South Australia - Aboriginal Australians

Aboriginal Australians 1837-1858

An Essay - Aborigines on the Coastal Plain

Editorial note – The following essay has been edited slightly to correct Kaurna language spelling and etymology.

The first settlers who arrived at Holdfast Bay in November 1836 described the local Kaurna people as 'friendly, harmless and honest to a remarkable degree.' and speaking a language believed to be of Malay origin - the Malays called water owey and the sun tindoo, while the Kaurna called them, respectively, kauwe and thirntu.

Much has been written over the years on the indigenous people and at the outset I would quote from two all but unknown sources. The first comment is from by Able Seaman Charles Moon of the Buffalo in respect of the 'Proclamation' ceremony:

On our landing for the proclamation the blacks ran away, but soon came back again. They were invited on board, but would not come until we left some men as hostages. The Governor made the chiefs dine with him on board the Buffalo, but the wine took greater effect upon them than was expected. They left the ship well pleased and were friendly ever after.

Writing a few days after the 'proclamation' ceremony in 1836 a settler said:

I fell in with a native, a fine-looking, manly fellow, whose appearance at once gave the lie to all past descriptions of the looks of the New Hollanders. He was a young man about 25 years of age, five feet ten inches in height; strong and well built, though the chest was rather narrow; with a very good-humoured face and a mouthful of the finest teeth I ever saw. Our storekeeper supplied him with slop-trousers and a military jacket, with white metal buttons and bright yellow cuffs of which he was not a little proud.

After an interchange of signs, I succeeded in making him understand that I wished to know the names of certain things in his own language and at last obtained a few dozen words... I pointed to the ship and by signs proposed that he should go with me on board. He understood me at once, but drew his hand back as a sign that he wished to return. I nodded and repeated the motion and his confidence from that moment seemed to be complete.

One of the boats took off and poor Ootinai, for that he told me was his name, created a great sensation among the people on board. He sat down beside me and watched and imitated every move I made. He ate heartily of cold tongue, fried fish, beef pie and plum pudding and after two or three attempts handled his knife and fork with as much dexterity as I could. He was greatly delighted with the piano forte which was played to him, as well as the flute to which he manifested a great wish to dance.

Willing to try his obedience, which had hitherto been implicit, I shook my head, on which he sat down; this manoeuvre was twice repeated; when at last I nodded assent, he jumped up and began kicking and dancing with all his might. The quickness with which he received all the novelties in the ship led to the supposition that he had been on shipboard before; that, however, was not the case... he was much pleased with my hair and took off my hat, observing that it resembled his own. there was a degree of archness and quickness which places this race many degrees above the savage.

It was not long before the Kaurna met with so-called British justice. In 1842 the citizens of Thebarton were outraged when Mr Peter Cook, a local butcher, had his watch stolen. In due course Munaitya, a member of the Kaurna people, was arraigned before the dispensers of Her Majesty's colonial justice and found guilty of theft.

A public flogging was prescribed at the Adelaide gaol and at the appointed hour several hundred citizens who possessed, no doubt, strong stomachs and a sadistic bent, gathered before the flogging rack among whom, as suggested by the Editor of the morning press, 'we regretted to observe a number of women.'

Having been secured to the triangle he received fifty lashes of a cat-o'-nine-tails, which ' he bore with commendable fortitude. The operator then gave him some water. At the command of the Sheriff, twenty-five more lashes were administered... after which he was conducted away by two of his tribe...'

In a sadistic summation in the local press it was said that:

Our reporter subsequently saw Monyitya's back, and described the apparent effect of the whipping as one which, although it cannot by any means be called cruel, is, nevertheless, likely to produce a lasting impression upon the mind of the culprit, if not upon his native companions who witnessed the infliction.

The population of the Kaurna people sank from 650 in 1841 to 150 in 1856 and a striking example of what we call, today, 'ethnic cleansing' of this embattled, and now extinct, people is in the following quotation from an Adelaide newspaper which is a positive indictment of the indifference which pervaded colonial society:

Hoar frost covered the hill all round... [On] the side of [it]... lay huddled together in a fretting mass, two reeking specimens of sable humanity. What a sight - what a picture of uncompensated, unmitigated, hopeless misery. A venerable old patriarch, pillowed on the icy grass, with his grey locks dappled in blood, forced by fierce pulmonic convulsions from his weakened lungs... His blind old lubra lay beside him.

All the covering that this frail pair could muster... was, for him, a coarse rotten remnant of a shirt; for her, a filthy abomination in the shape of a dilapidated opossum rug... Were the panacea for the suffering race... to be found in our capital, there would probably be no getting a tithe of them to partake of it.

In a lighter vein, in his reminiscences upon the Glenelg district David Shepard recalled that:

There were always a lot of blackfellows living in wurleys across the creek and us boys were frequent visitors to them; we would sit in their wurleys and talk with them; we picked up some of their language...

The property across the creek belonged to a Mr Gray. He was well known, especially to us boys. He rode a grey horse and with it he often chased us even into the river, but he never caught us; we never did him any harm. Why should he chase us? We went over there merely to talk with the blackfellows and kill snakes. We used to kill a good many of different sorts and put them across a long stick and take them on the bridge and tip them into the running stream. We would always show them to the blacks before doing so.... We always got on very well with the blacks. They always advised us to keep clear of 'old Gray' as they always called him.

One day we went over the bridge for the purpose of killing snakes when two of the Lubras came to us and said, 'My wordt boys, look out, Old Gray bin longa wurleys - 'im say he catch you, 'im let wild bullocks loose - so look out boys , 'im bullocks up there now, so don't go boys.'

This site, known as the 'Black's Camp' by the younger brigade of the district, was disbanded in August 1899 following ministrations of Mr and Mrs Matthews and Miss Cartwright, who had evinced a great interest in the welfare of Aborigines. For a considerable time the habitation on the banks of the Patawalonga had provided shelter for about ten Aborigines. The surroundings were anything but pleasant and with only a few bags overhead they had experienced a particularly trying time during the previous cold winter. At first it was thought possible to build a room of some sort, but the owners of the land on which the camp was situated could not be found and therefore the best alternative was to remove them to the mission station at Point McLeay.

On 31 August 1899 willing hands stoked a fire that disposed of the camp and accumulated rubbish, while the Glenelg contingent, together with others, and numbering eighteen in all, were sent away by train on 1 September to Milang, en route to Point McLeay, 'the district to which they belong', while a reporter furnished an illuminating paragraph which gives an interesting insight into the inherent lack of Christian charity within the dominant European population:

The drinking and begging of these people render their presence about Adelaide very undesirable and it is a fruitful source of evil to them. The Commissioner of Police has issued instructions that in future their camps will not be allowed at or near the city.

So, while the Kaurna people and others throughout South Australia were flogged, degraded, abused and socially ignored, prior to all but disappearing from the face of the earth, Adelaide, together with villages such as Thebarton and Cowandilla, grew slowly upon the old tribal land.

Sources

Geoffrey H. Manning, A Colonial Experience, Robert Foster & Tom Gara, cited in Rob Linn, Frail Flesh and Blood, pp 10-12, Yvonne Allen, Footprints in the Sand, Observer, 4 October 1858, p. 4 (supp.), Chronicle, 31 January 1935, p. 48, MLSA ref. D4888(L), Advertiser, 31 January 1898, p. 6, Observer, 2 September 1899, p. 51.

The Aborigines of South Australia

(Taken from Geoffrey H. Manning's A Colonial Experience)

Shame Upon Us! We take their land and drive away their food by what we call civilisation, and then deny them shelter from a storm... What comes of all the hypocrisy of our wishes to better their condition?.. The police drive them into the bush to murder shepherds, and then we cry out for more police... What can a maddened black think of our Christianity to deny him the sod on which he was born... You grow hundreds of bushels of corn on his land but deny him the crumbs that fall from the table... They kill a sheep, but you drive his kangaroo away. You now drive him away from his own, his native land - out upon it; how can God's all-seeing eye approve of this?
(Adelaide Times, 24 May 1851, page 6e.)

Introduction

The unhappiest feature of the spread of the white races over the earth is the subsequent disappearance of the natives with whom they inevitably came in contact. Early Spanish colonisation in the New World is a chapter of horrors, while British expansion in North America presents, in dealing with the natives, many features from which the modern mind recoils.

The record of the Dutch in South Africa is stained similarly, and the whole civilised world shuddered at the exploits of the Belgians in the Congo. In the early 20th century Germany has a similarly unenviable record in the Pacific Islands. Indeed, it seems to be the law, of what learned people call socio-politics, that a primitive race, brought in contact with a people of so called 'higher' civilisation, invariably goes to the wall. It is greatly to the credit of the British that they were the first to set their hands resolutely against the horrors which have usually attended this process. The fate of the Australian Aborigine is sufficient witness that they were as incapable of arresting that process, but they did attempt to ensure that their relations with the indigenous people should be as decent as possible.

There is a danger, however, of over-estimating the success that attended these efforts. The history of every State in the Commonwealth is foul with the blood of the unfortunate Aborigines and is marked with deeds of callous brutality on the part of the settlers and natives alike. To this record South Australia is a pleasant exception, an exception, indeed, unique in the annals of white colonisation.

Not, of course, that blood was not spilt here on both sides, or that many mistakes were not made in dealing with the Aborigines which led to misunderstanding, but as the scene of an honest-to-God attempt to give them a square deal, from the outset South Australia holds pride of place among the countries of the earth which have been invaded and settled by Europeans.

Life on the Adelaide Plains

Would not the claims of justice and humanity be equally satisfied and the majesty of the English law vindicated by emancipating the Aborigines from its direct operation? At present their roving mode of life is a continual violation of one of its inquisitions, which directs that the man who can give no satisfactory account of himself and his means of living be committed as a rogue and vagabond.
(Register, 1 December 1855, page 2.)

Prior to the arrival of the first European settlers, the area now occupied by the city of Adelaide - called Tarndanya (red kangaroo place) - was open grassy plains, interspersed with patches of woodland, mainly mallee box, sheoaks and acacias, and scattered red gums and blue gums. The River Torrens was lined with a dense red gum forest. It wound its way from the foothills across the plains to feed its waters into the Reedbeds (Witungga - 'reedy place') at Fulham.

The Kaurna called the river Karrawirra Parri, 'red gum forest river'. The area that is now Hindmarsh and Thebarton was known to the Kaurna as Karraundongga, literally 'red gum spear place'. It was a favourite locality for obtaining red gum branches used for making heavy fighting spears known as windas. The other creeks that descend from the foothills were lined also with red gums, as was the Sturt River Warriparri - 'windy river'). A thick forest of native pines, eucalypts and sheoaks stretched from south Adelaide towards Glenelg.

The coastal sandhills were vegetated thickly with acacia, teatree and sedges, while the higher red sand dunes inland supported stands of native pines, eucalypts and sheoaks. Behind these dunes was an extensive low-lying swampy area extending from the upper reaches of the Port River southwards through the Reedbeds at Fulham to the Patawalonga (Patawilya - 'gum-scrub place') and reaching as far inland as Richmond and Cowandilla (Kawandilla – ‘in the north').

On the grassy plains and open woodlands, the Aborigines hunted kangaroos, emus and wallabies while bandicoots, bilbies, bettongs and other small marsupials were abundant in the forests and scrub. Among the many plant foods available to the Aborigines were the fruits of the Carpobrotus (pigface), Exocarpus (wild cherry), Kunzea pomifera (muntrie), Santalum acuminatum (quandong) and Nitraria billardierei (nitre bush) and the roots of Oxalis, Xanthorrhoea (grass tree) and several species of rushes. The Adelaide plains were criss-crossed with the tracks of the ancestral spirits, but only fragments of the rich mythology have survived. It is known, as mentioned previously, that Tarnda (male red kangaroo), which being introduced chest scarification rites, was associated with the area now occupied by the city of Adelaide.

Aboriginal Legends

The Kaurna people believed they were the children of Munana who, long ago in the Munaintya (the Dream Time), had climbed up into the sky from his home in Pindingga (associated with Kangaroo Island). Here by the river was one of their favourite camping places, Tambawodli (the camp on the plain). To the west, Wongayerlo (the water where the sun sinks - Saint Vincent Gulf), flowed past Mudlungga (the place of the nose - Lefevre Peninsula) which was separated by a sea creek from Yertabulti (the place of slumber - now the Port Adelaide district), believed to be where the birds flew each night to sleep.

Wongayerlo yielded an endless supply of shellfish, and during many a long summer evening the Kaurna camped on Mudlangga to cook the day's catch in their camp fires. Wongayerlo had many fish, too, especially in the sea creek and south of Witungga near Patawilya, where there were plenty of marilanna (mullet) and spotted whiting.

There were many richly beautiful places in Tarndanya - Mikawomma (the plain), where Kilkenny now stands, was the home of the emu and the wild turkey, and in umbrageous gum trees the kookaburras laughed as the parrots annoyed the magpies with incessant chattering. Everywhere were the Marnpi and other types of native pigeon. In Witungga, at the head of the sea creek where the river of Tarndanya lost itself in the reeds and the lagoons, and in Kartawito, lived the swamp parrot whose eggs were so good to eat.

Over countless aeons the Kaurna people roamed this rich unchanging land. Every year the tutta (grass) grew green and fresh to feed the kangaroo, and every year at worltatti (which is derived from worlta 'clear; warm; hot'), the grasses grew yellow. This was the time when fire came to eat the grass and make room for the grass seeds to grow again.

Wodliparri (the river in the sky with reeds and waterholes - the 'Milky Way') is the river in the Dreamtime, flowing through the vast celestial plain known as Womma, the celestial plain, a place where youthful hunters stalked kangaroo and emus. The Orion belt was Tinniinyaranna, while the Magellanic clouds were Ngakallomurro, representing the ashes of rainbow lorikeets that were trapped and put to death.

But the land was to be changed beyond recognition following the arrival of a second nation of people - the white Europeans. Since their coming, all Tarndanya has changed. All the Kaurna, all their kangaroos, all the trees and birds, most of the fish and the Aboriginal meeting places have disappeared under the European onslaught. No more is the water fresh and clear in the drinking places and even Wongayerlo grew so hungry that he has eaten the sands of the beaches.

Mudlungga (the place of the nose) is now known as 'Lefevre Peninsula' although the Kaurna name is still the more appropriate. The first people, being true antipodeans, navigated by the Southern Cross. Consequently, unlike the newcomers who navigated by the Pole Star, they were in the habit of viewing their country from the north to the south. When thus viewed on a map, the striking likeness of the peninsula to a hooked and flattened nose is at once the vindication of the name and a tribute to the powers of observation of the Kaurna.

The Arrival of the White Settlers

Had they been a race equal to the New Zealander, Government would have spared no means if they could have got possession of the land by supplying them with food and medicine... To visit the encampments of the natives is distressing; exposure at this season of the year, many ill, without food, almost denuded, living at the mercy of their own tribe, is a disgrace...[ to those] who have amassed wealth, to the destruction of their common necessaries of life and health.
(Register, 11 July 1857, page 2h.)

The first settlers on the Adelaide Plains referred to the local people, the Kaurna, simply as the 'Adelaide tribe', a term that included the local groups or clans living in the Adelaide area as well as those on the Para and Gawler Rivers and others along the coast southwards towards Rapid Bay. Each of the local groups consisted of several families and numbered between 30 and 40 members.

It is clear from early historical accounts that each local group occupied a clearly defined territory, and each family was closely linked to a particular portion of the group's territory, termed the pangkara. Ties of kinship, intermarriage, trade and ceremonial obligations linked the neighbouring groups. The Kaurna also had close cultural links with the Ramindjeri people from Encounter Bay and the Ngadjuri of the Mid-North.

The South Australian Colonisation Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1834, declared the lands of the new colony to be 'waste and unoccupied'. The Act's clear denial of the Aborigines' rights to land met with considerable opposition from humanitarian circles in Great Britain, including Lord Glenelg, Sir George Grey and other influential men in the Colonial Office in London.

The Colonial Office subsequently enshrined the principal of Aboriginal land rights by inserting in the Letters Patent, the document issued to the Colonisation Commissioners early in 1836 to formally establish the colony of South Australia, a clause which recognised the prior rights of the Aborigines to the land and guaranteed that 'any lands now actually occupied or enjoyed by [the] Natives would not be alienated.'

After protracted negotiations with the Colonial Office, the Colonisation Commissioners agreed to the appointment of a Protector to safeguard the Aborigines' interests. Among his duties, the Protector was required to ensure that any land opened up for public sale had been voluntarily ceded and fairly purchased from the Aborigines.

The Commissioners agreed to set aside 20% of the proceeds from all land sales in the colony to be used for the benefit of the Aborigines and also committed the South Australia Company to protecting 'the natives in the unmolested exercise of their rights of property should such a right be found to exist.'

The English people are partial to collections. They have religious meetings ending in a collection... Orators, stump, table, dining, or parliamentary, plead severally for a collection. Testimonials are plentiful as blackberries to some popular public servant, to a successful speculator, to a theatrical fiddler... All these are well in a way. Why not, for a novelty, this year try a collection for the original owners of 'the land we live in?' They are poor enough, heaven knows, ragged and hungry and houseless... Can we not spare some of the old ewes now rotting on the distant runs, and add these and a few blankets to the stingy once-a-year liberality of the State?... Blackfellow and whitefellow will together face that tremendous day, when One will proclaim 'Forasmuch as ye did it not to these, ye did it not to me.'

Colonial officials, missionaries and others, who had close contact with the Kaurna soon became aware that they did have a well-defined system of land ownership. In 1839, a year after taking up the position of Protector, Moorhouse wrote:

We find - what the Europeans thought the Aborigines of Australia did not possess - territorial rights, families owning and holding certain districts of land which pass from fathers to sons, never to daughters, with as much regularity as property in our own country.

Similarly, Teichelmann, one of the Lutheran missionaries, observed that:

Each tribe has a certain district of the country as a property received by their forefathers, the boundaries of which are fixed.

It has been argued that despite considerable evidence that the Aborigines had clearly recognisable territorial rights, the Commissioners, in alliance with land-hungry colonists, frustrated all the attempts by Governors Gawler and Grey and the Protectors to safeguard those rights and to create reserves for Aborigines.

No attempts were ever made to negotiate with the Kaurna for the voluntary transfer of their lands and the scheme to use a proportion of the land sale funds for the benefit of the Aborigines was never implemented. The Waste Lands Act of 1842 finally gave the Governor the power to reserve land for the use or benefit of the Aborigines. Small blocks were subsequently reserved for the Aborigines throughout the settled districts. By then, however, the Kaurna had already been dispossessed of the lands that they and their ancestors had occupied for perhaps a thousand generations.

The first settlers who arrived at Holdfast Bay in November 1836 described the local Kaurna people as 'friendly, harmless and honest to a remarkable degree.' Within a few months the Kaurna were making themselves useful to the new settlers, acting as guides, carrying water and firewood and performing other chores around the settlement, for which they were rewarded with food, tobacco, clothes and other items. Captain Walter Bromley was appointed Protector of Aborigines in May 1837. He set up his tent on the banks of the Torrens [in what is now Bonython Park] and encouraged the Aborigines to visit him there to receive rations of food and blankets.

Perhaps it is a trite comment, but it would appear that it was impossible for the Kaurna to consent either to the occupation of their land, or on their enforced subjection to English law, for they were incapable of comprehending the import and results of either one or the other. One might be excused for concluding that, in their estimation of right and wrong, 'the killing of a white invader of their country [would be] rather more virtuous than criminal.'

An horrendous event occurred in 1842 when the inhabitants of the village of Thebarton were outraged when Mr Peter Cook, a local butcher, had his watch stolen. In due course Monyitya, a member of the Kaurna people, was arraigned before the dispensers of Her Majesty's colonial justice and found guilty of theft.

Having been secured to the triangle he received fifty lashes of a cat-o'-nine-tails, which 'he bore with commendable fortitude. The operator then gave him some water. At the command of the Sheriff, twenty-five more lashes were administered... after which he was conducted away by two of his tribe...'

In a sadistic summation in the local press it was said that:

Our reporter subsequently saw Monyitya's back, and described the apparent effect of the whipping as one which, although it cannot by any means be called cruel, is, nevertheless, likely to produce a lasting impression upon the mind of the culprit, if not upon his native companions who witnessed the infliction.

The Kaurna population sank from about 300 in 1841 to 150 in 1856 and during this period the white settlers intruded upon their lands, which were given to them by God, and, in so doing, completely overturned and embarrassed all their former accustomed modes of living. Driven from their own country and deprived of their means of subsistence, they were placed in a social position entirely strange to them, where difficulties and perplexities encountered them at every step.

A striking example of the decimation of this embattled, and now extinct, people is in the following quotation from an Adelaide newspaper which is a positive indictment of the indifference which pervaded colonial society:

Hoar frost covered the hill all round... [On] the side of [it]... lay huddled together in a fretting mass, two reeking specimens of sable humanity. What a sight - what a picture of uncompensated, unmitigated, hopeless misery. A venerable old patriarch, pillowed on the icy grass, with his grey locks dappled in blood, forced by fierce pulmonic convulsions from his weakened lungs... His blind old lubra lay beside him.

All the covering that this frail pair could muster... was, for him, a coarse rotten remnant of a shirt; for her, a filthy abomination in the shape of a dilapidated opossum rug... Were the panacea for the suffering race... to be found in our capital, there would probably be no getting a tithe of them to partake of it.

So, while the Kaurna people and others throughout South Australia were flogged, degraded, abused and socially ignored, prior to all but disappearing from the face of the earth, Adelaide, together with villages such as Kensington and Norwood, grew slowly upon the old tribal land.

Relations With the Aborigines

(Taken from Geoffrey H. Manning's A Colonial Experience)

From my personal experience with the Aborigines I must say they were friendly and mixed freely with we interlopers. They soon picked up a little 'pidgin' English and made themselves understood by signs and gesticulations. I learned some of the native speech and became fairly proficient and conversed freely with them in their own tongue and my sister and, years later, we used it between ourselves.

The vocabulary was not very extensive; for instance, in counting there were only words to indicate one, two and three, after that it was all done by showing their fingers in fives or tens. A little over a hundred of their words or names would enable one to carry on a fair conversation.

Captain Bromley established a sort of location by having shelter sheds built a little to the west of 'Buffalo Row' on the south bank of a gully near the present cattle sale yards. The Aborigines did not take kindly to the sheds and preferred their own wurleys. His efforts were tragically terminated when, in April 1838, his dead body was found in the river not far from where he lived and the cause of his death remains a mystery.

My sister and I often joined the Aboriginal children in their games of throwing spears and waddies. One of their pastimes was a mock battle, in which small bark shields were used and tea tree shoots about three feet long were thrown to represent spears. They would do no serious injury, though they gave a nasty blow. We also bathed together in the river where I learned to swim. The Aborigines, both young and old, at first swam in their own style, which we called dog-paddling, but some of them soon got into our way of breast-stroke swimming.

I once witnessed a native game that only the men took part in. It was on the occasion of a friendly tribe's visit to Adelaide. The sport took place on the Park Lands between the river and Montefiore Hill where about 30 to 40 men on each side sat in a cluster about 30 yards apart. A great deal of parley went on between them for some time and at length one of them advanced into the middle space, shaking in his hand a bunch of emu feather feathers firmly tied around the stems. This appeared to be a challenge.

Then one from the other side came out and tried to take the feathers from him. A melee ensued and at length others came out in twos and threes to help their respective sides until the whole company got in a heap where a lively struggle took place. It was like the old game of 'more stacks on the mill' very much extended. All the men were quite naked and climbed over each other, yelling and jabbering, for fully ten minutes, until all were too hot and tired to continue.

There was much noise and commotion when the side returned with the feathers to their starting point. The exercise was a real trial of strength and a thorough scramble. They also had wrestling bouts in which there were no tripping or footwork. It was simply hugging and attempting to force the opponent down on his back to the ground.

Occasional Essays on South Australian History

Researched and written by Geoffrey H. Manning

Part III - Essay No. 5 - The Aborigines of the Adelaide Plains

Shame Upon Us! We take their land and drive away their food by what we call civilization, and then deny them shelter from a storm... What comes of all the hypocrisy of our wishes to better their condition?.. The police drive them into the bush to murder shepherds, and then we cry out for more police... What can a maddened black think of our Christianity to deny him the sod on which he was born?.. You grow hundreds of bushels of corn on his land but deny him the crumbs that fall from the table... They kill a sheep, but you drive his kangaroo away. You now drive him away from his own, his native land - out upon it; how can God's all-seeing eye approve of this?
(Adelaide Times, 24 May 1851, page 6e.)

Introduction

According to Rev F. W. Taplin, a long-time missionary at Point McLeay Aboriginal Mission (Raukkan), there are grounds for believing that the Australian Aborigines are descendants of two races. In one case we find the representative of a light-skinned active race with lank straight hair and slightly angular features and a sullen, morose disposition. On the other hand a "curly wig", black skin, thick set, hairy frame with bright eyes twinkling humor and good nature.

He goes on to say that peculiarities of language, tradition and system of kinship support this theory and have led to various suppositions regarding the origin of the Australian Aborigines, perhaps the most favoured being the assumption that they are descendants of certain wanderers from southern India who in the course of their migration were subject to admixture with the inhabitants of the Malaysian Peninsula.

However, the work of a modern anthropologist, the late Norman B. Tindale has shown that Rev Taplin's "theory" was no more than guesswork - Tindale's findings were summarised by the late Professor Manning Clark as follows:

The first [arrivals] were the Negrito people - short, dark-skinned, curly-haired and broad-nosed - who were forced to migrate from their hunting grounds in south-east Asia by the movement into those areas of people of a higher material culture, at a time when Tasmania, Australia and new Guinea formed part of the land mass of Asia.

Later another people arrived - the Murrayians, who were related to the Ainu in Japan and either destroyed the Negritos or drove them into valleys behind Cairns, and south to what is now Tasmania, the islands of Bass Strait and Kangaroo Island. Then, in turn, the Murrayians were challenged and displaced by the Carpentarians - a people probably related to the Vedda of Ceylon, who settled in the northern portion of Australia after driving the Murrayians southwards in their turn...

The Coming of the White Man

The South Australian Colonisation Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1834, declared the lands of the new colony to be " unoccupied". The Act's clear denial of the Aborigines' rights to land met with considerable opposition from humanitarian circles in Great Britain, including Lord Glenelg, Sir George Grey and other influential men in the Colonial Office in London. The Colonial Office subsequently enshrined the principal of Aboriginal land rights by inserting in the Letters Patent, the document issued to the Colonization Commissioners early in 1836 to formally establish the colony of South Australia, a clause which recognized the prior rights of the Aborigines to the land and guaranteed that "any lands now actually occupied or enjoyed by [the] Natives' would not be alienated."

After protracted negotiations with the Colonial Office, the Colonization Commissioners agreed to the appointment of a Protector to safeguard the Aborigines' interests. Among his duties, the Protector was required to ensure that any land opened up for public sale had been voluntarily ceded and fairly purchased from the Aborigines. The Commissioners agreed to set aside 20% of the proceeds from all land sales in the colony to be used for the benefit of the Aborigines and also committed the South Australia Company to protecting "the natives in the unmolested exercise of their rights of property should such a right be found to exist".

In the new colony, these commitments were soon forgotten and all the lands were declared open for public sale. A few of the more enlightened colonists saw the Aborigines' dispossession as unjust and public debate on the issue occasionally flared in the newspapers. Colonial officials, missionaries and others who had close contact with the Kaurna soon became aware that they did have a well-defined system of land ownership. In 1839, a year after taking up the position of Protector, Moorhouse wrote:

We find - what the Europeans thought the Aborigines of Australia did not possess - territorial rights, families owning and holding certain districts of land which pass from fathers to sons, never to daughters, with as much regularity as property in our own country.

Similarly, Teichelmann, one of the Lutheran missionaries, observed that:

Each tribe has a certain district of the country as a property received by their forefathers, the boundaries of which are fixed."

From the closing months of 1836 their use of the land, together with customs going back for thousands of years, was to be slowly, but surely, all but exterminated by the intrusion of the British settler and the accompanying laws and diseases of their so-called "civilisation". It has been said that the first contact of this ethos with barbarism, wherever it occurs, "is accompanied or speedily followed by conflict; and the results of that conflict and attendant circumstances is almost invariably the extinction, not of barbarism merely, but of the barbarians". Prophetic words, indeed!

In June 1837, following a proclamation by Governor Hindmarsh in respect of the indigenous Aboriginals, Sir John Jeffcott, the first colonial judge, delivered a charge to "The Grand Jury of the Province" and in the course of his address suggested that the colonists should avoid scrupulously giving them offence and to respect their property at all times.

He urged them not to teach them British vices which would render them more debased than when they were found but, by example, "lead them into the paths of civilization and virtue."

The great Father of the human family... has placed us amongst them, and given us to enjoy the land which is their birthright, - no doubt for his own wise purposes, and, it may be hoped with a view to their ultimate conversion to His holy religion.

These sentiments echoed the wishes of the Commissioners for South Australia in London who, being aware of the injustice and cruelty meted out to the Aborigines in New South Wales and Tasmania, were determined that the rights of Aborigines would be protected in the new colony, and it was agreed that the following objectives should be sought:

To guard them against personal outrage and violence.
To protect them in the undisturbed enjoyment of their proprietary right to soil, wherever such right may be found to exist.
To make it an invariable and cardinal condition in all bargains and treaties entered into with the natives for the cession of lands possessed by them in occupation or enjoyment, that permanent subsistence should be supplied to them from some other source.
To promote amongst them the spread of civilisation and the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian religion.

In addition, it was enacted that they were to be treated as British subjects and that all aggression upon them would be strictly punished, while an officer of the Crown would be appointed especially to look over their welfare.

Such inherent platitudes were anathema to the more ruthless settler who suggested that they should be either mercifully exterminated or left to "the scarcely less certain but cruel fate of perishing by the loathsome diseases or excesses which [had] never failed to follow their contacts with whites." The more saintly among the interlopers held the view that they should be placed in a school where "all the mysteries of science, refinement and religion" could be inculcated within them.

At times the latter members of colonial society went a little further and pleaded for the Aboriginals who were "daily retreating from the footsteps of a race whose arts and powers [were] so much superior... as to leave no chance of their being able to feed or rear their young in peace amidst their accustomed haunts." This aroused the displeasure of the self-centred exploiter whose creed was that "the black brutes know well enough that they can obtain flour or meat by pestering you till you fling it at their heads... They will never rouse themselves from their slothful, dirty and sluggard state... Why do the Government inveigle us to these distant climes without some protection against these wretches?"

For about the first three years of European settlement the indigenous Kaurna tribe, who were shy and intelligent, coupled with an innate curiosity in respect of the whims and fancies of the white invaders, lived in relative harmony. If trouble did occur the catalyst was invariably the trading of insults or arguments about the abuse on Aboriginal women.

However, this initial euphoria was short-lived. The Commissioners' edict in respect of land acquisition was not implemented and the natives became increasingly hostile. The colonists acquired their lands and drove off the game while the settlers' stock began to destroy plants and shrubs which were a valuable source of food. The Colonial Secretary, Mr Gouger, observed wryly:

No legal provision by way of purchase of land on their behalf, or in any other mode, has yet been made, nor do I think that with proper care it is at all necessary.

Many attempts were made to "Christianise" the Kaurna; a "Native Location" conducted by German missionaries was established and by 1840 six cottages had been built and an acre of ground placed under cultivation "and out of 41 children in Adelaide, the average school attendance was eleven daily." The adults were much more inaccessible for religious instruction - "they are naturally proud and express themselves perfectly satisfied with the tradition of their forefathers."

A similar experiment was conducted in 1838 when the Government had a row of pise huts erected on the North Park Lands for the accommodation of the Kaurna tribe who, nevertheless, stuck to their "spontaneous pervious mansions of gum-branches and sheaoak". Although the buildings were always open to would-be occupants the authorities might as well have provided "mackintosh cloaks and umbrellas for Gov Gawler's ducks" for the natives merely used the quarters as a wind break and chose to sleep outside "in their customary umbrageous dormitories".

In 1842, the inhabitants of the village of Thebarton were outraged when Mr Peter Cook, a local butcher, had his watch stolen. In due course Monyitya, a member of the Kaurna tribe, was arraigned before the dispensers of Her Majesty's colonial justice and found guilty of theft. A public flogging was prescribed at the Adelaide Gaol and at the appointed hour several hundred citizens who possessed, no doubt, strong stomachs and a sadistic bent, gathered before the flogging rack among whom "we regretted to observe a considerable number of women":

Having been secured to the triangle [he] received fifty lashes of a cat-o'-nine-tails, which he bore with commendable fortitude... The operator then gave him some water... At the command of the Sheriff, twenty-five more lashes were administered... after which he was conducted away by two of his tribe...

Our reporter had subsequently to see Monyitya's back, and described the apparent effect of the whipping as one which, although it cannot by any means be called cruel, is, nevertheless, likely to produce a lasting impression upon the mind of the unfortunate culprit, if not upon his native companions who witnessed the infliction.

Perhaps it is a trite comment, but it would appear that it was impossible for the Kaurna to consent either to the occupation of their land or on their enforced subjection to English law for they were incapable of comprehending the import and results of either one or the other. One might be excused for concluding that, in their estimation of right and wrong, "the killing of a white invader of their country [would be] rather more virtuous than criminal".

Conclusion

The Kaurna tribe population sank from 650 in 1841 to 150 in 1856 and a striking example of the "ethnic cleansing" of this embattled, and now extinct, people is in the following quotation from an Adelaide newspaper which is a positive indictment of the indifference which pervaded colonial society:

Hoar frost covered the hill all round... [On] the side of [it]... lay huddled together in a fretting mass, two reeking specimens of sable humanity. What a sight - what a picture of uncompensated, unmitigated, hopeless misery. A venerable old patriarch, pillowed on the icy grass, with his grey locks dappled in blood, forced by fierce pulmonic convulsions from his weakened lungs... His blind old lubra lay beside him.

All the covering that this frail pair could muster... was, for him, a coarse rotten remnant of a shirt; for her, a filthy abomination in the shape of a dilapidated opossum rug... Were the panacea for the suffering race... to be found in our capital, there would probably be no getting a tithe of them to partake of it.

So, while the Kaurna tribe and others throughout South Australia were flogged, degraded, abused and socially ignored, prior to all but disappearing from the face of the earth, Adelaide and contiguous villages grew slowly upon the old tribal land.

Sources

F.W. Taplin, An Australian Native Fifty Years Ago, cited in the Register, 24 April 1889, p. 5g.
C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Book 1, p. 3.
Robert Foster & Tom Gara, cited in Rob Linn, Frail Flesh and Blood.
Kathleen Hassell, BA Thesis, Adelaide University, The Relations Between the Settlers and the Aborigines in South Australia.
Geoffrey H. Manning, Hope Farm Chronicle
Unpublished paper by Tom Gara, Thebarton's First Occupants.
Southern Australian, 22 December 1838, p. 4c, 11 January 1842, p. 4f, 7 June 1842, p. 3c, Register, 6 August 1842, p. 2b, 4 January 1876, p. 7d, 3 June 1837, p. 4a, South Australian Record, 15 November 1839, p. 270, Adelaide Chronicle, 24 March 1840, p. 2e, Observer, 4 October 1858, p. 4g (supp.)

Relations with the Aborigines of the Lower South East

(Taken from an unpublished manuscript by Geoffrey H. Manning titled "A History of the Lower South East District of South Australia in the 19th Century")

Observer

The Aborigines of the South East were once composed of powerful tribes, each occupying its own territory which seemed to be strictly defined, and territorial rights guarded jealously. Each had different dialects and the names of the tribes were Booandik, Pinegunga, Mootatunga, Wichitunga and Polingunga, of which the first named was the most powerful. The tract of country occupied by the Booandik extended from the mouth of the River Glenelg to Rivoli Bay North (Beachport) for about 30 miles inland. Irrespective of their territory they were divided into two classes - Kumite and Kroke - and here the curious tribal custom in relation to marriage occurred. A Kroke had to always marry a Kumite woman and a Kumite could only marry a Kroke woman, while any children were placed in the mother?s class.

Infants were betrothed to one another by their parents according to a system of exchange called ?wootambou? and Mrs Smith, who wrote a book on their life style, suggested that ?their marriage customs clearly indicate their sense that virtue is honour.? Polygamy was the rule, most of the men having two wives and there was clear evidence that infanticide was once practised and at times mothers ate their infants.

Among their legends it was said the Port MacDonnell originated through the anger of an aboriginal hero who caught a woman stealing his store of gum and to punish her he extended his right leg towards Cape Northumberland and his left to Green Point, thus forming the present coast there.

In the 1840s the River Glenelg was a favourite camping place and at McPherson's station it was reported that after an attack by the Aborigines:

The overseer lay in a very dangerous state having been speared a few days before while taking his usual ride around the run. He had dismounted at the time of the murderous attack and although speared in eight places he managed to get upon his horse and ride home. Tolmer affirmed that the destruction of property was dreadful particularly on the sheep runs. In many instances whole flocks were driven away and destroyed, while in others from 100 to 200 sheep had been taken.

The cattle owners also suffered and Mr Leake, at Glencoe, described the natives as follows:

They were numerous, small in stature and very active and fierce. About 60 or 70 attacked one of my shepherds and although he was well armed and fired several shots at them, they succeeded in spearing him and stealing about 40 sheep.

Leake and a party went in hot pursuit and surprised the natives while they were busy cooking the sheep. There was about 200 of them drawn up in a half-moon form and gave battle, but on receiving two rounds from the guns they fled leaving their spears, tomahawks, waddies and cooked sheep. They had left 20 fires burning and the ground was strewn with offal, while parts of sheep hung from the branches of trees.

Evelyn P.S. Sturt of the Compton Station recalled that:

The natives were very inimical when we first arrived. Our neighbour, Mr Leake, suffered many losses from them but we escaped any attack which I attribute to the astonishment they evinced at seeing a good rifle aimed by a correct eye, for not a crow would dare to caw on the highest tree near our camp, but a rifle ball reached him... I have always thought that this gained us their respect. They gave me the name of a chief who had fallen in battle and affirmed that I had again come among them as a white fellow.

George Riddoch who was closely associated with the Aborigines, and speaking of them as they were in 1865, said, in retrospect, that they were "fairly civilised, smart, sharp as needles, as docile as whites, ready to do a good day's work for wages. Alas, they are now down and out."

What was considered to be the cruelest murder of an Aborigine in the South East occurred in the 1840s and an eye witness recounted this sad story:

It was a sultry afternoon in the early part of summer. A heavy brooding stillness peculiar to Australia in close weather covered the country. Scarcely a breath of air moved the thick dark trees in the bush and as I walked down to the seashore, the water, which was far out, was as calm as a lake... Towards evening I turned homeward and was approaching a swamp not far from the station when I heard a pistol shot and soon afterwards the cry of a native., ?White man, come! White man, come!

I ran up a rise of ground that overlooked the station on the one side and an aboriginal camp of miamias on the other and, turning in the latter direction, I saw a native crawling in apparent pain from one miamia to the swamp, where he evidently wanted a drink. On running to his assistance I saw that he was bleeding profusely from a pistol wound in the side, but he could only indicate by gestures that he had been shot by some one near the wurleys. Soon afterwards he died..

The native who was killed had long been a favourite about the station under the name of Kingberri and sometimes Billy... He was a fellow of infinite jest and a willing worker about the station, now lying ruthlessly shot. Who had perpetrated this barbarous crime - for every settler would consider it, although we were Glenelg sheepfarmers and were hundreds of miles away from Courts of Justice.

My first step was to call the men from the station and two of them carried the warm body of Kingberri to the huts and I started off with the others in the direction of the wurleys. Here we met the deceased?s two lubras... who knew nothing of the perpetrator, but said that a ?whitefellow, him called Port Phillip Bill? was in the neighbourhood of the wurleys the previous day with a ?picaninny gun? (a pistol). Upon this man, who was a discharged shepherd, our suspicions fell for he was known to have caused much offence to Kingberri by his conduct in reference to the younger lubra, Emily, who had the misfortune to be much better looking than the generality of Australian black women...

Six of us started off towards the river and ,after a two day search, we were fortunate enough to find the rascal skulking in a hut, accompanied by a black boy called Jacky.. Both were handed over to the police neither admitting or denying the crime... The pistol as well as the bullets are damning proof of his guilt. There was no Coroner?s inquest and poor Kingberri lay sleeping in his grave beneath the dark sheaoak trees and the cheerful Emily was by this time the light of some other blackfellow?s wurley.

But the law was in motion and the Protector of Aborigines came down for the purpose of disinterring the remains and of formally ascertaining the cause of death. This is done and in the dead body a bullet is found... which shall now recoil and slay the murderer. But how to satisfy the majesty of the law? What is the name of the deceased? How is he to be described? Will not his very existence at the time of the tragedy be questioned? Yes, but the gallows was not to be robbed of its due and therefore 12 jurymen found the following :

Guilty of murder of a certain man, being an Aboriginal native of Australia, whose name is to the jurors unknown to this present time.

I look upon that trial, considering all the circumstances of the case - the distant scene of the murder and the numerous opportunities for escaping punishment - as a complete answer to the false charge that in this colony, in its early days, was indifferent to the treatment of the Aborigines, especially those on the south east border of the province.... The avenging arm of the law struck with unerring aim and the murderer died admitting that he committed the crime, but denying that it was premeditated...

Such then was the punishment inflicted... When according to Mr Kingsley, it was ?social ostracism? for a Protector of Aborigines in this colony to dare to stand between the squatters and the blackfellows and when it was ?easier to find water in the desert than to find mercy for the savages.? So much for English fiction and Australian fact.

In 1873 at Lacepede Bay several natives were encamped near the township and their wants were carefully attended to by Police Trooper Morris:

There were a few sick and infirm ones among them, who require daily rations, but the others can obtain fish generally for their support, and some are employed by the settlers. A school for native children is established at Kingston and is supported by private contributions, the inmates receiving the ordinary rations from the government. The average number attending is twelve, and those I examined appeared to be carefully instructed, This is the only depot where I found a place for keeping the stores exposed to the weather, but a trifling outlay on the building will put it in a proper state.

Many attempts were made to "Christianise" the local aborigines and James Smith and his wife did fine work among the Booandik tribe and for some 35 years Mrs Smith was closely associated with them and one of her sons learned their language and became the native interpreter for the district. This tribe occupied the land from the River Glenelg to Rivoli Bay North. Mr Smith was the son of a Congregational minister and, possessing letters of introduction to Rev Thomas Q. Stow, he remained for a time in South Australia and then went on to Port Philip (Melbourne) and took the position of school teacher.

Subsequently, a settlement was founded at Rivoli Bay, largely through the efforts of his brother-in-law, Captain Underwood, who had established a store there, of which Mr Smith became manager. This was in 1845. In this way he became the principal pioneer in that part of the colony.

He remained there about 10 years, not only looking after Captain Underwood's interests, but acting as postmaster and agent for the South Australian Company, the Leake brothers and other settlers in contiguous districts. In 1852 he removed to Mount Gambier where he opened a school "under the volcano" near the cave. This he conducted for about 16 months finally giving up the day school in the interests of his farm and establishing a night school for adults. It was at Rivoli Bay that Mr & Mrs Smith began their mission and it has been said that it began along these lines:

Mr Smith had been on business at the Glencoe Station and on his way home some distance from the track he hear a loud noise and rode in the direction from whence it came. He came across a sad scene - an aboriginal woman was lying on the ground and an infant was sucking at her breast. All around were men and women howling, yelling, shrieking, tearing their hair and plastering themselves with mud. The soul of James Smith was stirred. The outcome was that his wife opened a home or school for native children at Rivoli Bay.

Moving to Mount Gambier in 1854 Mr & Mrs Smith carried with them their interest in the moral and spiritual welfare of the aborigines. Here a mission was started through the efforts of Bishop Short, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts having granted him a sum of money for such a purpose. Mr Smith died in 1860 but his wife was asked to take charge at Cockatoo Valley contiguous to what is now known as Rosaville. Through lack of funds the mission closed in 1867 but Mrs Smith, assisted by her son, who knew the language, continued her good and gracious work. Gradually, the aborigines - once numbered by hundreds - died out. Her name deserves to be perpetuated.

In May 1869 it had 12 inmates and, four girls previously residing there, had been fitted for and placed in domestic service. Of these sixteen, ten were of mixed descent and one little fellow who spoke English fluently announced himself as "Willy, Duke of Normandy", while another was introduced as "Johnny Short", being named after the Bishop of Adelaide who took a great interest in the institution.

All the inmates were descendants of the Penganka (Pinegunga) and Booandik nations which formerly occupied the land from Mount Gambier to the Tatiara. They were prone to fevers and whooping cough and Dr Peel, the Assistant Colonial Surgeon resident at Mount Gambier supplied any necessary medicines at his own cost.

Another survivor was an Aborigine with the European name of Charles Runga and an 1888 newspaper report says:

There is working on the Kingston to Naracoorte line... an Aboriginal named Charles Runga who has been on the line in the South East from its commencement, I believe. He had a few acres of land given to him where he built a cottage and until lately has been able to go home every evening to his wife and family. A few days ago this hard working industrious black received notice to leave in a fortnight... Now he is a workman equal to any on the line... One time they thought of making him a ganger and he ran the line daily for years... [Editor's note - There is no truth in the above statements but we have learned from another authority that the dismissal was made on economic grounds.]

The Tarpeena Publican versus Reverend J.E. Tenison Woods

SA Gazette & Mining Journal

A most explicit account of the state of the general well being of the South East Aborigines, following two decades of infiltration by squatters and others, is to be found in a series of correspondence in the Register in mid-1866 from which a discerning reader might be enabled to deduce the truth. At the outset, in May of that year a report was published which read, in part, as follows:

A case recently occurred here when some of the natives obtained grog and got drunk and because they would not inform the police where they obtained the drink the rations of the whole company were stopped for a fortnight. Father Woods heard of the case and visited the poor old fellow and gave him some medicine, but he was too far gone - the man died of sheer inanition [sic]... The protection of Aborigines in the South East I am assured is a mere farce and the question is asked why Dr Walker does not come down frequently and look after them.

A few weeks later the Rev J.E. Tenison Woods sought to clarify certain assertions made previously and to plea for a radical change to the methods employed by the government in the treatment of the local Aborigines:

I assert most vehemently that we are bound to do something for them if only to smooth their path to the grave. True, the government does something but a more wretched inefficient system could not be devised. Here is a specimen - The Crown Land Ranger [Mr Egan] lives with his son who keeps a public house. It is a wayside inn far from any police protection - at least 18 miles. Here the rations are kept and there the blacks congregate in numbers, and there also congregate the usual society of a bush public house. Imagine the rest. Alas! I have often wished there were no rations at all.

Here is another instance. Blankets are, or should be, provided for the natives. The other day a poor native dying at my place [and] suffered much from the cold. I applied for blankets for him. Yes, I was told there are blankets but they were at Robe 25 miles away. Another instance. This native friend - a good, poor lad with many fine points in his character, savage though he was, and I wished to have him buried with some respect to his human nature and the thought that Christ had shed His blood for him after all. Oh, yes, he could be buried at government expense but no coffin would be allowed! What, then? A cart, could he have blankets? They were at Robe. Could he have any covering? The government would not pay for it. Poor Tommy! He sleeps in an old cloak of mine; his pillow, I trust, none the harder for the treatment of the more civilised brethren...

Oh, good people of Adelaide who respect your characters as men of humanity and wish your names to go down to posterity with something better than execration for your treatment of this fast- fading race, do something for them in the name of God. If you only saw their state, if you only saw their rations - but I have said enough - for I feel sure better days are in store.

I should like to add the names of those settlers in the district who have distinguished themselves above all others in their care for the blacks and their unfailing kindness to them - Messrs Lawson, Bonney and McLeod in the Tatiara; Henry Jones, James Hunter and Andrew Watson for the rest of the district.

The proprietor of the Tarpeena "bush inn", being the son of the Crown Lands Ranger, responded in a letter dated 2 July 1866:

The vile insinuations about the bush public house, the want of police protection, the blacks congregating in numbers, which is untrue... I fling back with contempt... [In conversation with the Protector] he replied dryly, ?Mr Woods cares very little about the blacks?. .. His appeal to the good Christian people of Adelaide is a great slur on the good Christian people of this district who, one and all, treat the blacks with great kindness and consideration.

In a letter dated 6 July the Rev Woods reentered the fray and, ignoring the personal insults emanating from Mr Egan at Tarpeena, informed his fellow colonists that:

Some temporary relief was obtained for poor Tom and he revived to some extent; but three days after the annual races occurred at Penola and on the same evening, as was usual on such occasions, our streets were traversed by maddened yelling tribes of drunken blacks. In the end they were all locked up and King Tom left, I suppose, without his usual attendance, for when I went there next day to enquire after him he was dead and had died, I conscientiously believe, for want of food.

Now on all this I do not blame the police... But I do blame the system. Why should they be the distributor of rations? Why should they be saddled with a duty for which they are not paid - which has the effect of congregating natives in towns from which it should be our most earnest object to keep them away?.... To my knowledge the majority suffer hunger rather than go to the police for their food. If, however, they do go and one gets locked up for drunkenness, they all decamp in terror and thus the rations are saved....

The ?system? as it is seen at Naracoorte is still more remarkable. No rations are supplied there at all... The camp contains about 30 blacks, three of whom are prostrate from sickness. I went to see them. The same emaciation and the same cry for food met me at the outset. There was hunger and starvation there beyond doubt. On enquiry I found that the only rations obtained were by the written orders to the storekeeper from Mr Eyre, the Ranger - an officer who I believe means well towards the natives and would do more if he could.

The storekeeper told me that for some time past all orders for rations had been refused. And what wonder? The government won?t pay for what they have already and there on the books of a storekeeper at Kincraig stands the name of Mr Wildman, Commissioner of Crown Lands, for a small account, significantly small, of tea, sugar and flour supplied to the natives since October 1865. Payment has been asked for and no reply received, so now the blacks live on the precarious earnings which their poor services can obtain... The sick cannot work, the aged cannot work and it is not everyone who can look for such heroism as I have known amongst them, where the son of an old man worked for a day?s rations and took them to his father, going without himself....

Here, too, is an instance of an evil of another kind in which I conceal names and places for obvious reasons. In compliance with a request from a charitable person I went to see a young lubra who was dying in a hut on a certain station. She was in the last stage of consumption and by her side sat a really beautiful little half-caste girl, about three years old. She was, however, smothered in dirt and not even decently covered by a few squalid rags. The mother seemed proud to tell me that the father of the child was a ?gentleman? of some little means who lived hard by and in whose service she had been until she had fallen sick... And this ?gentleman? had thus consigned his offspring to the wretched squalor of savages, and had abandoned its mother, it might have been for aught he knew, to starvation...

Good and abundant rations should be provided and not left at the townships but at such stations where the natives are known to congregate. The settlers would gladly see to their fair and equal distribution, for many of them have supplied food for years past without any government aid at all. Blankets should be provided at the same places. These alone if left in the hands of settlers would be of great service. Mr Lawson, of Padthaway, has no less than 20 natives at his station for two months waiting for a promised supply of blankets which, as far as he knew, were still at Guichen Bay....

Above all stringent enquiries should be made in the case of half-caste children so that their fathers should be forced to take some of the responsibility of the care and the education of children now bidding fair to become the worst kinds of savages that we have. This is no light evil; nay, I can assure my fellow colonists that it is a very grave one as any one can see who will take an account of the half-caste children in this district...

I could not, in the interests of humanity, keep silence in the sight of so much misery which my voice might probably help to alleviate, but I sadly feel that unless some at least of my suggestions are carried out, what I have urged and what you have so ably advocated, and the present visit of the Chief Inspector will be of no avail.

Support for Rev Woods? avowed stance in respect of government neglect was forthcoming from a citizen writing under the pseudonym of "Veritas" who castigated Mr Egan:

I believe Mr Woods to be substantially correct. I accompanied him on one occasion to the blacks? camp where one Tom King was lying very sick and he, and those who were with him, said they had nothing to eat, at least they had nothing that a sick man, not even a blackfellow could eat. They also said that they had no rations from the police for some time. Mr Woods made immediate enquiry and I believe he was told that the magistrate advised the police to give them no rations for a fortnight in order, if possible, to make them tell who it was that was serving them with drink, and for my part I quite agree with the magistrate. I think the plan was a good one, though it was hard for the poor fellow who was dying.

Mr Egan does not appear to advantage unless as his own trumpeter - ?my house is as well kept as any in the district?- ?tis well he says. Poor fellow, his feelings must be finely moulded to take exception to such action; so, I think he is quite alone in his opinion. He is also much annoyed because Mr Woods should appear to take more notice of the blacks than other clergymen do! If he but knew the many amiable qualities of the talented gentleman he seeks to abuse, he would know no object was too low for his sympathy and no trouble too much when tending to alleviate pain and misery. With these few remarks, Mr Editor, I will leave him in the hands of a discriminating public.

In August 1866 Mr Egan again disputed many of Rev Woods? claims and in a virulent attack against that gentleman said, inter alia:

During Mr Woods? 10 years painful experience of "appalling distress" among the blacks he can only fasten upon one doubtful fact to prove his many sweeping assertions... King Tom was very old and emaciated previous to his death; he was a long time ill; he had a chronic disease which was accelerated by a cold which he caught when washing sheep at the Mandara Station in Victoria. When he got a little better he crawled into Mr Robertson?s station at Wrattenbully [sic]; at all those stations he would have got plenty of food. As the races were approaching he crawled on to Comaum, 12 miles from Penola; here he remained for a week and had plenty of food given to him every day by Charley, a very intelligent black man, who works on the station.

From thence he came to Penola, accompanied by two lubras who remained with him and attended upon him up to his death. Charley, who fed him at Comaum, was also with him when he died (for he likewise came to the races) and he assisted to bury him. Charley says that King Tom had plenty of food but was too ill to eat it; he could only drink and he had an abundance of tea....

The greedy avidity with which a black devours his food is no evidence he died of starvation. There was one sick here for several weeks; she had three pannikins of sago every day, one pound of meat and as much vegetables as she liked, with bread; yet, she was ?woefully emaciated? and half an hour before she died she ate a pint pannikin full of sago with a ?greedy avidity? which would make Mr Woods say that she died from want of food.

[As regards the stoppage of rations] the intelligent blacks with whom I conversed say that the rations were not stopped and the officer in charge says the same. The blacks laugh at Mr Woods writing that they are frightened to go to the police station for their tucker...

I am afraid that Mr Woods draws largely on his imagination for his facts. What is he driving at? Does he expect the government to feed all the blacks in the district - young and old healthy and unhealthy. If that be his object he could not do them a greater injury, besides the injury he would do the settlers by depriving them of labour. Ranger Egan will encourage none that are able to work around Tarpeena. The same remarks apply to Border Town and Naracoorte...

About 18 months ago a number of natives congregated on a certain station some miles away from any town. There was no ?bush public house?, no ?police protection? but plenty of bushmen. There was about £25 to £30 worth of grog drunk amongst them; their drunkenness, debauchery and ruin held high revelry on that occasion.

How does Mr Wood know that the rations are kept at the Tarpeena public house. He has never been there, nor has he ever seen where the rations are kept. He ought to be more cautious when he writes. A clergyman should have a strict regard for the truth... There is little danger I will compromise my father?s private or official character by giving the blacks grog, and the very few who are generally around here is perhaps the best proof that they get none.

In giving advice about the management of the aborigines Mr Woods ought to visit Point MacLeay and take a leaf out of Mr Taplin?s book; there he would learn the true and only proper way of improving their condition.

In his letter he said that Christ shed His blood for the blacks. Well, what has he done for their immortal souls during his 10 years residence as a missionary priest among them. Has he learned their language, translated any portion of the Holy Scriptures into their vernacular tongue and taught at least some of them to read it, and told them about that blood which he says was shed for them and which cleanses all sin? [Signed - Laurence Mac Egan, junior]

And how did they receive the intoxicating liquors? A report at this period of time, while not referring specifically to the Tarpeena public house, said:

Many of the young Aborigines were employed as shearers by the squatters and, when paid, they would go to a white shepherd and say ?I will take care of the flock, will you go and get me a gallon of grog.? In other cases it was common knowledge that in the South East they were openly supplied with intoxicating drinks.

To conclude this enlightening discussion, the words of the Crown Ranger at Tarpeena, Egan (senior), in an annual report to his superiors in Adelaide in August 1866, discredits much of the untimely and ill-considered outpourings from his son:

During the last quarter there has been a great deal of sickness amongst the blacks throughout the district. They suffer very much from the cold at this season and require warmer blankets than those hitherto supplied and a more liberal allowance of clothing for both men and women. I take this opportunity to direct the attention of Government to the suggestions made in my report of the 9th March, 1863 relative to blankets and beg respectfully for their adoption.

An Aboriginal Legend

At one time the land extended southward as far as the eye could carry from the spot on which the townsghip of Port MacDonnell stands. A splendid forest of evergreen trees, including a wattle, out of which oozed a profusion of delicious gum and a rich profusion of beautiful flowers and grass grew upon it. A man of great height, fearful in his anger and a terror to trespassers on this favoured ground, was tk\he owner.

One hot summer?s day, whilst taking a walk through his land, he saw at the foot of the wattle tree a basket of gum.His anger rose and in a rage with a voice like thunder, he cried, ?Who is robbing me of my food?? Looking up he saw a woman concealed among the boughs and in a loud voice demanded the thief to come down. Trembling, she obeyed and pleaded for her life. He was relentless and told her he woyuld drown her for robbing him.

Filld with rage he seated himself on the grass, extended his right leg towards Cape Northumberland (Kinneang) and his left towards Green Point, raised his arms above his head and in a giant voice called upon the sea to come and drown the woman. The sea advanced, covering his beautiful land and destroyed the offending woman. It returned no more to its former bed and thus formed the present coast of MacDonnell Bay.

The Treatment of Aborigines at Tarpeena and Mount Gambier

Border Watch

By September 1862 there was a kind of Aboriginal refuge at Tarpeena where sick natives could be attended to at government expense and to many European interlopers its existence was expected to be of limited duration because"the blacks are dying out; but we should let them die out decently." Previously, in May 1862 a poor blackfellow named Jim Crow was lying in the police paddock at Mount Gambier for several days in a pitiable condition from a severe attack of inflammation of the lungs and he had no shelter beyond a piece of bark and no covering except a remnant of a blanket. To this event the Editor of the Border Watch opined that ?in the midst of a Christian community it was a pity that he had to lie outside and die like a dog?and had it not been for the kindness of Mrs Wehl he would have remained there.

Taking umbrage at this report Mr Egan, the Crown Ranger at Tarpeena and responsible locally for the Aborigines' general welfare, addressed the Border Watch:

You forgot to mention there is a depot at Tarpeena, where alll sick, infirm and destitute aborigines who choose to go there are daily supplied with rations, and a blanket given to them... Jim Crow is well acqiainted with that fact as you are for he has been there with his lubra, Louie, and they have had rations and a blanket given to them. It is therefore his own fault that he is destitute...On the 3th of this month I visited the blacks in the police paddock there. I offered to remove old King Charley to Tarpeena in a cart. I saw Jim Crow and he appeared to be in good health then...

To this heartless epistle the Editor responded:

No doubt they are very tenderly cared for and nursed at Tarpeena but then they do not happen to be at Tarpeena when they fall sick... Does Mr Egan mean that [Jim Crow] was in a fit state to go there. Or does he mean us to infer that Jim should have had a few days notice of his approaching illness and should have startted off immediately to that happy retreat...

In June 1863 the Editor of the Border Watch informed his readers of the apparent neglect of Mr Egan:

I address this note to you hoping you will do something for a poor black woman that has got her hip out of joint. She has lain for a month and cannot walk at all. If you do something for her it will be a great charity. This black woman has been lying for a month within a few miles of Allandale [sic] and yet her case has not attracted the attention of the Ranger...

This state of affairs prompted a citizen with a modicum of Christian charity to say:

There are a large number of them continually wandering around Mount Gambier dependent in a great measure for relief upon the beneficence of charitably-disposed persons. In the face of these things, then, the establishment of an asylum for Aborigines at Mount Gambier is the only means by which these miserable and unfortunate creatures can obtain that relief to which they are entiteld at the hands of government...

However, this suggestion did not meet with the approval of Dr Clindening, the medical officer in the Mount Gambier district, who was of the opinion that no additional depot should be established because it would entail a great deal of additional labour on the officers and would in no way add to the comfort of the natives, and further:.

All the able bodied men found employment in wood cutting ,but there habits were so migratory and their movements so uncertain that they cannot be depended upon for any length of time and on this account the greater number of them were unemployed. Great misery was caused among them by the fact that irresponsible settlers provided them with intoxicating drink which caused fighting and quarrelling among them.

By 1863 there were but a few Aborigines remaining in the MacDonnell Bay district and throughout the winter months they suffered a good deal when Dr Brass, with a degree of humanity, administered medicine to them free of charge and the local correspondent again raised the name of their supposed ?Protector?, Mr Egan:

I feel satisfiedd that my bringing their case under the notice of Mr Egan, will at once induce him to order a supply of rations for their use and see that in future they have regular medical attendance now that we have a resident doctor...

A "well-known blackfellow?, Bobby, died at Benaira [sic] station in May 1864 where he had been suffering from a lingering disease for several months:

He was one of the most intelligent of the blacks and had considerable knowledge of the Scriptures and of a future state. Before dying a considerable number of the blacks gathered around him and he warned them very earnestly of the evil of their ways and advised them to give up swearing and drinking. He expressed a firm hope of going to heaven himself and wished them all to be good and get there too.

The year 1865 saw many Aborigines frequenting the town where their favourite camp sites were the police paddock and a property owned by Mrs Mitchell at Hedley Park and in March of that year two of them died and were buried in Mrs Mitchell?s paddock the first being ?Old Polly?who was generally "well liked here as being very handy and good tempered". The next was Neddy McRae, belonging to the Casterton district and he was in the town receiving medical treatment having had the cap of his knee knocked out.

In the same month, at the Licensing Court the magistrate, Mr Lyon, informed the applicants that the government was determined to stop the practice of supplying drink to the blacks and that if any of them transgressed they would have their licence taken away. He referred to an orgy on Benara Station, where 20 or 30 drunken blacks set to and broke one another?s skulls and suggested that if it became a weekly occurrence the race would soon be exterminated. He concluded witth the comment that ?Will not the outrage of the Avenue find many a parallel when drink becomes abundant?"

Later, Mr Egan commented on this episode:

As is customary a good many of them were employed about the sheep during the shearing; they earned about £25... All the money was invested in grog [which they] obtained from stores where they could get whisky and rum at £1 per gallon. Many of the sheareres and other workmen brought bottles of spirits as a decoy to the lubras and took them into the scrub for an improper purpose... I have recommended in a former letter that the government should give no encouragement to these poor creatures to remain about towns where they have every facility for obtaining grog...

To these sad events a concerned citizen addressed his neighbours with a gentle lecture on Christian ethics and the fate of two further ill-fated Aborigines:

Two interesting youths of the Rivoli Bay tribe known as Harry and the Duke of Wellington, each aged 19 years, affected with diseases of the lungs lived for some time in a miamia near the site of the new jail in the policee paddock. Their subsistence was very precarious, being absent from their tribe, and but for the sympathy and kindness of some good neighbours they would probably have perished as they were unable to do much for themselves.

?Mrs Smith... supplied them with many comforts and eventually at their request [having referred] to her as ?their Mother?, had them brought to her homestaed on her dray a few days prior to theri removal by death which occurred 12 or 14 hours [later]... Harry, alarmed at his friend?s death... before morning called out, Come, come, I die.? They did all they could to restore him but he quickly sank and died, first witnessing that ?the great sinner was washed from his sins and forgiven?and his last words were, ?Tell them?, (that is the blacks), ?what Jesus did.?and died.... Two little mounds besides the late Mr Smith?s homestead mark the graves of these young men. They were wrapped in their blankets and thus lowered to the grave as no provision had been made for either a coffin or free burial in the cemetery.

This appeal prompted a suggestion that :

Before the winter sets in could not some money be collected to erect a shed in the police paddock to shelter these poor people from the severity of the weather. Five or six have died since February and in almost every case from disease of the lungs - contracted from their exposure in the wretched hovels they put up - lying on damp ground with wet blankets and wind and rain penetrating thier wurlies...

Conclusion

To conclude this brief excursion into the decimation of the Aboriginal nations of South Australia, and in particular the South East, it might be fitting to quote from a report in the Border Watch in 1875 and an editorial in the Advertiser in 1903:

Border Watch

The inaction in respect to the strengthening of the existing law for safeguarding the rights of the blacks, who is practically helpless to redress his own wrongs, except by such acts of reprisal as are natural to the savage, and who is often incapable of understanding the extent of injury done to himself and his race, contrasts unpleasantly with the attempts to secure his complete subjugation... The object of authorising whipping in addition to punishment by imprisonment for cattle raiding is not likely to meet with much favour... There is something [about it]... too strongly reminiscent of the middle ages...

General Notes

Shame Upon Us! We take their land and drive away their food by what we call civilization, and then deny them shelter from a storm... What comes of all the hypocrisy of our wishes to better their condition?.. The police drive them into the bush to murder shepherds, and then we cry out for more police... What can a maddened black think of our Christianity to deny him the sod on which he was born... You grow hundreds of bushels of corn on his land but deny him the crumbs that fall from the table... They kill a sheep, but you drive his kangaroo away. You now drive him away from his own, his native land - out upon it; how can God's all-seeing eye approve of this?
(Adelaide Times, 24 May 1851, page 6e.)

"Aborigines - Wanderers of the Wasteland" is discussed in the Advertiser,
1 September 1936 (special edition), page 42.

The Register of 3 June 1837, page 4a says, inter alia:

"An Adventure with the Natives" in 1837 is in the Advertiser,
28 December 1875, page 5e.

The treatment of Aborigines is discussed in the Register,
8 September 1838, page 5c,
the spearing of cattle and sheep on
10 November 1838, page 3d and
the funeral of a "native" on
9 March 1839, page 8b.

"Early Overlanders - Encounters With Blacks" is in the Observer,
7 March 1925, page 17e.

"Menace of the Blacks - Stirring Episodes of Early Days" is in the Observer,
26 January 1924, page 59a.

"In the Early days - Treatment of the Natives" is in the Chronicle,
24 January 1935, page 48.

The plight of the Aborigines is discussed in the Southern Australian,
22 December 1838, page 4c,
24 April 1839, page 2d,
1 and 8 May 1839, pages 2d and 2e.

The execution of "Two Blacks Convicted of Murder" is reported in the Southern Australian, 12 June 1839, pages 3d-4c:

Information on "The Natives" is in the Register,
27 April 1839, page 1d,
12 May 1839, page 2a,
8 and 15 June 1839, pages 3c and 4a,
6 July 1839, page 4c,
23 October 1839, page 4d,
18 January 1840, page 4a,
18 April 1840, page 5c,
25 July 1840, page 7c,
8 August 1840, page 5a,
21 November 1840, page 4a,
30 January 1841, page 3c.

"What Can be Done for the Natives" is in the South Australian Record,
15 November 1839, page 270,
"Protection for Aborigines",
23 May 1840, page 272 and
30 May 1840, page 288.

The Adelaide Chronicle of 31 December 1839, page 3c says:

A "Note of the State of the Natives on the Murray" is in the Adelaide Chronicle,
21 January 1840, page 3c,
"Natives of Yorke Peninsula" on
21 January 1840, page 3c,
"The Natives" on
18 February 1840, page 3d.

"Judicial Butchery in South Australia" is in the Adelaide Chronicle,
24 and 31 March 1840, pages 2e and 2e,
"Scandalous Neglect of the Natives" on
3 and 24 February 1841, pages 3a and 3c,
"Report on the Aborigines of SA" on
12 January 1842, page 3d.

An execution of "natives" is reported and discussed in the Register,
26 September 1840, page 2d-f,
3 and 24 October 1840, pages 2a and 2b,
7 November 1840, page 2a; also see
Southern Australian,
25 and 27 September 1840, pages 2d and 3a,
6 October 1840, page 3a,
19 November 1840, page 2e.

"Legislation for the Natives" is in the Southern Australian,
2 October 1840, page 2e,
"Civilization and Christianization of the Natives" on
5, 12, 16 and 19 February 1841, pages 3b, 2e, 3b and 1a (supp.),
"The Aborigines of South Australia" on
20 and 22 April 1841, pages 4a and 4a,
4 June 1841, page 2e.

"The Natives - Dr Penny's Lecture" is in the Register,
26 June 1841, page 2e; also see
26 November 1842, pages 2d-3d.

"The Natives and Their Protection" is in the Register,
30 October 1841, page 2c; also see
13 November 1841, page 3c,
11 December 1841, page 2f.

"The Natives at the Native Location" is in the Southern Australian,
29 October 1841, page 2e,
19 November 1841, page 3c,
4 and 7 April 1843, pages 2d and 2c;
a "Report on the Aborigines of South Australia" on
11 January 1842, page 3e,
historical information on the Mission to Aborigines on
7 June 1842, page 3c.

A public flogging of an Aborigine for stealing a watch is described in the Register,
6 August 1842, page 2b:

"Dr Wark, Captain Grey and The Aborigines" is in the Register,
17 May 1843, pages 2f-3d,
7 and 10 June 1843, pages 2d and 2f.

A report on Aborigines being taken to England by Mr Hall, a naturalist, is in the South Australian,
26 June 1843, page 2d.

The education of "native" children is reported upon in the Register,
9 December 1843, page 3b and
South Australian,
6 October 1846, page 4c.

"The Native Corroboree" is in the Register on
16 March 1844, page 3d.

"The Aborigines Evidence Bill" is in the Southern Australian,
9 August 1844, page 2b.

The habits of local Aborigines is discussed in the Southern Australian,
24 September 1844, page 2d.

"The Natives and the Crossing Place to North Adelaide" is in the Register,
7 December 1844, page 3c and
the death of "King John" on
6 January 1845, page 3a.

A "Sunday School for Aborigines" is reported upon in the South Australian,
6 December 1844, page 2c.

The death of "King John" of the Adelaide tribe is reported in the Observer,
11 January 1845, page 6b.

"The Natives and Their Progress to Civilisation" is in the Observer,
18 and 25 January 1845, pages 6a and 4b.

"The Aborigines" is the subject of editorial comment in the Register, 25 June 1845, page 3a:

"Manners and Customs of the Aborigines" is in the Register,
11 February 1846, page 1e,
"Australian Savages and British Laws" on
1 July 1846, page 2b,
"The Port Lincoln Blacks" on
22 August 1846, page 4c.

Information on "Miss Jenny", an Aborigine employed at Government House by Gov Grey, is in the Observer, 21 November 1846, page 5a.

"The Natives" is in the Observer, 29 May 1847, page 4c:

"The Aborigines" is in the South Australian,
24 April 1846, page 2d,
1 June 1847, page 2f,
17 September 1847, page 2d.

The Sunday School education of natives at the Adelaide Location is reported upon in the SA Gazette & Mining Journal,
29 May 1847, page 3b and
"Proprietary Rights of the Natives" on
12 June 1847, page 2b.

The insidious trade of supplying liquor to the Aborigines is commented upon in the Register,
3 February 1847, page 3a:

"Cannibalism in South Australia" is discussed in the Register,
4 September 1847, page 4b and
"The South Australian Protectorate" on
15 August 1849, page 2b.

Under the heading "Murderous Encounters" the Register
of 5 September 1849, page 2e says:

Register

The SA Gazette & Mining Journal of 1 September 1849, page 2d says:

We do not profess to have generally any very deep sympathy with the regrets which are so often poured forth at the gradual decay of the aboriginal races in the course of colonisation. Provided this decay is not the result of tyranny and oppression on the part of the dominant race, the fact that a population, beyond all doubt physically and mentally inferior to that which supersedes it should be so superseded, is a positive gain and advantage to the world in general.
(SA Gazette & Mining Journal, 31 August 1850, page 3b.)

SA Gazette & Mining Journal

"Justice to the Settlers" is discussed in the South Australian,
15 June 1849, page 4c; also see
7 February 1851, page 2c.

Under the heading "The Punishment of Death" a letter alluding to the hanging of four Aborigines is in the Register,
3 October 1849, page 4b; also see
21 May 1851, page 2c,
"An Appeal on Behalf of the Aborigines" is made on
14 and 17 January 1850, pages 3a and 4b.

We have been assured that the Aborigines, who despise the "pig-houses" erected for their shelter and will not occupy them, are now drawing near to that beautiful "paddock"... the Park Lands... The prime objects of the poor creatures... being water and wood.
(Register, 15 February 1850, page 2d.)

Under the heading "The Aborigines" the Register of 22 April 1850, page 2e says:

Mallee scrub, and an account of its usage by the Aborigines, is recounted in the Register,
4 July 1850, page 4e.

"The Natives" is in the Register,
5, 7 and 12 February 1852, pages 3a, 3d and 3d,
"The Blacks - The Police" on
21 April 1852, page 2e,
"Treatment of Natives" on
15 November 1852, page 2d,
"Native Police" on
2 December 1852, page 3e.

Under the heading "The Aborigines" the Register of 17 May 1853, page 3f has a letter which says:

Though the savage may have no relish for the pursuits of civilised life, he can well appreciate the warmth of a blanket, or the shelter of a wall. Let me urge loudly that these luxuries should not be withheld.
(Register,
25 July 1855, page 3c; also see
1 August 1855, page 3d.)

"Native Police" is in the Observer,
17 November 1855, page 5b,
"The Natives Under Sentence of Death" on
29 December 1855, page 3d.

A letter dealing with "The Laws of England Applied to the Aborigines" is in the Register,
1 December 1855, page 2g:

Register

The English people are partial to collections. They have religious meetings ending in a collection... Orators, stump, table, dining, or parliamentary, plead severally for a collection. Testimonials are plentiful as blackberries to some popular public servant, to a successful speculator, to a theatrical fiddler... All these are well in a way. Why not, for a novelty, this year try a collection for the original owners of "the land we live in?" They are poor enough, heaven knows, ragged and hungry and houseless... Can we not spare some of the old ewes now rotting on the distant runs, and add these and a few blankets to the stingy once-a-year liberality of the State?... Blackfellow and whitefellow will together face that tremendous day, when One will proclaim "Forasmuch as ye did it not to these, ye did it not to me."
(Observer, 7 June 1856, page 1h (supp.).

Had they been a race equal to the New Zealander, Government would have spared no means if they could have got possession of the land by supplying them with food and medicine... To visit the encampments of the natives is distressing; exposure at this season of the year, many ill, without food, almost denuded, living at the mercy of their own tribe, is a disgrace... [to those] who have amassed wealth, to the destruction of their common necessaries of life and health.
(Register,
11 July 1857, page 2h; also see
29 July 1857, page 3h.)

It will be an everlasting disgrace to us if we allow them to perish and dwindle away in misery, poverty and wretchedness as they have done hitherto. Are they not deserving of kinder and more humane treatment? Are they dogs or mere things that they are neglected so?... Our prosperity as a people is founded on their calamity, and the foundation of our wealth is laid in their decay and death.
(Register,
23 September 1857, page 3g; also see
23 and 24 February 1858, pages 2h and 2d-3e.)

They languish for awhile, exhibiting the contrasts of which humanity is capable, then they dwindle away, and finally they die out. We do not say this should be the case, we only say that it invariably is.
(Register,
21 August 1858, page 2d; also see
31 August 1858, page 2h,
1, 6 and 27 September 1858, pages 3f, 3d and 3h.)

A letter from Rev M.B. Hale is in the Observer,
8 March 1856, page 7f; it reads in part:

Observer

"The Labours of Archdeacon Hale" is in the Chronicle,
9 January 1936, page 50.

"Winter and the Natives" is discussed in the Register,
3 June 1856, page 3c,
"Aboriginal Reserves" on
6 May 1857, page 2e,
"The Police and the Natives" on
26, 28 and 30 November 1857, pages 3f, 3f and 3a.

"A New [Aboriginal] Claimant for the Gold Reward" is in the Register,
13 September 1856, page 2c.

"Aboriginal Reserves" is in the Observer,
9 May 1857, page 6g,
"Execution of Natives" on
27 February 1858, pages 5h-7f,
"The Aborigines" on
31 July 1858, page 6e:

Their unalterable destiny is to recede from the face of the earth; and silently, rapidly, before our eyes is that destiny being accomplished.
(Also see Observer,
28 August 1858, page 7a,
4 September 1858, page 7d.)

"Native Schools" is in the Chronicle,
8 August 1858, page 2c (supp.).

The plight of Aborigines in the Watervale district is reported in the Observer,
4 September 1858, page 4g (supp.):

Aboriginal Australians - Choose again