity.
Steve Morelli
Woolgoolga, New South Wales
224
Coming to Terms: Aboriginal Title in South Australia edited by Shaun Berg, xix +
570 pp, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2010, ISBN 9781862548671 (pbk), $39.95
The legal pursuit of Aboriginal land rights can trace its lineage to the Gove Land
Rights Case of Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd (1971) at which the court held against
the Yolngu applicants. That legal battle eventually led to the Northern Territory
Land Rights Act 1976. The Mabo case 20 years later led to the creation of the
Native Title Act 1993 and a process whereby Aboriginal communities Australiawide can pursue a (relatively weak) form of land rights. Both the Gove Land
Rights Case and one of the early native title matters to go to the High Court,
Fejo v Northern Territory (1998), explored the significance of the Letters Patent
issued by King William IV on 19 February 1836 when creating the Province of
South Australia. Neither of those matters considered the Letters Patent to have
protected the rights of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. This book
argues that the matter is much less clear in South Australia.
The relevant passage from the Kings decree, cited repeatedly in this volume,
reads:
Provided always that nothing in those our Letters Patent contained shall
affect or be construed to affect the rights of any Aboriginal Natives of the
said Province to the actual occupation or enjoyment in their own Persons
or in the Persons of their Descendants of any Lands therein now actually
occupied or enjoyed by such Natives.
The argument, in a nutshell, is that this means that any appropriation of lands
occupied by Aboriginal people in South Australia was in breach of the Letters
Patent, potentially giving rise to compensation. It could perhaps be described
as a posthumous argument for land rights. According to the co-authored
contribution by Simmonds and Berg, the relevant provision would have had legal
force until at least 1842, possibly 1857, and perhaps beyond. Even on the earliest
date of 1842, the lands appropriated during the six years since colonisation were
significant and would include most if not all of contemporary greater Adelaide.
Should the argument for compensation be legally correct, the implications could
be substantial.
Berg is a commercial lawyer with a long-term commitment to acting for
the Ngarrindjeri community of South Australia in matters of native title and
heritage. That the arguments in this book are close to the heart of his clients is
made clear in the preface by three senior Ngarrindjeri men. They describe the
question of the Letters Patent as unfinished business and ask why the colonists
ignored Aboriginal rights, when King William IV intended to protect them. They
would like the South Australian government of today to seriously address this
matter and assume responsibility for the failings of its early predecessor.
All the other contributors to the volume are lawyers, many distinguished, and
for the non-legally trained the reading can be hard going. But it makes sense
225
for it to be so, as the book itself seems to be a building block for a potential
future court action on this question of land rights particular to South Australia.
The composition of the audience that attended the launch of Coming to Terms
suggests that the significance of the Letters Patent is taken seriously; the
Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, members of the judiciary and other
high profile lawyers were present to hear Shaun Bergs talk.
The tenor of the book, like the book launch itself, however, is fairly cautious,
leaving me with the overall impression that the question is really more moral
and political than legal. On the face of it, the wording of the Letters Patent is
unambiguous as is the fact that the colonisation of South Australia did not
adhere to its spirit. Legally, however, the standing of the document seems less
certain. In places, this book makes a rousing case for why the Letters Patent
has legal standing equivalent to that of statute, but at other times the authors
seem very aware that there are legal opinions to the contrary. The fact that this
book has been published prior to any legal challenge on the issue makes me
wonder whether the editor is aware that such a challenge would be risky and is
pursuing a morally based political argument instead. Given the current status
of the land rights position in Aboriginal affairs and the emphasis on practical
reconciliation, however, I do not think that the South Australian government
will seriously engage with such a moral argument on the issue of past injustices.
I think a legal challenge would be unavoidable if one wanted to pursue this
matter further, and it will be interesting to see whether such a challenge will
follow this work. The eight chapters by the various contributors are followed by a
300-page appendix of historic material relevant to the matter, including of course
the Letters Patent, excerpts of historic legislation and other official documents
considering the status of Aboriginal people in the context of South Australias
colonisation. It consequently provides a good resource for anybody who wishes
to pursue this question further, whether from a legal or an historical perspective.
The contribution of this book may well be that it has pushed this matter to such
a point where one South Australian Aboriginal community or another will take
it up and put it to the test in the very legal system that provided King William
with the authority to appropriate Aboriginal lands in the first place. No doubt,
should this matter ever make it to the court, Coming to Terms will be found on the
bar tables of lawyers on all sides of the argument.
Kim McCaul
Adelaide
226
Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies: Historical and Anthropological

Perspectives edited by Ian Keen, 195 pp, ANU E Press, The Australian National
University, Canberra, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-921-66-686-5 (pbk), $24.95
Some of the chapters in this book are important additions to the body of research
on the engagement of Aboriginal people in the colonial and twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Interestingly someone should advise Ian Keen that for some
Aboriginals it still is colonial engagement, even more so after the intervention.
However Keen is certainly correct when he states that Indigenous Australia has
been more or less invisible in many economic histories of Australia (p. 1). The
text subject outline is: Aboriginal Australians-Economic conditions; Business
enterprises-Aboriginal Australian; Aboriginal Australians-Employment;
Economic Anthropology-Australia; Hunting and gathering societies-Australia;
and Australia-Economic Conditions (p. iv). Enthused, I read on. However after
10 chapters I had to ask myself was some of this work relevant to what the book
proposed? There are exceptions. Half of the text is very good. My favourite is
Chris Haynes chapter, which is passionate and relevant to current academic
argument: a new voice in an industry that appears at times to be bogged down
in the glory of a bygone era researching the exotic with little to no Aboriginal
voice and content.
The text arose from an ARC linkage grant and proceedings from a wonderful
conference, the Australian Anthropological Society, the Association of Social
Anthropologist (United Kingdom) and the Association of Social Anthropologists
of Aotearoa (New Zealand) held in Auckland 2008. This was a conference
that I attended and presented at, which included many excellent papers by
Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars. Its a pity this publication was not
more representative of the high standard of presentations at that conference.
The editor groups the chapters into clusters which are explained (at some
length) in pages 913. They begin with a broad overview of the settler colonial
economy starting with Christopher Lloyd who writes of settler capitalism and
economic hybridity; it is not until his conclusion (p. 36) that the realisations of
destroyed economies and the future are outlined. Overall I found the chapter
over-generalising, often set in early to mid twentieth-century beliefs which
I thought we had moved on from. Lloyd seems to spend the first few pages
waltzing around the issues and the concept of terra nullius searching for political
correctness which leads to an oversimplification of Aboriginal settlement (pp.
2425). Rudimentary oversights on land use management are concerning as is the
summation that Aboriginal economic activity is reduced to that of the simplified
forager. The discussion on Australian settler capitalism and the disintegration of
Aboriginal societies follows a brief discussion on hybridity. This is the strength of
this paper: the origins of Australian settler capitalism, socioeconomic hybridity,
and the evolution of Australian settler capitalism in the nineteenth century,
and the disintegration/integration of Aboriginal societies. Care must be taken
however in understanding hybridity in economic-socioeconomic and in real
227
market terminology. Lloyd provides a sensitive explanation (p. 29). However

from the reviewers Indigenist position, Aboriginal hybrid economies are not the
retention of traditional ways of life. Rather:
they are the malnourished economic activity from a deformed and mutated
society struggling to survive under the yoke of colonialism and dominance by
an invading society. You can quote me on that!
Lloyd goes on with international examples which confuse the issue rather than
simplify the Australian situation. Jon Altmans work is referenced. However in
the authors belief it too is limited in its case analysis, for it does not illustrate
comparatives of the economic division and integration of Aboriginal groups based
on their resources opportunity recognition and ability to maximise available
assets based on their overall economic position within a wider geographic range
that also includes regional and urban populations. It is far more opportunist.
Lloyd is somewhat fixated in the foraging community. Altman gives Aboriginal
people agency; Lloyd does not.
The importance of this paper was lost on side issues and the authors
generalisations. Perhaps the paper would have been enriched by wider
referencing on Aboriginal economic activity, literature from scholars such as Dr
Heather Builth and Dr Ian J McNiven concerning their work on the Gunditjmara
as examples. However this would be in contrast to Lloyds fixation on the
foraging Aboriginal without established economic interactions, established
trade routes and the production of value added products produced in surplus
for exchange sale? The quote by Rowley (p. 38) finally shows some empathy to
the British domination of the Aboriginal economy. The balance of the conclusion
is shallow, superficially linking into the subject matter.
Chapter 3 by Ian Keen examines Aboriginal concepts of property on the frontier
that includes King George Sound in Western Australia to Raffles Bay in the
Northern Territory. Its a wonderful paper as Keen provides the reader with a
ride into history that is well referenced and seemingly unbiased. He attempts
to show the intricacies in inter-racial interaction between peoples with vastly
different standpoints and values. He tries to explain these in an uncomplicated
way, from bartering, demand sharing and reciprocation. The discussion on
property concepts in late eighteenth-century England (p. 43) are described
allowing the reader a comparative in understanding the following discussion on
the interpretation of Aboriginal property (pp. 4448). I found the writing style
and explanation easy to absorb. Keen then reviews amateur anthropologists
accounts of Aboriginal property (pp. 4852). This is followed by his overview
of the early professional anthropologists accounts of Aboriginal property.
That is then followed by English property categories (pp. 5455) and finally a
summation of the kinds of Aboriginal property (pp. 5556). This separation
of the amateur from the professional is novel and important. Keen allows the
reader an insight into Aboriginal tangible property and more importantly the
intangible and the overarching concept that there is no equivalent between
Aboriginal property and the European concepts of ownership. His conclusion
228
BOOK REVIEwS
is balanced as he questions the ethnocentrisms within his profession. Keen

simply concludes: Anthropologists need to record and interpret more of the
Indigenous discourse about owning things (p. 57). Race relations in Australia
could possibly be vastly improved if settler society (white Australia) read and
understood this chapter.
Chapter 4 by Jeremy Beckett is disappointing, written no doubt in his sleep from
previous publications over many, many years. Nothing new! Rather a short
ethno-history and a modern interpretation of post Second World War Islander
migration to the mainland were given. The data is dated in the authors nostalgic
overview of his own lifes work. This chapter does not address Keens summation
of the text (p. iv). Rather it is about a succinct group who are not Australian
Aboriginals and arguably this chapter is an orphan within an academic text on
Aboriginal economy.
Chapter 5 by Anthony Redmond and Fiona Skyring provides the reader
with an explanation of the exchangeWurnan economy at Karunjie station in
northern Western Australia. An insight into white brutality towards Aboriginal
Australians and the links with Afghans figure in this remote micro study.
Aboriginal people took what they could from an unfair exchange in labour (p.
87) and the most desirable objects into their Aboriginal trade system that existed
prior to the European contact and economic subjugation. This is an important
story illustrating not only the evil of some white pastoralists on the frontier. I
applaud the authors for their links into factual history in the reconstruction of
details pertaining to the Wurnan economy, the Aboriginal economy.
Chapter 6 was another important paper and one that I enjoyed. Diana Young is a
talented academic. Her paper is on dingo scalping and is one of the better papers
in this collection. She illustrates the importance of the 40 year development of
the dingo trade on the development of a frontier economy, skilfully managed
and manipulated by the missionary industry to substantiate its own survival
and the ultimate destruction of the Aboriginal economies. She also illustrates the
influence of tourism and its low wages. Youngs overuse of the word dreaming
is perplexing however; this Spencer and Gillen fictitious phrase that has crept
into our vocabulary could be well substituted with more accurate Indigenous
terminology or language. Apart from this oversight, it is well written and
researched as to the changing development of Central Australia and the changing
economies of its traditional residents by waves of explorers, missionaries,
graziers, doggers and western economics. The alleged corruption by cameleers
and the doggers paying cash to Anangu was unacceptable, so it was better to
manage the industry by a Mission (p. 94). Once again Aboriginal people, even
though they had showed money management skills for several years, had this
stolen from them as Christianity cashed in for the Missions survival, not the
betterment of Anangu. Young links the work of Elkin, Tindale, Love, Charles
Duguid (p. 94), Dick Kimber (p. 98) and many others into an important paper
on the history and corruption of the Aboriginal reserves and Aboriginal culture
by the progressive waves of intruders bringing a new economy, the western
economy.
229
Chapter 7 by John White is based on the history of the south coast of New South
Wales from the early nineteenth century concluding with the pea and bean
industry in the Tuross Valley in the mid twentieth century. No doubt important
for some due to its relativeness and currency within many Sydney and South
Coast Aboriginal families even today. However the discussions on the expansion
of colonial capitalism in the nineteenth century and Aboriginal engagement
with the settler economy seem to lack detail in the Aboriginal involvement in a
wages and cash economy. Possibly there are two different papers, or parts, one
about laws and regulations, and the impact of the 1909 Aborigines Protection Act
and another about the people in the fields and their employers. The romanticism
shown by White in the closing sentence, An Aboriginal workers employer
was a patron and a whitefellas employer was simply a boss (p. 122), lost him
credibility. It illustrates a naivety, possible ignorance and lack of grounded
qualitative interviews with those that toiled for pennies when the white worker
was often paid much more and invariably treated better. True, some Aboriginal
workers were allowed to stay on their traditional lands (p. 119), most however
were forced to move in the circuit, from Bega, Bodalla the Tuross to the
Goulburn Valley, the Riverina, or Wagga or back to the Monaro; wherever a crop
needed picking, sheep dagged, fences mended, ensuring they lived on the fringe
and in poverty and one step ahead of the Protector. Or, they were forced
back onto the coastal missions such as Wallaga Lake. The paper provides a
possibly biased insight into the rise and fall of one segment of the rural economy
involving Aboriginal labour.
Lorraine Gibson in Chapter 8 reviews Wilcannia and the justification of white
moral values (p. 137) and highlights the nepotism so prevalent in the white
management of blacks (p. 131). Pages 129130 provide the reader with an
enlightening view of insider/outsider ontology. This paper questions who is
you, with black and white meeting only at the point of service delivery. Overall
her findings are: You are who you are not by virtue of what you have become
(p. 137). This paper goes deep enough to explain Aboriginal attitudes that are at
the interface between Aboriginal priorities and colonisation. Gibson looks at the
related elements and redefines what work is within a wider range of Aboriginal
socio-cultural meanings. Perhaps her concluding sentence is the perfect
summation: This sense of self, for the most, is not determined by engagement
in the capitalist division of labour; indeed, the greater the engagement in the
capitalist economy, the more problematic and fraught a sense of self and of
belonging can become (p. 137). This is a complex paper that allows the reader
to combine the structural and psychological factors of the overarching economy
and the Aboriginal socio-cultural determinants and needs verses settler cultural
expectations to explain work and Aboriginal involvement. Well worth the
investment to read and reflect.
Chapter 9 jumps from concept to concept and attempts to understand and/or
address sustainable livelihoods after the mining ends. It is highly referenced to
the point that one starts to question why? The paper is speculative, whilst it
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BOOK REVIEwS
addresses important issues. Holcombes paper, and above all her writing style,
does little to arouse my interests and I should leave my comments there. Let the
reader formulate their own understanding.
As mentioned in the introduction, in Chapter 10 Chris Haynes provides a hardhitting paper addressing tourism in Kakadu. Cultural tourism has created
significant disadvantage for the Aboriginal people of the area (p. 165): at last
honesty! Let the reader enjoy this chapter, and realise the poor dividend to
traditional owners from tourism (p. 173). Aboriginal people in the far north are
being short-changed (p. 181) as are the tourists with the misrepresentations of
Aboriginal culture by non-indigenous tour guides (p. 175).
Keen as editor left the best till last. No doubt I will reference Chris Haynes for
many years to come; this paper made a huge impact on me as a reviewer for
its depth of content. Would I purchase this text or recommend it outside
of a library resource centre possibly, it does contain some very good material.
Definitely I recommend it for a resource centre. No doubt the reviewed text will
be quoted by many in their industry substantiating what they do. The work by
Keen, Redmond and Skyring, Young, Gibson, and Haynes I enjoyed with much
pleasure. They alone are worth reading this important addition to a body of
research on the engagement of Aboriginal people in the European frontier, the
settled history of Australia.
Dennis Foley
University of Newcastle
231
Aboriginal Family and the State: The Conditions of History by Sally Babidge, xix
+ 269 pp, Ashgate, Farnham, United Kingdom and Burlington, Vermont, 2010,
ISBN 9780754679356 (hbk), 60.00
This book is an updated version of Sally Babidges award-winning doctoral

dissertation (2004) which explored continuities and transformations in kinship
practices amongst Indigenous people living in the major mining centre of
Charters Towers and its hinterland in north Queensland. Most of the people with
whom the author worked live in a post-pastoral work era where the memories
of that industry, together with their marginalised participation in a fossicking
economy, form an essential part of many peoples self-regard. However, the local
domestic economy is now mostly based upon state transfers with occasional
additional income injections coming from cultural heritage protection
agreements in the extensive mining exploration areas. Expertly deploying
the classical anthropological method of sustained, fine-grained participantobservation in conjunction with a thorough review of the documentary record,
Babidge gained an acute appreciation of the powerful historical forces coming
to bear upon a fiercely administered Indigenous population, subjected until at
least the mid-1970s to life under Queenslands draconian Aboriginal Protection
and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 with its regime of random punitive
removals of adults and children to other far-off settlements (such as Palm Island,
Yarrabah and Woorabinda), its Kafkaesque intensive bureaucratic surveillance,
and the ensuing marginalisation of local Aboriginal people from the mainstream
economic and political life of the town.
Babidge paints a portrait of a distinctive and now highly mobile Aboriginal
population situated within a wider socio-cultural region which at the time of her
fieldwork was on the cusp of the massive economic and political transformations
brought about by the renewed minerals boom currently reshaping the face of
northern Australia more generally. For the Aboriginal people of Charters Towers,
this new phase of the mineral boom exploded in the years immediately following
Babidges field work and has brought some new employment opportunities,
encouraged the rise of some Aboriginal contracting businesses, but also made
the cost of living, especially housing, much higher and made the continuation
of Aboriginal housing co-operatives an even more essential element of the
accommodation problem.
Babidge found that the social meaning of the local term family in the Charters
Towers area is used polysemically to refer to a number of different sets of, but
overlapping, relations (p. 101) which differentiates the local notion of family
between the shifting and labile nature of peoples every day economic, political
and social relationships, on the one hand, and, on the other, the descent-based
family constructs which gain prominence in organised political forums (such
as native title claimant groups and other corporate-type aggregates), which
rely upon descent connections to legitimate (a very limited) participation in
natural resource management. As Babidge acknowledges, despite the analytical
233
value of the distinction between everyday bilateral relatedness vis a vis family
structures, no clear division is sustainable between these two types of sociality
because people bring the politics of everyday relations into organised politics,
and draw the processes and outcomes of organised politics into their living
arrangements (p. 128). Babidge demonstrates how keenly felt obligations
are a critical component of the contemporary social world but also allow a
filtering of demands from kin so that more or less stable groupings of familial
sets are maintained within the larger polity. This has important implications
for managing the demands made upon the kin group and their rights and
interests in land and its resources in the contemporary era. Babidge shows that
while her subjects kinship arrangements somewhat resemble Peter Suttons
description of Aboriginal cognatic families of polity in other parts of heavilysettled Australia, this model alone could not capture the complexity through
which relatedness is performed and experienced. Babidge is critical of a stream
of British social anthropology which over-valued descent structures (seen as
having jural status, i.e. a public significance which transcends the concerns
of the individuals involved) vis a vis kinship (characterised by the less formal
significations accorded to more private, familial relationships). Babidge found
that anthropological models which focused attention upon corporate group
membership at the expense of the multi-faceted demands of everyday kinship,
commonly fail to take account of how individuals negotiate their involvement
in group interactions and decision-making.1 To be fair to Sutton, he is clear that
all kinship relationships, from the most informal and seemingly contingent to
the more structured, cognatic surnamed family, possess certain jural qualities
because kinship always involves a public dimension in that it relies on recognition
from a wider polity and is never simply a biological aggregation of persons.2 In
Suttons model, families of polity always mix both ideology and action, and of
the mix of Aboriginal peoples models with their observable behaviour.3
An over emphasis on the primacy of public, jural descent structures over more
private and domestic kinship relations is, of course, not simply a product of
British social anthropological models (which actually recognised the dynamic
relationship between everyday, agentive kinship practices and indigenous
ideologies of jural descent quite early on)4 nor of traditional Indigenous
ideologies about these topics. Babidge shows how corporate entities are often
elicited and solidified in response to the focus on descent structures by the state
itself which seeks out well defined, bounded groups with which to negotiate
over native title rights and interests, eliciting the kinds of groups it needs to
do this in response. That this is the case is demonstrated by the fact that while
federal government agencies often elicit broad regional indigenous groupings
that mirror the requirements of its legislation and procedures, State and local
jurisdictions commonly elicit more compact, localised groupings.
1
2
3
4
234
For a discussion of the optative elements of Aboriginal kinship, see also Sutton 2003: 214-216.
Sutton 2003: 208.
Sutton 2003: 210.
Evans-Pritchard 1940; Fortes 1953: 165.
BOOK REVIEwS
In common with many other transactional models of small-scale gift/service

economies,5 Babidge follows Gaynor Macdonalds argument that in local giving/
receiving/demanding processes the focus is on the relationship rather than
the object.6 It is worth considering, though, whether a too exclusive emphasis
on the exchange relationship as distinct from the gifted object/service, might
not continue to over-dichotomise the exchange process, especially in a regime
where the state has traditionally maintained an extremely tight rein on the local
distribution of things, from rations, blankets and clothes in the early settlement
and mission era to welfare dollars in the present.
In this otherwise excellent book, I found the discussion of intra-kin conflict was
somewhat muted compared to the discussion of the early settler versus Aboriginal
conflict and the effects of contemporary intra-group Aboriginal battles over native
title group membership and housing allocation. Kin-based conflict has formed
an essential part of the discussion of kinship in other important works on this
subject in Aboriginal Australia, some written by field-work co-evals of Babidge,7
and others which are a generation or two older.8 I wondered if this muting
might be seen as contributing some substance to the recent round of accusations
that anthropologists have failed to describe and analyse violently conflictual
conditions in contemporary Aboriginal settlement life. Ultimately Babidges
work is too fine-grained and ethnographically rigorous to be diminished by that
kind of topical characterisation but the book might have still have achieved a
little more in this regard. This book remains highly recommended reading for
those working in intensely settled areas of Australia where the distinctiveness of
Indigenous kinship practices is too easily overlooked.
References
Babidge, Sally 2004, Family Affairs: an historical anthropology of Aboriginal
agency and state practice in a north Queensland town, Unpublished PhD
Thesis, James Cook University, Townsville.
, with consultation and editorial assistance from Patricia Dallachy and Valerie
Alberts 2007, Written True, not Gammon!: A History of Aboriginal Charters
Towers, Black Ink Press, Thuringowa, Queensland.
Cox, Leonie 2001, Freeloadin for tea, freeloadin for children, freeloadin for
tribe: bureaucratic apartheid and the post colonial condition, Unpublished
PhD Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, Sydney.
Evans-Pritchard, EE 1940, The Nuer, Clarendon, Oxford.
5
6
7
8
See for example Sansom 1988; Merlan 1997.

Macdonald 2000: 108.
For example Cox 2001.
Hiatt 1965.
235
Fortes, Meyer 1953, The structure of unilineal descent groups, American

Anthropologist 55(1): 1741: 165
Hiatt, Les R 1965, Kinship and conflict : a study of an Aboriginal community in
northern Arnhem Land, Australian National University, Canberra.
Macdonald, Gaynor 2000, Economies and personhood: demand sharing among
the Wiradjuri of New South Wales, in The Social Economy of Sharing: Resource
Allocation and Modern Hunter Gatherers, G Wentzel, G Hovelsrud-Broda and
N Kishigami (eds), Senri Ethnological Series no 53, National Museum of
Ethnology, Osaka: 87111.
Merlan, F 1997, The mother-in-law taboo: avoidance and obligation in Aboriginal
Australia, in Scholar and Sceptic: Australian Aboriginal studies in Honour of L.
R. Hiatt, Francesca Merlan, John Morton and Alan Rumsey (eds), Aboriginal
Studies Press, Canberra: 95122.
Sansom, B 1988, A grammar of exchange, in Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in
Settled Australia, Ian Keen (ed), Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra: 159178.
Sutton, Peter 2003, Native Title in Australia: An Ethnographic Perspective, Cambridge
University Press, Melbourne.
Anthony Redmond
Australian National University
236
The Secret War: A True History of Queenslands Native Police by Jonathan Richards,
308pp, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2008, ISBN 9780702236396
(pbk), $39.95
The Queensland Native Police are a curious outlier in the history of Australian
settlement; whereas for much of the twentieth century the story of frontier
violence between Aboriginal people and settlers largely disappeared from
national history, accounts of the operations of the Queensland Native Police
were surprisingly persistent. I recently came across an article from a 1914 issue
of The Queenslander which praised the European officers of the Native Police,
who were always on the side of justice and propriety, but then revelled in
their violent reputation, something explained away by the actions of the black
police, that constabulary of half-tamed savages who were the ruthless arm of
the law. Accounts such as this, Jonathan Richards tells us, were characteristic
of the literature about the Queensland Native Police until the 1960s. Produced
by journalists, novelists and popular historians, these accounts perpetuated
romantic stereotypes and had an eye for the sensational. Richards study is an
important corrective.
It would have been easy to write a narrative of the rise and fall of the force, but
Richards chooses instead to give us an almost sociological study which crosssections the constitution and operations of the force. Early chapters detail the
formation of the force and its operations on the Queensland frontier. Against
claims that such a story could not be told because the records had been lost
or destroyed, Richards digs deep into the archives, especially inquest files, and
constructs a detailed and convincing picture of their activities. Like Tony Roberts
in his recent study of violence in the Gulf country, Frontier Justice, Richards is
also sensitive to the way in which secrecy was a structural imperative of the
force. The tension between the formal role of police as upholders of the law,
and their understood role as a retaliatory force, not a preventive one, is expertly
explored, as are the consequences of this on the ways the frontier was reported
and remembered. Richards explains that among the various frontier myths that
circulated was a belief, accepted as fact by some writers, that a settler could
get a licence to kill Aboriginal people. The 1914 account of the Native Police
in the above-cited edition of The Queenslander perpetuates this very myth. The
surviving son of a massacred family, we are told, went to Brisbane where the
authorities gave him a rifle and free leave to return to the district and shoot
as many blackfellows as he could manage. The licence to kill, as Richards
clearly shows, was a myth, but the message encoded in the myth, retold with
such nonchalance, is disturbing indeed.
The book also provides a detailed examination of both European and Aboriginal
service in the force; the backgrounds of the officers and men of the force, the
organisation of the rank and file, and the disciplinary issues that were faced. I
was somewhat surprised at the number of European officers who were charged
with offences, indeed, offences against Aboriginal people, but as Richards
237
demonstrates, this was not so much an indicator of the forces transparency, as it

was of these officers failure to maintain its opacity. The sections detailing how
Aboriginal people were recruited, and their relationship to the European officers
who commanded them, is especially valuable for teasing out the complexities
of service in this colonial paramilitary force. The chapter which examines the
Native Police in the context of other comparable colonial forces is a reminder of
how commonplace it was within empires to use Indigenous people themselves
to help in the subjugation of their own people, and to serve the ends of empire
building.
In this excellent study Richards not only provides us with a meticulous account
of the operations of the force, skilfully unpicks the myths surrounding them, but
he also aids our understanding by placing them in a broader imperial context.
Robert Foster
University of Adelaide
238
The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina by Peter Beveridge, xxxiv + 221 pp, Lowden
Publishing Co, Donvale, Victoria, 2008, ISBN 9781920753085 (pbk), $45.00
I remember the morning as overcast when we gathered on the veranda at

Tyntynder homestead, a group of Mallee primary school-children on our day
out to Swan Hill, a trip made by so many like us for decades. This trip was
undertaken by generations of local people and undoubtedly influenced their
views: the impressiveness of the colonial buildings at Tyntynder was offset
by the exotica of the artefact collections. All was overshadowed by the stories
told of the killing of Andrew Beveridge by what were deemed treacherous
local Aborigines. Versions of that received narrative would have coloured the
reception of the first edition, in 1889, of the work under review, and will shape
the reception of this second edition, though likely in quite a different manner.
The family of who was to be the long lamented Andrew Beveridge ran Tyntynder
and other pastoral stations both downstream and inland from Swan Hill for
over 30 years from 1844. Peter Beveridge, Andrews brother and the author of
the present book, was the central figure in the family business for much of that
period. Earlier clashes with local Aborigines had led to the killing of Andrew
Beveridge, and these clashes continued for some years afterwards. Hostilities
only ceased when a point was reached where as a character in one of Peter
Beveridges fictional works said the family tired of the slaughter.1 Conflict
was not confined to struggles with the Aboriginal population, as the Beveridges
also clashed in court with other pastoralists over occupation of the area where
Swan Hill now stands, and armed stand-offs flared with other squatters in the
back country away from the Murray particularly in later years as pasturage
became scarcer. All this followed on from the family being ordered by the
colonial authorities in 1845 to leave the district they had just occupied: they had
moved beyond the permitted boundaries of expansion! Ironically it was conflict
within the Beveridge family on the back of drought and mismanagement that
led to Peter Beveridge having to leave the region and then the remainder of the
family sold their interests and severed their connection in 1876.
Peter Beveridge held status as a colonial gentleman as a result of this frontier
pastoral experience and this was strengthened by his other attainments. He
assisted a number of scientific expeditions to the mid-Murray region and
corresponded widely. A collector of flora and fauna and ethnographic objects
and member of a range of learned societies, he also pursued creative writing in
addition to his better-known ethnographic writings. These writings, in common
with his other work, stemmed from deep personal experience of the region
where he spent the greater part of his life. His contact and engagement with
Aboriginal people extended into forms of intimacy that stretched beyond the
experience of most of his peers. He had travelled widely with Aboriginal people,
John Fairfield, the Overlander: an Australian Story, MS, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.
239
including during the years of violence before and after the killing of his brother.
He had employed many of them on his pastoral stations and acted as their Local
Guardian. This strong link with Aboriginal people is reflected in his writing.
Once retired and having moved down country, Peter Beveridge had enhanced
opportunities of continuing the writing projects that he had pursued for many
years. The major fruit of this period was a draft manuscript of The Aborigines
of Victoria and Riverina, which was published posthumously in 1889. This first
edition was generally very positively received, being reviewed as a work not
to be missed by those who take an interest in the Aborigines of this country.2
Peter Beveridges work was rated higher than the works of R Brough Smyth
(1878) and E Curr (188687) due to his more direct experience. His work could
perhaps be better understood as it was based on more direct observations and
greater sympathy, and was less detached in manner. Despite the standing in
colonial society of Beveridge and his family this was no guaranteed outcome, as
shown in an early survey of Australian literature where the work of his brother
MK Beveridge, Among Gum Trees, was acknowledged as the first attempt to
relate the legends of the aborigines in verse but was dismissed not just on the
basis of a negative view of the poetry, but also because the legends themselves
are worth little.3 The message is clear: writings on Aboriginal people could
form interesting curios but details of Aboriginal lore held little worth.
How then might the work be received by readers when perspectives on Aboriginal
culture have much altered? As the work itself has undergone alteration those
changes need to be considered initially. The recent edition contains additional
material in the form of illustrations previously published in Brough Smyths
work and from The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia together with biographical
notes on the artists concerned. The illustrations add to the volume though it may
have been preferable to some readers at least to use illustrations more directly
related to the region. It also contains a short biographical note on Beveridge
himself from readily available sources which sketches his personal background
without providing any particular new insight into his character or experience.
The sketch errs also when listing his brothers as it overlooks his brother John.
Another biographical note, this time on ML Hutchinson, the publisher of the first
edition, follows before the main text. While many of these new additions add to
the work the retention of the inordinate number of typographical and textual
errors from the first edition severely detract from it, and the readily recognisable
errors in English usage and spelling should definitely have been removed.
In one instance at least a misprint leads to elucidation. The reference Tarp in
place of larp highlights that particular section, a section that should be familiar
to both ethnographers and entomologists. Beveridge is not referring to psyllids
as we would expect nor is the cultural practice around gathering this larp
(more regularly spelt as lerp) what we might recognise. While surprising, this
account has echoes of his observations on interaction of native flora and fauna
2 The Argus, 26 October 1889; Kilmore Free Press, 2 August 1889.

3 Alexander Sutherland, Australian literature in Its First Century, The Argus, 10 July 1886.
240
BOOK REVIEwS
elsewhere in his writings and thus illustrates the depth of his knowledge even
when particular accounts differ from other authorities. His account, though
unfamiliar, deepens our knowledge in a way other accounts could not.
Despite the depth of his knowledge Beveridge often presents his material in
ways that would be offensive to many readers today and which detract from
his account more generally. He appears dismissive if not contemptuous of what
he claims are the actions and motivations of Aboriginal people, for example
in his account of venereal disease, yet he provides a strong amount of detail
not found elsewhere. It is apparent that he is writing for a particular colonial
audience in a way that will demonstrate his knowledge on the one hand, yet
demonstrate detachment and superiority on the other. Such an approach would
have confirmed his status and authority during his own era, whilst blocking
criticism from those who dismissed the work of his brother Mitchell Kilgour
Beveridge on the basis of it focusing on Aboriginal people, as noted above.
This inbuilt fault in his approach leads to great variation in the accuracy of
his analysis of what he has seen and experienced and can obscure what is a
consistently important layer of detail of practice rarely found elsewhere. His
more pointed writings on topics of Aboriginal life, customs and beliefs found
in newspaper accounts and journal articles can transcend these limitations but
they are not available to the general reader. At times however his experience and
admiration of the way Aboriginal people held to their beliefs breaks through
his mannered superiority. Certainly his dialogic account of his own debates
with Central Murray people on religious matters in Chapter XI shows greater
generosity than some other parts of his work and also portrays Aboriginal
people as the clear winners of the debate for those not convinced of the a priori
superiority of Christianity. All sections of his work have similar depth of material
and all are worthy of careful study.
Apart from reflexive dismissals of Beveridges work on account of his
involvement as a direct actor in frontier violence, or because of the offensive tone
of his writing on Aboriginal people, his work might also be dismissed by some
readers as that of one of the early ethnographers. As such it would be classed
with the work of AW Howitt, RH Mathews, John Mathew, Robert Brough Smyth
and EM Curr and deemed of little worth due to a generalised lack of scientific
rigour. Such reactions appear to be declining and there is a thawing in attitude
with substantive research being carried on in recent years on the works of John
Mathew and RH Mathews. This is a positive development as in common with
the work of his amateur peers Beveridges writings stem from informants who
can be identified. Thus personal histories developed and regional ethnographies
were re-created from observations made when the Indigenous communities of
the areas in question were relatively little affected by the inroads of Europeans.
Such re-creations require a depth of knowledge amply demonstrated by
Beveridge and the other early ethnographers. That depth of knowledge is more
than enough reason for readers of today to return again to works such as The
Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.
Edward Ryan
Swan Hill
241
Great Central State: The Foundation of the Northern Territory by Jack Cross, xii +
404pp, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2011, ISBN 9781862548770 (pbk), $39.95
In his authors note, Jack Cross tells us that his book is the result of forty
years of detailed archival research concentrating on the period 1860 to 1911 and
using, where possible, only primary or contemporary sources. His basic theme
is the creation and eventual dissolution of a South Australian dream during
the period when that colony ruled the Northern Territory. The dream was of
the Great Australian State, bestriding the continent from south to north; an
Australian colossus, gateway to an unlimited Asian market for the pastoralists
and businessmen of South Australia. Cross begins at the beginning, with a
chapter on the origins of the dream, the confusion in the initial acquisition of
the Northern Territory which saw its principal parliamentary opponents become
the custodians of the lands they had never wanted and the efforts of constantly
recycled parliamentary ministries to devise a feasible settlement plan. The
next three chapters follow chronologically. Chapter 2 traces the fortunes and
misfortunes of Boyle Travers Finniss and the 1864 expedition he led to Escape
Cliffs with high hopes of founding a modified Wakefieldian empire, only to
face fierce dissension among his own men and his Adelaide political masters,
humiliating recall and the ultimate failure of the whole scheme in 1866. Chapter
3 covers the political turmoil of 1866 to 1869 which led ultimately to George
Goyders northern surveys and the founding of Palmerston town on the shores
of Port Darwin, and the fourth chapter concentrates mainly on the early history
of the town and its environs.
To this point, the book is carried by a broad mainstream of events centring on
politics and major personalities in Adelaide and the effects of their policies
or the lack of them on Territory land settlement and industry. Later chapters
tend to be more diffuse. Chapter 5 discusses aspects of government attempts
to create new hope in the languishing colony, through gold discovery and
exploitation, followed by a laissez-faire policy, defined by the author as opening
the floodgates of North Australia to South-East Asian migration and trade. A
third stream of hope lay in attempts to encourage the migration of religious
groups; and this aspect, relating to Santals, Mennonites, Japanese and Jews, is
the subject of Chapter 6. Chapter 7, Coming of the gauchos, deals with some
aspects of pastoral colonisation, mainly in the 1880s and a final short chapter
more of a note touches on events from that time until the Commonwealth
takeover in 1911.
There is notable scholarship in this book and Jack Cross is at his best in tracing
the motives and machinations of the Adelaide political class, the pastoralists
and the speculators who formed the driving force behind both proponents
and opponents of the Great Central State. Here, Cross reliance on meticulous
examination of primary and contemporary sources really pays off: the detail of
political conflict and personal idiosyncrasy, particularly in the early chapters, is
quite remarkable and is presented with clarity, plus a modicum of well-judged
243
dry (and often wry) wit. It is likely, though, that the main themes of the book
could have been enhanced by consideration of the plethora of secondary sources
that have grown up during recent years. It is difficult to judge how much Cross
had read, since little of it appears in his footnotes and the book does not include
a bibliography. Details of attempts to attract religious migrants to the Territory
and accounts of early pastoral treks are fascinating, but they do seem to be more
of a diversion than a continuation of the main theme; and the complicated story
of the dreams end, the Commonwealth/South Australian negotiations for
transfer to the former in 1911 are barely touched upon.
Perhaps the most notable omission in the book is analysis of Aboriginal
dispossession in the pursuit of the white mans vision. No attempt has been
made, writes Cross, to analyse the response of the indigenous peoples to the
invasion of their country by rootless nomadic outsiders except at the most
descriptive level. That, at least, is a refreshingly honest assessment of the
invaders and Cross makes it clear that he does not wish to impinge on the
right of Aboriginal people to write their own history. His empirical descriptions
of massacre and dispossession may be sparse but they are blunt; And so the
intermittent war went on, he says, with the scales gradually tilting towards
those with superior technology. The process of power acquisition, oppression
and exploitation of conquered peoples may be a constant in world history; yet
never morally justified and Jack Cross would not have it so.
The books diction is lucid. The book is well illustrated, cogently argued,
competently referenced with few errors, and it will certainly become essential
reading for all who wish to understand South Australias role in the Northern
Territory.
Alan Powell
Charles Darwin University
244
Nharangga Wargunni Bugi-Buggillu: A Journey Through Narungga History by Skye

Krichauff, xi + 203 pp, Narungga Aboriginal Progress Association and Wakefield
Press, Adelaide, 2011, ISBN 9781862549104 (hbk), $39.95
This book has an interesting genesis based on a Masters thesis and written for
the Narungga Aboriginal Progress Association. The author, Skye Krichauff,
sets out to write the early contact history of the Narungga of Yorke Peninsula
in South Australia. Surprisingly, the colonial process through the nineteenth
century generated a very limited amount of archival material. The period
under investigation was too far back to be accessible through oral accounts, so
Krichauff was left with a historical record which gave her the bare outline of
events but frustratingly little detail. She has on the whole done an admirable
job of presenting a history which reflects both sides of the colonial encounter
from the earliest seafaring explorers who sighted the Yorke Peninsula coastline
in the early nineteenth century to the establishment of a Christian mission, Point
Pearce, in the 1860s.
Although the book has a slightly polemical tone, Krichauff tries, I think
successfully, to present an even-handed account of both the Narungga and the
early explorers and colonisers. She argues that through the nineteenth century
the Narungga were in control of their own lives and made informed decisions
about how to relate to the people who gradually came to occupy their lands.
This historical approach is not as novel as Krichauff implies (the footnotes, there
is no bibliography, do not reflect a wide reading of Australian colonial history),
nevertheless, she makes her point well and on the whole convincingly. The
Narungga, unlike the Kaurna, their neighbours on the Adelaide plains, were
not inundated by large numbers of settlers. The colonisation of Yorke Peninsula
was gradual and dispersed. The men who came to the peninsula were on the
whole willing to accommodate themselves to the Narungga, who in turn did
not act aggressively towards the interlopers. The period of violent conflict was
very brief compared to many other regions of Australia, lasting less than a year,
(apart from a couple of later incidents). Krichauff assumes that the Narungga
were so isolated from the rest of Aboriginal Australia that they were unaware
of the Kaurna experience and that they dealt with the colonisers on a one by
one basis. Some on the southern coastal regions may have been influenced by
whalers and sealers coming to their shores to take women, although there is little
documentary evidence that they did so, but otherwise Krichauff does not reflect
on the wider colonial context.
My main concern with the approach Krichauff takes is in her attempt to, provide
colour and tone to the emerging picture, [she] seized on and interpreted clues
and used conjecture and imagination (p. 7). The result is a rather speculative
approach to history. It seems rather presumptuous to guess at Narungga
motivations, especially in the early days of contact. Occasionally the speculation
seems ill informed, for instance, where she wonders if the Narungga men might
have expected a survey party to supply them with women (p. 42), rather than
245
speculating why these strange men seemed to be without women. This conjectural
tone is even used where Krichauff does have evidence. Sometimes Krichauff
adopts the language of her sources referring to Narungga chiefs and assuming
the Narungga would have viewed early exploring parties as hierarchical, even
though their own experience was of non-hierarchical socio-political system.
At other points in this history Krichauffs approach works well. Her handling
of the violence which erupted in 1849 is empathetic, particularly her analysis
of settler interests. She accumulates an impressive range of data from diverse
sources in her discussion of a man known as Jim Crack who was an interpreter
and police guide and as such appears more regularly in the records than other
most other Narungga.
The book ends with the establishment of Point Pearce mission by a Moravian
missionary Julius Kuhn. Again Krichauff tries to be even-handed in her
discussion of Kuhn and Narungga responses to him, but her analysis would be
helped by a wider reading of the extensive secondary literature on missions in
Australia where she would find that current scholarship considers Aboriginal as
well as missionary motivations behind the formation of missions.
The book is handsomely presented with paintings by Edward Snell and William
Cawthorne on the cover. The Contents, however, lacks a list of illustrations and
maps used in the book, and rather inexplicably some illustrations lack captions.
A bibliography would also be helpful for the reader.
Skye Krichauff with the support of the Narungga Aboriginal Progress
Association has filled a gap in our knowledge of early South Australian
colonial history in Nharangga Wargunni Bugi-Buggillu, and reminds us that we
should never assume that all colonial history followed predictable trajectories.
She discovered the Narungga were able to live on at least some of their lands
relatively independently through much of the nineteenth century, although by
the twentieth century their numbers were sadly depleted and they no longer
inhabited the southern part of the peninsula.
Peggy Brock
Edith Cowan University
246
Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colonial Encounter edited by Alison
Holland and Barbara Brookes, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2011,
ISBN 9781443828628 (hbk), 39.99
This valuable collection invites readers to engage with the ways that moments
can reveal the workings and limits of imperial and colonial power. In a really
useful introduction, Alison Holland sets out the context for the collection she
has edited with Barbara Brookes, pointing to shifts in global politics post 9/11
and ensuing critical responses including from historians interested in the
genealogies of globalising systems such as the formation of racial difference.
Seeking to extend the idea of the racial moment as described in Race and Nation
edited by Paul Spickard (Routledge, 2005), Holland argues for the application of
a more active and diverse notion: that of racialising moments as a methodology
for the critical investigation of racial difference. Rather than fundamental or
essential categories, the formations of whiteness, Indigeneity and other racial
formations are thereby revealed as they were lived: in process, never complete,
always relational and contextual, and often contradictory.
With its focus on Australia and New Zealand, Rethinking the Racial Moment
provides a satisfying combination of interconnection and comparison with
diversity. The trans-colonial conference on which the collection is based helps
to break the nexus between metropole and colony, or indeed between white and
black, that has often characterised colonial history. Similarly, by looking beyond
simplistic notions of whiteness or non-whiteness, it asks us to reconsider the
complexities of colonial encounters in relational mode; to realise that racial
formation was a fragile and sometimes contradictory process. And, thirdly,
through applying a global approach to investigating these operations on both
sides of the frontier, the collection offers a really exciting set of studies exemplary
both for their fine-tuned analysis and for their capacity to look outwards from
the archives towards the global geo-politics of past and present.
Contributions range from Hsu-Ming Teos evocative study of early nineteenth
romantic fiction as a racialising moment in relation to European literary
representations of the Orient to Tony Ballantynes insightful investigation of the
cosmopolitan maritime culture in New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s on the
cusp of systemic colonisation. A consummate discussion by Angela Woollacott
concerns the role that employment of unfree labour played in confirming the
free status of white settlers in Australia and New Zealand. While through his
study of a leading white male settler in the same era (Alfred Howitt), Leigh
Boucher sets out in compelling detail the ways in which a biographical approach
can illustrate the fragmented and contingent ways in which settler colonialism
has been lived and experienced, and how marginalised figures such as wives
and daughters, as well as Indigenous people, have been material to the capacity
of its key men. Vicki Grieves draws from family memories of loss in the face
of colonisation to consider Indigenous family formations despite the impacts
of an inter-colonial discourse of slavery through which white mens property
247
rights included Aboriginal women and their off-spring as future labour force.
Turning again to New Zealand, Barbara Brookes investigates the campaigns
of Maori leaders in the interwar years influenced by hegemonic ideas about
racial purity. Understanding themselves to be like white men with whom they
shared Aryan ancestry, they argued also against sexual relations between their
women and Asian men on the grounds of racial contamination. Similarly, Alison
Holland writes persuasively of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal utilisations
of ideas of uplift in her study of the Yurtookee Club in Adelaide in the 1940s
in order to uncover the diverse ways in which Aboriginal and humanitarian
politics interacted within that project. Another of the outstanding chapters in
this collection is by Rani Kerin who interrogates the humanitarian investment
in the idea of Aboriginality through the multiplicity of racial moments in the
life of an Aboriginal boy, Sydney James Cook adopted by Christian reform and
Aboriginal rights activists, the Duguids (Phyllis Duguid was involved also in
Yurtookee). The final chapter offers a fascinating study of the term indigenous
as applied by liberal imperialists to the particular rights of natives under
international law, and its implications for the emergence of global indigenism
in the second half of the twentieth century. Tim Rowse concludes that non-racial
notions of Indigenous cultural difference within Western non-racial thought
were as influential in the emergence of this political movement as the history of
Indigenous self-assertion itself.
One of the central features of the collection is the contributors assumption that
Indigenous perspectives are integral to the kind of history they write. Drawing
on whiteness studies, transnational feminist scholarship, postcolonial studies,
Indigenous history and critical imperial history, although they cover a widerange of topics each illustrates how racialising moments have been specific sites
with sometimes diverse and contradictory effects, including those articulated
and enacted by the colonised themselves. Under the rubric of this interrogative
framework, their contributions provide a wonderfully engaging snapshot of
new settler colonial history in Australia and New Zealand. It is possible that
more might have been said about the spatial aspect of contact history, including
where violence rather than accommodation dominates. Obviously racialising
moments are locations in time and space as well as representational spaces in
which notions of racial privilege and subordination are marked, transformed
and appropriated on both sides of the colonial divide (p. 9). But aside from
this concern, Rethinking the Racial Moment is highly recommended as a volume
for teaching as well as one to be enjoyed by readers eager to sample some of
the most innovative and well-written history coming out of Australia and New
Zealand in recent years.
Fiona Paisley
Griffith University
248
Contributors
Christine Choo is a historian, social researcher and social worker, with a particular
interest in Indigenous people, migrants, missions and minority groups in
Australia. She has published in these areas. Christine has contributed to the
native title process as an expert historian in litigation in a number of Western
Australian native title cases. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University
of Western Australia and an interviewer with the Oral History and Folklore
Branch of the National Library of Australia. Her publications include Mission
Girls (UWA Press, 2001), Aboriginal Child Poverty (Brotherhood of St Laurence &
SNAICC, 1990) and with Shawn Hollbach she co-edited, History and Native Title
(Studies in WA History, 2003).
Ian D Clark is an Associate Professor in Tourism in the School of Business at
the University of Ballarat. He has a PhD from Monash University in Aboriginal
historical geography. His areas of interest include Indigenous tourism, the
history of tourism, and Aboriginal history.
Victoria Haskins is an ARC Future Fellow (History) in the Research Institute for
Social Inclusion and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle. She works on
gender and cross-cultural Indigenous histories, and is currently researching
a transnational study of government interventions and Indigenous domestic
service in Australia and the United States. She is the author of One Bright Spot
(Palgrave, 2005) and Matrons and Maids: Regulating Native American Domestic
Labor in Tucson, Arizona (University of Arizona Press, forthcoming).
Grace Karskens teaches Australian history at the University of New South Wales,
and works in colonial Australian history and environmental history. Her books
include Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood and the multi-award
winning The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney. Her latest book The Colony: A History
of Early Sydney won the 2010 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Leah Lui-Chivizhe is Torres Strait Islander. She was born and grew up on the
Australian mainland after her father, Zitha Jacob Lui, left Erub (Darnley Island)
in the early 1960s and became a railway man. She has presented papers on this
remarkable, yet little known, history of Islander labour migration at conferences
in Sydney, Melbourne and Ipswich. She teaches Indigenous Australian Studies
at the University of Sydney and her research interests include race and antiracism, Torres Strait history, material culture and cultural practices and Islander
migration and identity.
Campbell Macknight taught History, including Aboriginal Australian History, for
many years at the Australian National University. From 1994 to 1999, he was
professor of Humanities at the University of Tasmania in Launceston. He has
249
now retired to Canberra where, as a Fellow in the Research School of Asia and
the Pacific at the Australian National University, he continues an active interest in
the history of South Sulawesi. His email address is: macknight@ozemail.com.au.
Julia Martnez is a Senior Lecturer in Asian and Australia History at the University
of Wollongong. She has published on themes of Aboriginal and Asian labour
since 1996. Her chapter on Asian-Aboriginal relations in Darwin appeared in
Regina Ganters Mixed Relations (2006) and her PhD (2000) explored Darwins
multicultural history. She is currently working on a transcolonial history of
domestic service (with Lowrie, Haskins and Steel) and a book on IndonesianAustralian relations (with Vickers).
Noah Riseman is a Lecturer in History at Australian Catholic University in
Melbourne. He completed his PhD in History at the University of Melbourne
in 2008. His thesis examined the impact of the Second World War on settlerYolngu relations and with comparative analysis of Indigenous military service
in the United States and Papua New Guinea. His article in this volume is part
of his current ARC-funded research project examining the history of Australian
Indigenous military service in the post-Second World War era.
Anna Shnukal is a sociolinguist who has published extensively on aspects of
Torres Strait language, society and culture.
Peta Stephenson is an honorary fellow in the Asia Institute at the University
of Melbourne. Her book Islam Dreaming (UNSW Press, 2010) traces the long
history of Islam in Indigenous Australia in its examination of the growing
popularity of the faith among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians
today. She is also the author of The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia's IndigenousAsian Story (UNSW Press, 2007).
250
Information for authors
Articles up to 7,000 words in length are preferred. Please submit both a hard
copy and an electronic version of the paper (in .doc or .rtf file types). Footnotes
should be brief and numbered consecutively throughout the paper. References
should be arranged in alphabetical order by authors last name and include
full publication details as given on the title page of the work. Arrange works
by the same author in chronological order. Web citations should include full
address (URL) and the date accessed. Only original photographs, maps or other
illustrations will be accepted. Do not send scans or photocopies taken from
books or other publications. If you provide electronic scans of illustrations,
photos or maps, these must be separate high resolution (300 dpi) .tif files. Do
not paste scans into your text document. If accepted for publication, authors are
responsible for obtaining copyright clearance for any figures and photographic
images that are reproduced. Authors should follow the usage of The Style Manual
for Authors, Editors and Printers, 6th edition, John Wiley and Sons, Canberra, 2002.
Footnote style
1. Rowley 1971: 107. See also Barwick 1981.
2. Fisher to Hassall, 20 July 1824.
3. Fison and Howitt 1880: 96-108.
4. Evening Mail, 12 March 1869.
5. Solly to Stokell, 4 March 1869, AOTCSD 7/23/127.
Footnote numbers are placed after punctuation marks in the text. Please do not
use ibid. or similar abbreviations, but repeat the short citation.
References
Anderson, Hugh 1995, Lost in the streets: a gumleaf requiem for Bill Bull,
Journal of Australian Studies 44, 1995: 2237.
Beckett, Jeremy 1964, Aborigines, alcohol and assimilation in Aborigines Now:
New Perspectives in the Study of Aboriginal Communities, Marie Reay (ed), Angus
and Robertson, Sydney: 3247.
Cowlishaw, Gillian 1999, Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas: A Study of Racial
Power and Intimacy in Australia, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW.
251
Hardy, Jane, JVS Megaw and M Ruth Megaw (eds) 1992, The Heritage of Namatjira:
The Watercolourists of Central Australia, William Heinemann, Port Melbourne.
Trangamar, ER 1960, Stories of the past: Mulga Fred, reprinted in Coleraine
Albion, 4 and 11 February.
252
Aboriginal History Monograph Series
Monograph 23, 2011

In Good Faith? Governing Indigenous Australia through God, Charity and Empire,
18251855
Jessie Mitchell
Monograph 22, 2011
I Succeeded Once The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula,
18391840
Marie Hansen Fels
Monograph 21, 2010
Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia
Edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys and John Docker
Monograph 20, 2010
Racial Folly: A Twentieth-Century Aboriginal Family
Gordon Briscoe
Monograph 19, 2009
Aboriginal Placenames: Naming and Re-naming the Australian Landscape
Edited by Harold Koch and Luise Hercus
Monograph 18, 2009
The Two Rainbow Serpents Travelling: Mura Track Narratives from the
Corner Country
Jeremy Beckett and Luise Hercus
Monograph 17, 2008
Indigenous Biography and Autobiography
Edited by Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little and Anna Haebich
Monograph 16, 2008
Transgressions: Critical Australian Indigenous Histories
Edited by Ingereth Macfarlane and Mark Hannah
Monograph 15, 2007
Culture in Translation: The Anthropological Legacy of RH Mathews
Edited by Martin Thomas
Monograph 14, 2007
The Axe Had Never Sounded: Place, People and Heritage of Recherche Bay, Tasmania
John Mulvaney
253
Monograph 13, 2006

What Good Condition?: Reflections on an Australian Aboriginal Treaty 19862006
Edited by Peter Read
Monograph 12, 2005
Peopling the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal History in Western Central Australia, 18501980
MA Smith
Monograph 11, 2005
Many Exchanges: Archaeology, History, Community and the Work of Isabel McBryde
Edited by Ingereth Macfarlane
Monograph 10, 2002
The Aboriginal Population Revisited: 70 000 Years to the Present
Edited by Gordon Briscoe & Len Smith
Monograph 9, 2002
The Pajong and Wallabalooa: A History of Aboriginal Farming Families at Blakney and
Pudman Creeks
Ann Jackson-Nakano
Monograph 8, 2002
The Kamberri: A History of Aboriginal Families in the ACT and Surrounds
Ann Jackson-Nakano
Monograph 7, 2001
Repossession of Our Spirit: Traditional Owners of Northern Sydney
Dennis Foley & Ricky Maynard
Monograph 6, 1998
History in Portraits: Biographies of Nineteenth Century South Australian
Aboriginal People
Jane Simpson & Luise Hercus
Monograph 5, 1998
Rebellion at Coranderrk
Diane Barwick
Monograph 4, 1997
In the Best Interest of the Child? Stolen Children: Aboriginal Pain/White Shame
Link-Up (NSW) and Tikka Wilson
Monograph 3, 1996
Country: Aboriginal Boundaries and Land Ownership in Australia
Peter Sutton
Sale and orders

Thelma Sims, email: Thelma.Sims@anu.edu.au, tel or fax: +61 2 6125 3269,
www.aboriginalhistory.org
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ABORIGINAL HISTORY

Volume 35, 2011

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Published by ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated

This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au

Aboriginal History Monograph Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

relationships that place white settler narratives of Australias social development

Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

Fig 1. Alphonse Pellion (attrib), Sauvages de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud [Tara

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

Fig 2. Artist unknown, Real life in Sydney, lithograph, c1838.

Hansen 2007: 2732.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

wearing European clothing. Art historian Michael Rosenthal concluded of the

Rosenthal 2000: 39.

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

Augustus Earles watercolour of an Aboriginal family camped in front of a

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

Fig 5. ST Gill, Native Dignity.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

in the early colonial period consider themselves as degraded, culturally lost

Maynard 2006: 103.

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

European manner. Hybrid dress signals something in between, something

See also Brock 2007: 1; Jones 2007: 1112.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

gradually realised, modesty was nevertheless part of Eora womens culture.

Collins 1971[1798], 1: 562, 457; Attenbrow 2002: 109; Brock 2007.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

Collins 1971[1798], 1: 52.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

King 17861790: 395; Clendinnen 2003: 108109.

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

embattled beachheads [of] Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. But Wilcox does not

Wilcox 2009: 13, 1516.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

Fig 6. SJ Neele, Benelong a Native of New Holland, c1800.

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

Sydney Gazette, 27 October 1805; see also 3 November 1805.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

Sydney Gazette, 19 May 1805.

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

Fig 7. Alphonse Pellion, Jedat et Nemare, pencil sketch, 1819.

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

artificial jaggedness by the artist. Meanwhile Nemare wears a convict-issue

Fig 8. E Forget, Nouvelle-Holland, Port Jackson, Sauvages des environs de la

Brad Manera, pers comm, 11 April 2011.

ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2011 VOL 35

Fig 9. Augustus Earle, Natives of N. S. Wales as seen in the streets of

A close comparison of Earles picture, itself made up of separate sketches, and

RED COAT, BLUE JACKET, BLACK SKIN

Brad Manera, pers comm, 11 April 2011.