Angepena Waters

An Australian academic has created an interactive map showing sites of massacres that occurred during the frontier wars.  

The map can be accessed as a link in the newspaper article here . 

The massacres (and reprisals) were an inevitable part of the unsettlement of Australian First Nations people, of their forcible and violent dispossession from Country.  Angepena, in the Flinders is not on the map yet, but should be.  See my earlier (2007) post:  The Angepena Atrocities here

In 2011 I wrote this poem about Angepena:

Angepena Waters

Angepena waters were always just there

For all of the yura to share

And the birds and the creatures

Danced through its virgin features

As the yura chanted the songlines

Angepena waters are sparkling in the sun

But white men took the land for their cattle to run

And for them it makes more sense

Than to build a big long fence

That the yura are dispersed with the gun 

Though yura men lay dead

Their families had not fled

They still huddled near Angepena water

So the stockmen took whips and slashed their breasts

With great rips

And cut the heads and the backs of their children

At Angepena waters there were genocidal slaughters

So that cattle could drink without disturbance

With the water holes mud

Mixed with cow shit and blood

Angepena’s a shame job for whitey.

19/12/11

Canadian educator on teaching Aboriginal history

Ben Sichel is a progressive Canadian secondary school teacher who put up a post on his blog about the ethics of a non-Indigneous Canadian teaching Canadian Aboriginal history.


I won't copy the whole post in here, but I recommend you access it on his blog, where you can also look at a range of other topics he has dealt with:
https://noneedtoraiseyourhand.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/on-teaching-aboriginal-history-to-non-aboriginal-students/comment-page-1/#comment-347


The only thing I took issue with is the use of the term "settler" which I think we all need to challenge.  At the March 4 rally in Adelaide, I urged anyone with kids at school or who was at school themselves, to bring home any history text books (a disappearing artefact in any case) and go through and cross out the words "settle" and "settlement" and write in over the top of them "unsettler" and "unsettlement".  I said they were not acts of vandalism or of damage to history textbooks. They were necessary corrections to the vandalism and damage done to history by words that carry loaded meanings.


I put the following comment on Ben's post:




Ben – I’ve just finished reading the reprint of this post in Our Schools Our Selves.  I work at the Australian Education Union in South Australia.  One other approach you might like to use is to work with your kids to examine just how loaded the word “settler” is.  How often have you, as a teacher, called on a class to “settle down”.  To “settle” implies the positive action of bringing calm and order to a situation that is disorganised and out of control.  To refer to white invaders of First Nations lands as “settlers” (as mine were in 1839, three years after the foundation of South Australia) is to confer on them a benign title at odds with colonisation and displacement.  How can colonisation “settle” communities that were stable, sustainable and organised?  I have asked my students to read “unsettler” for “settler” and “unsettlement” for “settlement” out of respect for the settled communities that were disrupted and torn apart by colonisation.

I’ve also taken students outside to do the “brick count”.  Aboriginal Australians are known to have occupied this continent for somewhere between 50-60,000 years before unsettlement.  Students often don’t relate to that enormous span of time in any concrete conceptual way.  So we take a school building with a nice long wall and assign 1000 years to every brick, choose a starting point, and then walk the length of 50 bricks in the wall.  When we get to the last one, we divide it into fifths.  That roughly represents the slightly more than 200 years of European unsettlement.  It helps the kids see the significance of talking about “the world’s oldest continuous culture” and what Aboriginal Australians are entitled to take pride in and to protect.

Anyway, just wanted to share those two things with you and to thank you for your article.

Pyne uses Anzac Day to revive racist cultural war

Federal Opposition spokesman on education, Christopher Pyne, has stated that a future Liberal government would review elements of the new Australian Curriculum that presented a "black armband view" of Australia's history.

He said that the federal coalition wants to "restore the importance of the Anzac story in school history classes"

By attempting to score brownie points with racist and conservative Australians, Pyne has only revealed his own ignorance of history, including the Anzac tradition.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women, having been subjected to the violence and frontier warfare of colonisation, nevertheless served in the Australian armed forces in every conflict in which they have been involved.

Once these conflicts were over, these sae ATSI service people were thrown back into civilian life as second class citizens.

 

According to the website

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/anzac-day-coloured-digger-march :

They were not only denied the recognition afforded to non-indigenous soldiers but also the same rights their comrades in arms were granted. They did not receive a war pension, were not allowed to join RSL clubs and some men even came back to find their children had been taken from them.

The nephew of Australia's most famous Aboriginal soldier, Captain Reg Saunders MBE, said when his uncle came back from serving in Korea, "he couldn't even get a beer in a pub, let alone a pension, and he wasn't permitted to become a citizen until 1968".

 

Precisely because ATSI people and their supporters have brought the black history of this country out into the light of day - the so-called "black armband view" that Pyne decries – some justice is now being done to the service record of Indigenous Australians.

For example, in South Australia, the RSL, Reconciliation Australia and the Council of Elders of South Australia, with the support of the state government, have commissioned a sculpture of a black serviceman and a black servicewoman to be erected at Adelaide’s Torrens Parade Ground.

Among those involved in this project is Bill Hignett, a Vietnam veteran and union organiser, who is a member of Reconciliation SA.

Hignett, and others like him, give the lie to Pyne’s attempt to pit the spirit of Anzac Day against due recognition of past and present injustices to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

A black service person with a chest full of medals is fully entitled to wear a black armband in memory of the victims of the colonial wars for the conquest of his or her traditional lands.

Black Armband 5: Genocidal mindsets

One of the books that I have is Frederick Morrison’s Aldine History of South Australia, published in two volumes in 1890.

By 1890, one might reasonably have assumed that a more “enlightened attitude” towards Aboriginal Australians than the following may have emerged. I am placing it here because it is important to understand the mindset that afflicted members of the settler regime, and the justifications they used to support genocidal practices that ranged from murder (“dispersing the blacks”) to the forcible removal of children from their parents and punishments for using their own languages on mission stations and reserves.

Note how the author tries to pose as an objective observer, placing himself between “the extremes” before moving speedily to the extreme of apologising for genocide himself.

As we approach the historic occasion of an apology from the Prime Minister to the Stolen Generations (see here and here), the excerpt below will help us understand the arrogant assumptions of superiority behind the injustices visited upon the indigenous peoples of this land.

..................................

Chapter IV

The Aborigines

There has been a great deal written about the “blacks” of this fair land, some of which has been extravagant in its laudation, and, on the other hand, much has been said adverse to them equally wide of the mark. Between these two classes of writers we may expect to find the truth somewhere. It has been asserted by many that it is utterly impossible to civilise the native Australian, that is, to induce him by any system of instruction to settle down to the cultivation of the soil, build and occupy houses, much less to adopt a life akin to the modes adopted by his white brethren. On the other hand, with equal earnestness, writers have asserted the possibility of the blacks being raised to a high rank or status in education, religious enlightenment, and other habits of industry, sobriety, and general conduct, found associated with all ranks of civilised people.

There can be no question at all that in some instances there have been satisfactory evidences of a good degree of culture, earnest religious zeal, and praiseworthy deeds of morality and prudence – not a few cases of genuine conversion to the Christian religion and practices have been reported by the early missionaries. Notwithstanding all this, we believe we but express the sentiment of nearly everyone who has been brought into contact with them, that they are, above all other races of savages yet discovered, the lowest in the scale of humanity. They build no houses, perform no labour except such little as is required by the absolute necessity of hunger. They respect no moral code save that of brute force. Their condition at the time of arrival by Captain Cook, and for many years afterwards, was as low as that of the beasts of the field. In fact, in no sense were they superior, except in the low sagacity and cunning they evinced in capturing the birds of the air, the animals of the forests and plains, and the fish of their rivers and seas, and in making them tributary to their sustenance and support on the very easiest conditions. “They toil not neither do they spin,” neither are they clad in the “glory of a Solomon or in the beauty of the flowers of the field.”

The “Voice of God” moved our first parents, Adam and Eve, to seek in very shame a covering to their nakedness, and, as a rule, among all barbarous tribes there is recognised the same “voice” that bids man to make, from palm leaves or other woody fibres of branch or grass, aprons to cover himself; but in the black tribes of Australia we find a race that lives in utter disregard of all rules and requirements of dress, in fact, whose manner of life antedates even Adamic times.

May we not be pardoned for suggesting that one of the first evidences of an intelligence which raises man above the brute and makes him susceptible to civilising influences, is the fact that he is able to appreciate and value the great worth of a garment. The place in civilisation that dress occupies is perhaps not sufficiently understood by any of us. How far its influence for good extends is yet an unsolved problem. It is one of those incidental circumstances that is taken in this life, like the air we breathe and the water we drink and the sunshine we hail, as a matter of course. It is so abundantly bestowed, and hence so common in its plentitude, that we fail to see its worth and absolute value in developing that aesthetic nature that fits man to walk with God in the gardens of the earth and transforms it into a Paradise, in which is heard the “voice” divine….

The first white man killed by the natives was in May, 1788. This provoked a spirit of revenge, not on the murderer, but on the race….

Few institutions of learning are to be found among them, and few Churches are actively engaged in Christianising them. At the same time they are fast disappearing in numbers, and doubtless soon will be reckoned among the extinct races of the earth.

…The work of extermination by the whites still goes silently on, not as a purpose or by concerted plan, nevertheless, steadily and surely. The occupancy by the whites of their land and civilisation in her triumphant march carries along with her a hundred concomitants against which the blackfellow cannot successfully stand. A generation or two will in all probability wipe them out, and the second centennial will record their existence as a thing of the past.

Black Armband 4: The Angepena Atrocities

Angepena Station is a pastoral run near Copley in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia.

It is currently the subject of a dispute between the Adnyamathanha people, who are the traditional owners, and “Operation Flinders”, an SA-based Foundation that runs a boot camp style program for young offenders and youth at risk.

This dispute will be dealt with in a later post.

This post looks at the disputes that arose from the unsettlement of the area by pastoralists in the 1850s, and at incidents that could only be described as atrocities.

An atrocity is a term used to describe crimes or excesses ranging from an act committed against a single person to one committed against a population or ethnic group.

In general use, an atrocity designates a politically or ethnically motivated killing of civilians.

I use the term “Angepena Atrocities” to describe such actions in and around Angepena station (see homestead, below).


The chief source is the writing of John Wrathall Bull, perhaps better known in South Australia as one of two claimants to the title of inventor of the Stripper (below, left), an agricultural implement that dramatically increased the productive forces of the farm sector in colonial times.

As a twenty-one year old, Bull took charge of a cattle-run owned by John Chambers, at Bobmoonie West, to the north of Oratunga in the Flinders Ranges in 1856. One of his first jobs was to drove seven thousand sheep from Oratunga to Franklin Harbour at Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula.

The droving was not without incident, and Bull recounts one incident in which a group of about two hundred Aborigines threatened his progress near Port Augusta. He shot some of the old rams in the flock within sight of the Aborigines in order to impress upon them the lethal nature of his weaponry, and then gave them some of the meat. The Aborigines followed him to Minbrie, about twenty kilometres due north of Cowell, and then left.

On arrival at Minbrie, James Shannon, the manager, asked Bull about Pongilta, an Aborigine, saying that if he was among those that had threatened Bull he would find him and shoot him as he had robbed a shepherd’s hut a month previously.

Bull confirmed Pongilta’s presence and recorded that Shannon “went after him but whether he got him or not I never knew.”

What he did know, beyond doubt, was that there were only Aboriginal women at Minbrie homestead. He was surprised and asked them the whereabouts of their men. He was told they were “crackaback”, or dead. “All about white fella shoot ‘em,” they reported.

On his way back to Oratunga, a 4-day horse ride, he stopped at Wilpena and Aroona in the Flinders Ranges and, as he had at Minbrie, only saw Aboriginal women and children in the camps.

“They told me, ‘White fella shootem all about blackfella,’” he wrote.

Thus, the dispossession of the traditional owners and the unsettlement of their societies were accompanied by atrocities directed mainly at the adult men.

It was targetted, genocidal murder.

But it was not only the men who were the subject of atrocities by the unsettlers.

That same year Bull went from Bobmoonie West to the neighbouring Angepena to arrange for a cattle muster. There he met John Stewart, who ran the place. It was late in the day, and he noticed a “native camp” not far down the creek from Stewart’s hut.

“Stewart took me down the creek,” he wrote, “and showed me a camp of lubras and children all cut to pieces with the stockwhips.

“The women’s breasts were cut open and little children six to twelve months old were bleeding all over.

“They said they were coming through Pernunna and went to a little spring to get a drink.

“They said ‘No bullocky there, master,’ meaning they were doing no harm, as there were no cattle there to be frightened away by them.

“They said Arkaba Charlie and Jack Morrow galloped down on them and ‘Whip give it’.”

Similar reports from other observers throughout South Australia make it clear that denying Aboriginal people access to water holes was a common practice at the time, and that in any case, sheep and cattle soon left natural water holes fouled and undrinkable.

Bull and Stewart went mustering cattle the next day, leaving Stewart’s hut-keeper James Mitchell in charge. When they returned several days later, they found that Mitchell had been killed by Aboriginal men enraged at the treatment of the woman and children.

Mounted police were sent to find Mitchell’s killers and an Aboriginal male named Warrioota was captured, fastened “with a dog-chain and a rope around his neck so (the troopers) could each take an end to lead him.” However, Warrioota escaped on the third day, rejoined his people and was never recaptured.

Undaunted, the troopers arrested a second man whom they believed to be Puttapa Bob, another of Mitchell’s assailants. The arrest wasn’t easy – “Puttapa Bob” resisted and was stabbed and cut by a sword and shot through the arm. Thus wounded, chained and handcuffed, the captured man was forced to walk to Mt Remarkable, a walk that took several days. He was seen there by Bull who recognised immediately that it was the wrong man!

Bull wrote that the innocent “blackfellow was ironed and chained down to a large ring-bolt in the middle and stank…He died a few days after I saw him and there was nothing said about it. I knew it was no use saying anything at that time.”

He commented that the Aborigines “look upon the white man as their general enemy taking the water and hunting grounds from them and giving them no recompense for it, but shooting them down.”

The situation in and around Angepena remained “unsettled” and a police station was maintained there for ten years until drought forced its closure in 1867.

When Prime Monster John Howard announced his proposal for a Constitutional “affirmation of the unique place of Indigenous Australians” at the Sydney Institute on October 12, he simultaneously reiterated his disdain for “shame, guilt and apologies”.

The truth will out. The facts are plain.

British colonialism was guilty of unsettling the traditional owners of the land, of dispossessing them, and of carrying out this unsettlement and dispossession with atrocities and massacres.

This is what is required to be stated in the Constitutional Preamble!

Black Armband 3: Aftermath of the Maria massacre

(Moogie Sumner, right, a proud descendent of the Coorong people, in traditional body ochre designs as leader of the Coorong mob dancers.)

Most South Australians, if they bothered to think about it at all today, would probably say that, compared to the other Australian colonies, SA was settled relatively peacefully.

Actually, it was unsettled very violently.

So much so that, four years after the birth of the colony in 1836, senior administrators were referring to international law in an effort to prove that Aborigines along the frontier were nations at war with Britain and deserving of extermination.

The particular frontier that prompted this search for a justification for genocide was the coastal stretch known today as the Coorong where the Salt Creek, or Milmenrura, people had killed two whalers in 1839, following possible involvement in the killing of explorer Captain Collett Barker at the Murray Mouth in 1831.

Murder of the Maria survivors

In June 1840, the brig Maria was wrecked at the bottom end of the Coorong en route from Hobart to Adelaide. Twenty-six crew and passengers survived, but confused as to their whereabouts, apparently negotiated with the Milmenrura to be taken to the nearest township of Victor Harbor on the other side of the Mouth.

Perhaps because some of the crew made sexual advances to Milmenrura women, or perhaps because the Milmenrura wanted the clothing and other possessions of the survivors, or perhaps because the survivors tried to force the Milmenrura to enter land which was not theirs to enter, or perhaps because the Milmenrura simply saw a chance to kill a part of the invasion population, the rescued party never made it further than present-day Meningie. They were all killed. (For more information, see here.)

Punishment by hanging

A punitive force under Major O’Halloran (below), the Commissioner of Police, was despatched under orders from the colonial Governor, George Gawler to “make prisoners the whole

number congregated with the murderers…(if) you are really compelled to abandon temperate measures, and to resort to those of extreme force, you will not be held blamable…your warfare is not with any but the tribe by which the murder was committed…Should your mind become satisfied of the guilt as to actual participation in the murder of any number not exceeding three, you will, if possible, move the whole tribe in your power to the spot at which the murder was committed. You will there explain to the blacks the nature of your conduct, and the orders you have received from the Governor, and you will deliberately and formally cause sentence of death to be executed by shooting or hanging…”

The following account of the expedition comes from the reminiscences of Inspector Tolmer of the Mounted Police:

“The result of that day’s proceedings was the capture by the land and boat party of thirteen men, two lads, and about fifty women and children. Without exception, they all wore articles of European clothing, belonging to the murdered people, more or less stained with blood…

“(The following morning) we descried a couple of natives who wore European clothing…As they had already gained some distance into the lake, and it was evident they would escape, Major O’Halloran then ordered the police…to fire…Bonney had the first shot at them, which evidently told, by the sound of the thud that followed…

“…sword in hand, I followed the tracks of the fugitives which were marked with blood, and discovered them behind a thicket. One was lying down, supported by the other, and as I approached they commenced a series of lamentations….Upon examining them, I found that one had received a shot in the cheek, another in the shoulder, and a third in the neck, and that the other was also wounded in the shoulder. They were bleeding profusely, and, naturally, thinking they must soon die from the effects, I left them…

“During the day, the captives pointed out one of their number as the actual murderer of a whaler named Roach…and further made known to Major O’Halloran that one of the murderers of the crew of the Maria was on the mainland opposite our camp, and could be secured…Both these men, voluntarily given up by their tribe, were powerfully made, and stood nearly six feet high, with countenances the most ferocious and demon-like I ever beheld.

“…early on the 25th August…the two condemned men were handcuffed together, marched in front under special charge of two police troopers and myself; and the other prisoners followed, escorted by Major O’Halloran and the rest of the police.

“On arrival at the place of execution, which was about fifteen miles from our camp, we halted; but as the whole strip of land between the Coorong and the sea is destitute of trees of any size, Captain Pullen was despatched to the mainland to cut down the tallest Shea oaks he could find, with which to erect the gallows…

“Whilst the foregoing preparations were going on, the whole of the prisoners (men, women and children) formed a semi-circle in front of the gallows…

“When everything was reported ready, the culprits were made to stand on a box, expressly brought for that purpose. The nooses were then passed over their heads, and the slip-knots having been properly adjusted, the box was suddenly withdrawn at a given signal, but unfortunately the fall was not sufficient to cause the dislocation of the neck, besides which the ropes stretched to such an extent, with the immense weight of the condemned men’s bodies, that they remained simply suspended, their toes touching the sand, and their eyes glaring upwards at the cross-beam.

“Horrified at the failure of the execution, the Major sat on his horse almost paralysed, and knew not what to do, when one of Captain Pullen’s crew, named Barber, quickly stepped forward, and saluting the Major, said –

‘I beg pardon, Major, but I’ll soon hang them if you’ll let me.’

‘Do, Barber, anything; but be quick!’

“In a few moments, a couple of lines were procured from the whale-boat; the ends were then thrown over the cross-beam and securely fastened behind the men’s pinioned arms, and then pulled up some height from the ground. Barber then said ‘Now, Major, when you drop your handkerchief we’ll let go,’ which was no sooner said than done, and thus the unfortunate wretches were launched into eternity, dying instantaneously. Some of the sand, however, had to be removed from under their feet, so as to allow the bodies to swing freely without touching.” (Alexander Tolmer, Reminiscences of an Adventurous and Chequered Career.)

The Aftermath

This extra-judicial execution of the two Milmenrura men (Mongarawata and Pilgarie) was not without controversy, both within the colony, and in Britain.

Gawler (right) asserted that “The natives as being practical atheists, unacquainted with the obligation of an oath, or solemn declaration, are not in British law valid witnesses.” He also believed that it was “imperative that retribution should be inflicted.”

But how to inflict the retribution “beyond the limits of ordinary British justice”? He decided to consider the Coorong as “a disturbed state” and to proceed “on the basis of martial law.” However, this would be seen as “injurious” to the good name of the colony, so with the connivance of the governing Council of the colony, he refrained from issuing a decree for martial law.

“I know of no other mode than that of martial law by which the Aborigines can be dealt with in similar cases of ferocious aggression…” he said.

Aware of criticisms of what had happened, he added: “I consider it my duty to have no share in that unhealthy sentiment, by some persons miscalled philanthropy, which…would allow impunity to wanton crimes.”

Gawler would have made a good shock-jock in today’s world, assailing the “bleeding hearts” for supporting criminals and being soft on Laura Norder!

Enter Vattel, stage right.

Following Gawler’s retrospective justification for undeclared martial law against the Aborigines, Robert Burnard, the colony’s new Advocate-General weighed in and quoted 18th Century Emerich de Vattel, a Swiss philosopher, diplomat and legal expert whose theories are still credited with having laid the foundation of modern international law and political philosophy.

Burnard sought to prove that the Aborigines of the colony, particularly those beyond the confines of European “settlement”, were not required to be accorded the rights of British citizens, and that their extermination was quite justified.

“…it may be necessary,” he said, “to view such tribes…as a separate state or nation, not acknowledging, but acting independently of, and in opposition to British interests and authority.”

He went on: “The rights of the Aboriginal proprietors of the soil are thus described by Vattel:- ‘Those nations (such as the ancient Germans or some modern Tartars) who inhabit fertile countries, but disdain to cultivate their lands, and choose rather to live by plunder, are wanting to themselves, are injurious to their neighbours, and deserve to be extirpated as savage and pernicious beasts. There are others who, to avoid labour, choose to live only by hunting and their flocks. This might, doubtless, be applied in the first ages of the world, when the earth, without cultivation, produced more than was sufficient to feed its small number of inhabitants. But at present, when the human race is so greatly multiplied, it could not subsist if all nations were disposed to live in that matter. Those who still pursue this idle mode of life, usurp more extensive territories than with a reasonable share of labour they would have occasion for; and have, therefore, no reason to complain, if other nations, more industrious, and too closely confined, come to take possession of a part of their lands…’

“This passage,” the Adocate-General concludes, “establishes that savage erratic tribes are to be considered as nations…(that) deserve to be extirpated as savage and pernicious beasts.”

Burnard reviewed his arguments and then, referring to the Maria massacre, concludes: “The crime therefore was to be regarded, not as that of individual British subjects, but of a whole hostile tribe, that is, of a nation at enmity with her Majesty’s subjects.”

So spoke the respectable gentlemen who comprised the ruling elite of the young colony.

There was no doubt in their minds that a frontier war existed between the settler regime and the Aboriginal nations, the latter deserving to be “extirpated”.

We would call this genocide today.

Let those among the Howardites who would bury the past and disparage the so-called “black armband” view of history tremble.

The facts will out!

And they will play their part in smashing the racist apartheid laws that Howard, with Labor support, has introduced in the Northern Territory.

(Pellampellamwallah, an Aboriginal woman of the Coorong. She has all her food gathering equipment with her: a net bag, a sedge basket and digging stick. She is wearing a sedge cloak and is carrying live coals between to pieces of bark. Artist : GF Angas, 1844 (AA8).

Black Armband 2 - Elliston Massacres

(Please note: This article was written in 2007. In 2017, the local Council erected a monument as a memorial to the massacre described below. The wording was contested, but confirmation of the massacre remains. See: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-19/elliston-council-votes-to-keep-word-massacre-in-monument/8961036 )

(Please note 2: Great news at the end of 2018 that the New York Times has given sympathetic coverage to this story: here https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/australia/reconciliation-waterloo-bay-indigenous-wirangu.html and here https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/world/australia/aboriginal-massacres-elliston-memorial.html )

I'm a South Australian, so I'll draw on South Australian history for my Black Armband examples.


Example One takes us to beautiful Eyre Peninsula on the west coast of South Australia, and to the white coastal township of Elliston (see red on map opposite).

This section of coast was home to large numbers of Aboriginal people.

Following the "settlement" of South Australia in 1836, it was also home to a small but growing number of European colonists. Their descendents, and other white Australians, live in Elliston today. The descendents of the original owners of the land don't.

Here are two accounts that explain why. The first is an indigenous history of a massacre in 1839 , the second a settler history of a nearly identical massacre ten years later.

The first is from Iris Burgoyne's The Mirning: We Are the Whales and is published by, and available from, Magabala Books in Broome.


The intruders landed on our soil and took our land without paying a penny. We fought for our tribal boundaries, yet we could not get a tiny plot. They sat back and took everything. They did not understand our ancestors were the landlords of this country. When equal rights were granted to the Aboriginal people in the sixties, we were promised our land. We were promised the world. Truth was a theory constantly disproved. Only lies went on forever.

This story was passed to me by my people. Their spoken words were always the truth. As young girls at Koonibba, we sat and listened to the old people like Jack Joonary, Jilgina Jack and Wombardy. (Photo shows old people in their camp at Koonibba - Mike). They were well over a hundred. They shared many of their experiences. They told us about how they survived the Elliston massacres in about 1839 and 1849. Jack Jacobs from Franklin Harbour, old lame Paddy and Dick Dory spoke about it as well. That day they escaped death as they tricked the European horsemen and ran into the bushes. They stood and watched in horror as their people were driven off the cliffs into the sea.

A camp of about two hundred Aboriginal people lived on the outskirts of Elliston. One day two Aboriginal men went out hunting. They looked over the bushes and watched a farmer as he rode his horse and cart into his yard. As the farmer stepped down, he noticed the hunters. When he checked his sheep the following day, he found there were four missing. Naturally, he suspected the Aboriginal men and reported them to the police.

The policeman approached the camp and asked the people whether the hunters stole the sheep. They replied that no one had taken any sheep. The policeman was suspicious of them. “Who went out hunting yesterday?” he asked.

The people named the two men and told the policeman they came back with wombat and kangaroo. But he did not believe them. He thought that the Aboriginal people lied. They arrested the two hunters, who spoke no English and kept them in the cells. A few weeks later a judge came from Adelaide for the trial, which was held in a big shed in Elliston. The Aboriginal people stood outside in the dark, peeped through the window and watched the two men as they pleaded with the judge. The men tried to tell the judge they hunted wombat and kangaroo, but the judge couldn’t understand them and said, “Hang them! Give them an example. Show them what will happen if they steal again!”

That very night they were hung in the centre of the town. Those innocent fellows hung there all the next day, while the Aboriginal people mourned them. That night, whilst the European townspeople slept, people from the camp released the two boys and buried them. They snuck around to the boarding house where the judge slept and coaxed him outside with a whoobu-whoobie, a device that made different sounds like and engine, a dog growling or a horse neighing. When the judge emerged, they grabbed him, knocked him unconscious and hung him up in the very same place. The next morning the townsfolk discovered what happened and decided to take the law into their own hands. The policeman rounded up farmers with about ten horses and rode out to the camp. They herded all the Aboriginal men, women and children like animals and forced them off the cliffs at Elliston. People tried to escape, but they were cut down by whips, sticks and guns.

Three teenagers – one girl and two boys – and a baby survived the massacre. The baby gently tumbled out of its mother’s arms onto the soft sand. The teenagers dared not move whilst the horsemen at the cliff top watched for survivors. They listened to the moaning and dying carried with the swirling breeze. When the coast was clear, they staggered around and looked for signs of life amongst the bodies, but to no avail.

They escaped along the coast towards Streaky Bay and with them, news of the tragedy spread. Aboriginal people were horrified and immediately fled the coast for Talewan, the Bight, Yardea, the Gawler Ranges and Ooldea. About ten years later, in 1849, there was another massacre near the Sweep Holes. No Aboriginal person has lived in Elliston ever since.

Those two hunters could not have carried off those sheep. They were executed without evidence. All the authorities had were tracks in the bushes. Usually when a farmer slaughtered sheep, Aboriginal people collected the guts and runners. That was if there was no bushtucker around. They believed in healthy food. Aboriginal people did not steal those sheep. There were kangaroos, lizards, goanna, possums and birds. They lived where there was an abundance of fish. They saw farmers looking after those sheep and knew they were not allowed to touch them. It was something of value.

Years later, people discovered those Aboriginal men were innocent. Non-Aboriginal men stole the sheep and started their own farm. The police were told the Aboriginal men were murdered for no reason. They owned up but nothing could be done. Innocent people were killed.
This is Iris' account of the first massacre. But as if that weren't enough, a second, nearly identical massacre occurred a decade later. I've got to point out that were it not for the fact that these massacres had become part of local folklore, they might not be known about today. Many of the episodes of frontier war between the "settlers" and the Aborigines were not recorded. The author of what follows had access to people who had had "secrets" passed on by word of mouth in the local community.
(I came across a similar thing when I was teaching local history in a school south of Adelaide some years ago: a student who lived in the Clarendon-Kangarilla area tried reseraching the Aboriginal history of the area, and was told by several elderly residents that there had been a massacre of Aborigines, pushed down a steep cliff in the hills to the east of the towns, in the early days. Of course, there were no records and the informants were not enthusiastic about discussing the matter.)
In the account that follows, note how there is again, no direct evidence of Aborigines actually killing the victim. Nor were Aborigines who resisted the dispossession of their lands given to beheading people. Their victims (and there were a number on the West Coast) were speared. My first question is what was the motive for the murder, and did the murderer(s) use the local Aborigines as a scapegoat? Note too, how the author adopts an "end justifies the means" viewpoint in the conclusion. And I thought it was just us commie bastards that did that!
Across the Bar to Waterloo Bay: Elliston 1878-1978, compiled and published by the Elliston Centenary Book Committee.
It was in the year 1848 that John Hamp was murdered by natives, which started the legends, various rumors and conjectures which have persisted in the area around Elliston for over one hundred years regarding the “Elliston Massacre”.

After hearing many and varied stories of the murder and subsequent extermination of the native tribe one clear fact only was definite. John Hamp was found dead when his brother returned to the hut he shared with his brother near the northern end of Lake Newland. It was then late in the day. The indications were that the crime had been committed by the natives, who had decapitated the body, leaving John’s head beside the body, then ransacked the hut, and taken all the food. No natives had been sighted.

John Hamp and his brother were joint lessees of the pastoral run from Talia Station southward to Lake Newland.

Talia Station was managed by Dr Browne…

John’s brother, immediately after discovering the body, rode to Talia Station to let Dr Browne know, and to ask his advice regarding what should be done. Dr Browne immediately took it upon himself to organize a punitive force to punish the natives, and to report the killing to the police. He sent a message to Trooper Gerherty, the police trooper for that area…

So the small force was assembled and eventually left Talia to hunt the natives. As some time had elapsed since the murder all the natives had left the area, and it was to be a hunt, for there were hiding places all the way southward, which Dr Browne assumed was the direction taken, as there were numerous watering places along the coast and lakes…

As the bush gave good cover for the natives, who knew all the tracks through it, it was not an easy task for the pursuers to search it thoroughly, and the chase was necessarily slow. From the Lake Newland area the force of white men proceeded south, keeping near the coast, looking for signs of the natives. Not until they passed Waterloo Bay did they find any, when they surprised a party at a waterhole near a lake, later named Hamps Lake. There were men, women and children in the party at the waterhole, who took fright when they saw the armed men, and made for the titree. Some shots were fired at them, without effect other than to further frighten the natives who ran southward through the titree scrub, from one lake to another, and not until they broke from the cover of the titrees to the more open mallee and sheoak land, near where the roads to Port Lincoln and Lock now separate did they present any fair target to the pursuers.


Even though the country was more open, the low growth and scrub did not make it easy going for the horsemen, who however continued to shoot when they caught sight of the fugitives, and several natives were shot. The majority, however, continued their flight southward, and the leading horseman saw them race for the cliffs and jump over. As the white men were on unfamiliar ground, they approached the cliffs very cautiously, and when they did reach the brink and look down no trace of any natives could be seen. Straight down, 150 feet below, was the sea!

All the natives were presumed drowned.

So ended the “Elliston Massacre”.

Immediately after, Dr Browne addressed the men who comprised the punitive force, and told them bluntly that by killing a native, or natives, or being party to such killings, they had all broken the law and could themselves be hung as murderers. He explained that the men had achieved the purpose of the expedition in wiping out the coastal natives, or by driving them to their death over the cliffs, so unless they wanted to be arrested for murder they should say nothing about the events of the last few days while even one of the party was still alive. So they all swore an oath of secrecy…

…the only survivors of the massacre…were a small boy, whose mother had hidden him in some bushes when she fled during the chase of the natives, and a girl, quite young, who was left behind because she was lame. Who cared for these children I do not know, but more than one person told me of them living and visiting Elliston well into this century.
It is my opinion, in view of the description of the country and the stories of the natives, their knowledge of the coast and coastal country, their agility in descending and climbing the cliffs, and the delay of the party of white men in starting the pursuit, that the natives escaped, probably by leaving for the Gawler Ranges before the pursuit started, or even while it was in progress, and that the natives surprised at the waterhole at Hamps Lake were only a section of the tribe, and possibly unaware of what had happened at Talia. Of these people the few who were shot could have been the only losses, as once over the cliff they would know all the caves and hiding places below, only to leave for the Gawler Ranges when the hunt died.

Whatever the result – extermination or else escape – the purpose of the punitive force was achieved. The natives did not continually frequent the coast, and in the area concerned there were no further crimes committed.
I take that to mean that no more colonists were murdered, not that there were no more massacres, but I guess that depends on how you define "crimes".

Black Armband 1 - History by Government Decree

The phrase "black armband view of history" was coined by bourgeois historian Prof. Geoffrey Blainey in 1993.

He used the phrase to attack progressive historians who had had the temerity to argue that the 1778 "settlement" of Australia by the British was more accurately an "invasion", and that frontier wars had characterised the relations between settler forces and the indigenous peoples, rather than a process of "peaceful colonisation".

Yesterday, the History Teachers Association of Australia claimed that the Howard Government had shut them out of the development of a national Australian history curriculum for high schools.

They alleged that the curriculum was being "drafted in backrooms" away from public scrutiny and without the involvement of History teachers.

Howard is a right-wing Anglophile (British culturally and US imperialist politically) zealotwho heads a ministerial clique that is unapologetic about its attacks on indigenous land rights and trade union and workers' rights.

His Education Minister has alleged that "Maoists" are running the curriculum in schools.

If only!!!!

The Howardites want public education destroyed, except for a residual service aimed at the poor and dysfunctional, and all education brought under the ideological control of the most reactionary and most powerful sections of the capitalist class and the imperialists.

Last year, Howard convened a so-called "Australian history summit" to serve notice on schools that they had to stop children and emerging young adults from thinking critically about social issues.

The Howardites then commissioned Monash University's Professor Tony Taylor to develop a Years 3-10 Australian history curriculum that would confine history in schools to a pro-settler, pro-imperialist linear narrative.

But Taylor failed in his task. Howard thought that the Taylor draft raised too many questions and still allowed for the teaching of some history from an indigenous perspective.

In June, Howard tried to gather around his drawing board a four-person writing team. It included arch-conservative political commentator Gerard Henderson, author of a "history" of Howard's Liberal Party, and the original anti-indigenene Geoffrey Baliney! Two less conservative persons were added: Nicholas Brown, from the Australian National University, and Jennifer Lawless from the NSW Board of Studies. Lawless, however, was told that she could not participate by the NSW Minister for Education because the four person group was "biased". She was then replaced by former Presbyterian Ladies College principal Elizabeth Ward.

It is this group that the History Teachers Association accuses of hiding away in a backroom and concocting a "history" fit to be taught in our schools.

It is this group that is charged with carrying out the Howardites' decree that the teaching of Australian history not convey a "black armband view" of our past.

In support of the History Teachers Association and of honest and progressive history teachers, I'll devote some posts to Black Armband discussion.