WHO DISCOVERED AUSTRALIA
“ …The Vallard Map … created by the Portuguese, partially depicts Australia’s eastern coastline, and that was done in the 15th century …”
Generations of Australian school children have been taught the lie that the first documented recording of European landing on the Australian continent is attributed to the Englishman, Capt. James Cook, at Botany Bay, New South Wales, in 1770.
Not true!
Due to recent research, we are learning that politics flavours just about every activity of man, including historical documentation. Henry Ford was correct when he said: “History is mostly lies.” Here in Australia we have carefully ignored the explorations of the Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch explorers who were sailing around our shoreline hundreds of years before the pommy, James Cook, ventured this way, often using his predecessor’s charts to help plot his own version and then presenting it as his own original chartography.
The Vallard Map (hand-drawn on parchment no later than 1547), and now housed in a small American archive (the Huntington Library) created by the Portuguese, partially depicts Australia’s eastern coastline, and that was done in the 15th century. Cook didn’t venture this way until 1770. Yet, according to official Australian documentation, Capt. Cook DISCOVERED Australia.
The Portuguese also mapped the New Zealand coastlines of the North and South Islands in the same era. But Capt. Cook discovered N.Z., too, according to officialdom. Back in the 1920s, in Wellington Harbour, a metal soldier’s helmet and a cannonball was dredged up from the harbour’s bottom. Ever since, the N.Z. Museum authorities have kept the artefacts secret, never displaying them in public, and even trying, when challenged, to degrade them as insignificant specimens not worthy of serious academic consideration. Yet international authorities have carbon dated these items as belonging to the 1580 era. So why is this information suppressed by the NZ authorities? It seems Mr. Ford was right – history (as recorded) is often lies.
More truthfully, the first European to explore our shores was a Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, who, in his small vessel, “Duyfken” (Little Dove), chartered between 200-300 miles of the western coastline of Cape York Peninsula and Cape Turnagain in 1606.
Not long afterwards, on October 25, 1616, at Cape Inscription, on the northern-most point of what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island, in Shark Bay, West Australia, another Dutch sailor and his crew, Dirk Hartog (Hartich, Hartoog or Hartochsz, on board the “Eendrach,” left behind a rude record of his visit to the Australian continent roughly engraved on a pewter dish, which he left nailed to a timber post and lodged in a rock crevasse.
The English translation of the Dutch engraving is:
“The 25th October there arrived here the ship D’Eendraght, the uppermerchant is Gil es Miebaisof Luck (Liege), skipper Dirck Hartichs of Amsterdam. The 2yth ditto we sail for Bantum. The undermerchant Jan Stins, the upper steersman Pieter Dookes of Bil. A.D. 1616.”
Later, a journal writer from another shop recorded: … “The uppersteersman … returned on board, he reported that he had sailed as far as 18 miles and that it was an island. He brought with him a tin plate which in the course of time had fallen from a post, to which it had been attached and on which was cut the name of the merchant, undermerchant and uppersteersman of the ship, Eendraught, which arrived here in the year 1616 of the 25th of October and left for Bantam on the 27th of the same month.”
In 1697 the Dutch navigator, Willem De Vlamingh, sailing with a fleet of three ships, Geelvinck, Nijptangh and Weseltje, had discovered the weathered plate and had taken it into his possession.
He left behind his own plate, similarly described, adding mention of his own visit.
Vlamingh’s plate read:
“1697 the 4th of February there arrived here a ship De Geelvinck for Amsterdam and commander and skipper Willem De Vlamingh of Vlielandt assistant Joan Nes Bremer of Copenhagen Uppersteersman Michel Bloem of the Bishopric Bremen the hooker De Nijptangh Skipper Gerrit Colaart of Amsterdam assist’ Theo Doris Heirman of Do. Uppersteersman Ger Rit Gerritsen of Bremen and sailed from here with our fleet the X to make a further survey of the Southland and bound for Batavia.”
The original Hartog plate was mislaid for a great many years, but was eventually recovered and is now preserved at the State Museum, in Amsterdam.
Commodore of the French exploring vessels, Naturaliste and Geographe, Nicholas Baudin, saw the Vlamingh plate in 1803, but when the British surveyor, Capt. Phillip King, arrived in 1822 the plate had vanished.
Unbeknown to the Englishman, four years earlier the Frenchman, Lieutenant De Freycinet, had confiscated the artefact and taken it back to Paris to be placed in the care of the “Acadamie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,” and under their care it became lost when French authorities conducted a search for it in 1901.
Miraculously, it seemed, the missing Vlamingh plate was relocated in 1940 by an official of the Paris Institute; it was discovered lying under a pile of timber!
In 1943 the French government arranged for the plate to be given to the Australian government.
Today, it is safely preserved at the Maritime Museum, in Fremantle, West Australia.
The West Australian Historical Society was instrumental in having a tablet erected on the Cape Inscription site in 1937 as a permanent record; timber posts were subject to rapid deterioration as the cliff face eroded, requiring a more substantial memorial to weather the eternal winds of the Indian Ocean, the heat and salt spray.
The sturdy plaque provides an English translation of the early Dutch plates, mentioning that the original Hartog relic was initially installed “120 yards south-west of (the existing) lighthouse.”
Vessels passing by cape Inscription can clearly discern the spot where European adventurers first left a tangible record of their landing in Australia – an event which occurred in Shark Bay – not Botany Bay, the discoverers being Dutch – not English.
Yet another significant point is this: Francisco Pelsaert abandoned two young mutineers on the West Australian mainland following the “Batavia” tragedy, these two Dutchmen, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye being the first permanent European residents of Australia.
The two young Dutch sailors were abandoned at the mouth of the Hutt River on the 16th of November, in 1629.
As early as 1504 the French maritime explorers were rumoured to have accidentally touched the land they called for three centuries, “France Australe.“On board the ship, “L’Espoir,” the commander, Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, with more than 60 crew, were blown off course in a storm and sighted an unknown land, which he called “Southern Indies,” that was duly taken in possession in the name of the King, Louis XII, of France. The L’ Espoir crew remained for six months while repairing their damaged vessel. Some historians believe de Gonneville may inadvertently have occupied Australian soil, but it cannot be verified.
On March 30, 1772, another French explorer, Saint Allouarn, in command of the vessel, “Le Gros Ventre,” claimed West Australis in the name of the King, Louis XV. A French flag was hoisted and a document indicating their unofficial possession was secured in a bottle and buried beneath a shrub., with two six franc coins dropped nearby. A crew member, Rosily, recorded in his diary: “This evening (29 March) having seen a bay we … anchored in 30 fathoms, about a league from the land. M. St. Allouarn sent Mengault to take possession of this part of the land …”
Other French adventurers followed: D’Entrecasteaux, Freycinet, Baudin and Dumont d’Urville, among others.
The French scientist-explorer, Francois Peron’s visit to the Australian coastline in the early 18th century resulted, interestingly, in a recorded account of the explorer’s first personal encounter with an Aboriginal couple – a man (who quickly disappeared into the bush), and his pregnant wife. The woman promptly defecated at the white men’s feet. She was considered unattractive and repulsive and not “even the most depraved … (of the) sailors would … want her.”
Thomas Nicolas Baudin, on board the “Geographe,” sighted Dirk Hartog Island, near Shark Bay, in June, 1801.
The coastal country looked uninviting, with steep and dangerous rocky cliffs, offering little in the way of safety or shelter. Their ship’s journal described “Terra Australis” as being “like the lands of Sinai,” sterile and barren. Sailing past “the barren islands” (Bernier and Dorre), he entered into the turbulent waters of Shark Bay. Eventually, he made anchorage near the northern point of Bernier Island. One boat was sent ashore with the head gardener, Riedle, to explore the inhospitable terrain, returning the following afternoon with a selection of native plants never before collected or documented.
Baudin then ordered two boats to return to the island where they anchored in a cove to the north. No fish were caught. The crew collected more specimens of the indigenous flora, sustaining their energies with biscuits and water. One of the crew, Francois Peron, wandered away by himself and was temporarily lost. He spent the night camping in the low scrub, managing in the process to lose all his gathered specimens. Peron found his way back to the beach where he discovered one of the Geographe’s boats waiting for him. Peron, a marine zoologist, relished the opportunity of personally investigating Bernier Island’s fauna. The sheer variety of marine life astonished him,commenting in his journal: “The prodigious number of these animals (invertebrates and jellyfish), symmetrical and exotic shapes, their beautiful colours and the suppleness and swiftness of their movements, were a spectacle which excited pleasure in the extreme.”
Peron’s research resulted in the discovery of 11 new species of jellyfish. In a later foray, while trying to gain specimens of the island’s unique “striped kangaroo,” the Frenchman carefully observed the female kangaroo’s strong protective instinct.
Peron wrote: “During the period we were on the island, all the full-grown females had in their pockets a fair-sized young, which they protected with truly admirable courage. If wounded, the mother fled carrying the young in her pocket and did not abandon it until, overcome with fatigue or exhausted through loss of blood, she could carry its weight no longer. The mother would then stop, help the young one out of the bag, hide it in a safe spot and continue her flight with what speed her remaining strength would permit. If the hunter was evaded, the wounded mother would return to the thicket, calling her infant with a special grunting sound which it recognised. She then caressed the infant affectionately as if to allay its fears and assisted it with her front legs to re-enter the pouch before seeking new cover … Generous selflessness of which animal behaviour presents so many examples, and of which the human species is so often reduced to envy.”
Peron lauded the superior taste of wallaby meat, comparing it favourably with wild rabbit of his homeland. He even trapped several specimens, hoping to carry them back to France for farming purposes. Fed on bread and sweetened water, the last remaining animal became quite tame and was the ship’s mascot. The whole crew mourned when the kangaroo was accidentally killed at Timor.
While Peron explored Bernier Island, Baudin and some of the others fared much better. They caught a plentiful supply of fish, crabs, oysters and crayfish. The men left behind on board caught over 600 pounds of fish on handlines.
Peron enthused: “No place in the world can be as fishy as Sharks Bay.”
On the North West Cape of Shark Bay Baudin names Cape Cuvier, to Carnarvon’s north.
On June 30, 1801, the Geographe sailed closer to the mainland. They found an anchorage not far from the Gascoyne River mouth. With Midshipman Bougainville in charge, but with orders not to go ashore, a small rowboat went towards the beach to conduct a cursory survey of the immediate surroundings. The land where Carnarvon now stands was considered unappealing, and so Thomas Baudin missed his opportunity of becoming the official discoverer of the Gascoyne River.
The Geographe sailed away from Shark Bay on July 11, 1801, pointed towards Timor.
Louis Claude Desaules de Freycinet, on a scientific expeditionary jaunt , visited Shark Bay, in West Australia, in 1818, their charter being to record something of the history of Australia’s indigenous people, geographical descriptions of the landscape, natural food production, the work and artistic pursuits of the Aborigines, also their political philosophies.
Quite a different agenda to the British who mainly saw Australia as a dumping ground for their over-crowded gaols!
Freycinet’s corvette, the “Uranie,” 350 tons, left Toulon on September 17, 1817, carrying among its crew two surgeons who were also naturalists, a pharmacist, botanist and a draughtsman. The wily captain managed to smuggle on board his wife, Rose!
The French vessel approached the Shark Bay coast on September 11, 1818, and they lowered their anchor about six miles off Dirk Hartog Island. In her diary, Rose de Freycinet, mentioned: “Louis sent a boat to Dirk Hartich’s to take away an inscription left by the Dutch who landed there about 1600. It is something precious to take back to Paris.”
Later the Uranie sailed across to the mainland near Peron Point, where the Frenchmen stayed for two weeks. Shortly after setting up camp on the beach, a group of naked Aborigines made an appearance on the high ground above them. The natives yelled out unknown messages to the white visitors. To demonstrate their peaceful intentions, the Freycinet party danced and sang songs, hoping such behaviour would allay any fears held by the wild black people.
One of the French crew, Jacques Arago, unpacked his castanets and performed with gay abandon. Quite naturally, both sides were hampered by a serious communication barrier. Gabert, the ship’s secretary, wrote down his rather unflattering description of the native Australians, describing them as “perhaps the saddest savages in creation” (and being of) “poorly appearance.”
As no fresh water appeared to be available to the native folk, the French visitors incorrectly assumed the natives had somehow managed to learn to adapt to the drinking of salt water from the sea. One white man, curious to see if this assumption was correct, pretended to drink sea water. Consequently, when the Aborigines did not show any surprise or alarm, the Frenchmen’s view was reinforced.
In fact, it was later recorded: “It is to be presumed … that these poor people drink only salt water, and live wholly on fish, shellfish and a kind of pulse resembling our French beans which is met here and there in the interior of the country.”
Jacques Etienne Victor Arago, the artist on board the Uranie, wrote in a letter home: “The coast, from the moment we first saw it, exhibited nothing but a picture of isolation; no rivulet consoled the eye, no tree attracted it, no mountain gave variety to the landscape, no dwelling livened it; everywhere reigned sterility and death. If a few birds of prey skimmed with rapid wing the flats washed by waves, where, we asked ourselves, could they satisfy their hunger? Where could they quench their thirst? Do all the beings that dwell in this inhospitable land drink sea water? Where are their resources? For they must have wants. Where are their enjoyments? For they must have desires. At first view, you take in an immense distance: but beware of looking for any enjoyment; the search would be merely wasting your strength, without finding the least relief.”
Accompanied by 12 men, including an Aboriginal named “Kaiber,” a Captain of the 83rd (British) Regiment, George Grey (1812 – 1898) sailed on the “Russel” from Fremantle to arrive at Dorre Island, in Shark Bay, on February 24, 1839.
The next day, while investigating the adjacent island, Bernier, Grey’s men killed three turtles.
“When portions … of the turtle were put into … brine long after the death of the animals,” Grey observed, “they quivered for several minutes, as if still endowed with the sense of feeling.”
After many hardships in trying to determine a fresh water supply, Grey sailed at last for the coastline of West Australia and tentatively went ashore in the vicinity of what was eventually to become the site of Carnarvon township.
“I always held it to be better, upon first appearing amongst natives who have never before seen Europeans, to shew (sic) such strength as might impress them with a certainty that we were well able to resist any attack, which they might naturally feel inclined to make on such strange and incomprehensible intruders, as white men must necessarily appear to them,” opined the Portugal-born explorer.
Searching through the tangled mangroves around the shoreline, the exploring party came across a large opening “ … about three quarters of a mile across at the mouth.
“On either side … was a sandy point, covered with pelicans and wild fowl … The opening … now widened into a very fine reach, out of which the water was running rapidly, and when we has ascended about a mile, I saw large trees … sticking up in the bed of the river …”
As the river depth dwindled to “about six inches,” Grey selected a camp site and readied his men to continue exploring on foot. Accompanied by three others, Grey walked further up the river, running almost west. Peering into the reeds, Grey said he spied “a huge alligator, fast asleep.”
He noted: “I … retreated to a respectful … distance and let fly at it with a rifle; it gave … a kind of shake … I therefore took a double-barrelled shotgun … and drove two balls through the beast … It turned out to be a huge shark … left in some hole by the tide, where the natives had found and killed it, and, being disturbed by our approach, had run away, first hiding it in (the) reeds.”
The English soldier described the river as “the most mournful, deserted spot imaginable … Even the water-holes were nearly all dried up, and in the bottom of these the natives had scooped little wells.”
Following the wide, sandy, river bed for three and a half miles, Grey then decided to turn off in a west-by-south direction.
He later wrote in his journal: “I named (the river) Gascoyne, in compliment to my friend, Captain Gascoyne, and found that we were in a very fertile district, being one of the most splendid exceptions to the general sterility of Australia which are only occasionally met with: it apparently was one immense delta of alluvial soil, covered with gently sloping grassy rises, for they could scarcely be called hills; and in the valleys between these lay fresh-water lagoons … The country here was … well adapted for either agricultural or pastoral purposes …
“ … I felt conscious that within a few years of the moment at which I stood there, a British population, rich in civilization, and the means of transforming an unoccupied country to one teeming with inhabitants and produce, and would be eagerly and anxiously examining my charts …”
Two days later Grey and his men explored the country to the north of the Gascoyne River … “just above the point where it separates into two mouths,” and they travelled in a north-by-easterly direction. The explorers came across seven native huts, “built of large-sized logs, much higher, and altogether of a very superior description to those made by the natives on the south-western coast.”
Their Aboriginal guide, Kaiber, examined the huts. He thought they should be left undisturbed, as the natives who used them “must be very large men,” and he did not fancy having to tackle them in battle.
The party noticed two Aboriginal men following them at a distance and behaving in an extraordinary manner. The whites assumed their visitors were “native sorcerers.” Grey drew near, hoping to entice them closer by having his Aboriginal companion, Kaiber, strip off his clothes and speak to them in his dialect.
Grey wrote: “The two sorcerers … committed more overt acts of witchcraft towards us … and Kaiber, turning round to me, said, ‘Weak ears have they and wooden foreheads. They do not understand the southern language.’”
The white men then asked Kaiber to go over and personally speak to the gesticulating natives.
“This order of mine was a perfect thunderbolt to Kaiber,” George Grey recorded. “He … had an utter aversion to all strange natives … he gave me a blank look of horror … and … there was a mysterious, deep meaning in his tone, as if he expected to see me thrill with terror … As far as a native can turn white from fear, Kaiber did turn white … he waded ashore, and the two natives cautiously approached him. As soon as they were close to him, I joined the party with a large piece of damper in one hand and a piece of pork in the other. The natives were dreadfully frightened; they stood in the presence of unknown and mysterious beings. No persuasions could induce them to take my hand, or touch me; and they trembled from head to foot. I now left them to bear to their companions the strange food I had bestowed, and to recount to eager listeners the mysterious tale of their interview with beings from another world, and who were of an unknown form and colour. Whilst they hurried off with such thoughts passing through their minds, we pulled down the Gascoyne in search of new lands and adventures …”
The local Aboriginal tribe, known as Mandi, were rumoured to be ferocious cannibals.
The bloody battles between them and the white pioneers engendered a government investigation which all but divided the population of West Australia’s early settlers.
The earliest European explorers recorded that the Gascoyne’s tribal people were both brave and well armed.
In the late 1850s an exploring party led by Francis Gregory described their 12 ft. multi-barbed spears and large wooden shields. He told of the young Aboriginal man who had rushed between armed Europeans into the middle of his camp to rescue a tribal baby accidentally left behind. But tolerance of the “noble savages” waned rapidly when the early pioneers discovered the Aboriginal people had no intention of yielding their country without a fight. The tribal people, at first merely curious about the odd-looking strangers, became increasingly aggressive when attempts were made to virtually enslave them as station property, or were forcibly apprehended and kept thirsty to force them into revealing their traditional water resources.
By 1878 the confrontation had already ignited.
John Finnerty, of Mungarra, (later named “Brickhouse Station), recorded that he and his men would not venture 50 yards from the homestead without a cocked revolver in their hands. Sheep killings rose to dozens each day as the emboldened tribesmen, in groups up to 400 strong, found that the white interlopers were too few and scattered to organise an effective resistance.
In June, 1881, George Gooch, droving sheep at Mt. Dalgetty Station, managed to ward off a mass attack, but was infuriated when the robbers stole and ate two of his horses, one a thoroughbred racer. Much worse was to come. Three months later the bones of a man who had been killed and eaten were found near Minilya. In October a white and an Aboriginal were killed in an affray on the Nicol Bay Road. Soon afterwards. The well-known Gascoyne pioneer, Charles Wheelock, appealed for aid in a message which said: “ … out of ammunition and troubled by natives.”
By now the whole region was in a nervous turmoil. Drovers would only tackle the Kennedy Ranges in convoys, a Carnarvon man reported to a Perth newspaper in March, 1882. He wrote: “Great and universal dissatisfaction is felt here at the tardiness of the government in sending up the long promised police force. The daring robberies of the natives are becoming quite unbearable. They are killing sheep in open daylight in every direction. There has been a most brutal murder of a Swan (Perth) native called Jacob while in charge of his master’s shearing shed. The settlers here are few in number … Consequently, they are quite in the power of the natives, who are now beginning to know their strength. Many threats against the lives of whites are being made and no one would be surprised to see them carried out at any moment.”
Only a few days later his prediction came true. A camel teamster named Collins was asleep in his dray at Minnie Creek, while his mate, Smith, explored a nearby creek. Suddenly, 14 Aboriginals rushed from the surrounding bush to attack the sleeping man. For warmth, he had wrapped himself in a heavy canvas cart sheet which resisted most of the spear thrusts and undoubtedly saved his life. Even so, he received severe wounds in the chest and stomach before his mate raced back to help; their combined gunfire drove away the attackers.
Conflicts between the Gascoyne’s early settlers and the Aborigines became so violent the police presence was increased and an especially appointed magistrate, Robert Fairbairn, from Busselton, arrived in Carnarvon to investigate what was becoming known as the “Gascoyne War.”
Perth residents took a considerably different view of the problem than the embattled settlers. Humanitarian principles were in the ascendant, encouraged by the Governor, Sir William Robinson, regarded as among the most able and enlightened of the colonial administrators. However, whites on the Gascoyne were in no mood for unrealistic sentiments from outsiders. There was widespread anger when the Governor’s instructions to Fairbairn were publicised as “to ascertain how far the settlers of these districts had brought the trouble on themselves by their harsh treatment of the natives.” Not surprisingly, the luckless Fairbairn did not find himself popular and did not receive much assistance with his official inquiries. Fairbairn’s popularity became non-existent. Three months later when it became known that his report blamed most of the trouble on the taking of Aboriginal women by the white sheep station employees.
In the meantime, the predicament had seriously deteriorated. In July, 1882, a shepherd at Nanicoo had granted an Aboriginal’s request to cook a wallaby in his campfire. Instead, the Aboriginal had stabbed the white man through the neck, grabbed his revolver and beckoned two tribal friends to join the fray. Together, they attacked the white shepherd and, leaving him badly injured, drove off his sheep to be scattered over the countryside. Days later one of the areas’s best-known shepherds, Charles Bracknell, was axed in his lambing paddock at Bookabookarra by his Aboriginal helper, Billy Nannacrow. Bracknell’s partner, James Smith, returned to find the victim still wrapped in his sleeping blanket, but his head was almost severed.
Local grief and outrage were the greater because some time before the dead man had been the hero of an earlier Aboriginal attack and had successfully driven away marauders with only a single bullet in his gun. An unofficial posse tracked down Nannacrow and killed him. Other Aboriginals, far from being cowed by his terrible death, merely vowed revenge. A notorious Aboriginal outlaw known around the Gascoyne as Simon sent a message to the white settlers that he would not spear any more shepherds; next time his target would be the boss of the homestead. George Gooch called his bluff by arranging an ambush of his own – after which, states a cryptic account – “he was never again troubled by that particular gang.”
Tempers on both sides were at white heat when the governor’s verdict on Fairbairn’s report inflamed the settlers even further. Sir William, perhaps himself nettled by earlier local criticisms, was quite astonishingly out-spoken in his findings; he made it painfully clear where he placed all the blame for the inter-racial strife.
“Their women are surely as valuable … as our flocks and herds are to us,” he wrote, thus evoking frowns of disapproval from the settler’s wives. “So long as we outrage those feelings which human nature has placed in a greater or lesser degree in even the most savage breast, what right have we to expect that they will respect the property of the aggressor? What right have we to be surprised when we hear a native has gone ‘sulky’ with a shepherd for stealing away his woman …?”
The Gascoyne settlers were furious. Not only did they repudiate the findings, but they denied statements attributed to them in Fairbairn’s report, especially those along the lines: “Let the government leave it to us for six months and we will settle matters.”
Defending the illegal posse that had ruthlessly murdered Billy Nannacrow, an Arthur River settler wrote: “Objecting to being cruelly butchered, they went out to meet the blacks who, beards in mouths, attacked them boldly and fought like devils. Was this an outrage? I have had much experience among natives, but have never come across a worse lot than these Gascoyne-Lyons and Upper Minilya tribes.”
A Mt. Stirling settler advocated shooting down all Aboriginal killers and ten year gaol sentences for all thieves, adding: It is absurd to bring such savages to the Supreme Court …”
Whatever the rights and wrongs, it was obvious a solution must be found.
The Governor appointed Mr. C. Foss as itinerant magistrate to the Gascoyne, empowered by a special act of parliament to track down offenders and deal with them on the spot. Among his earlier successes was the capture of Jangacoorroo whose known crimes included at least one murder and other attempt. After a month’s chase, he was captured and chained in an Aboriginal camp at Gnabaryarra, in spite of protests by Aboriginal elders. The settlers took heart from this incident. In June, 1883, George Gooch and Charles Keen made a notable capture of Joolabroo when they seized a sheep stealer named Thackabiddy, who tried to spear Keen and threw a boomerang at Gooch before he was shot through the neck. Thackabiddy was chained to a tree by another settler, Charles Clifford, after an alleged escape attempt. When police found Thackabiddy dead Clifford was tried for manslaughter, but acquitted.
“Trouble-shooter” Foss found 63 convictions, some offenders being sent to the Aboriginal prison on Rottnest Island. Quite suddenly, the heart went out of the opposition.
In August, 1889, an Aboriginal named Joolagoora mounted a single-handed attack on Yanyeareddy Station. William Lefroy arrived at the homestead to find his wife terrified and a servant wounded. At once, he set off with a friend named White to track down the culprit. They found Joolagoora waiting defiantly in his camp, daubed with ochre, carrying three spears and a hair belt full of boomerangs. In spite of the white men’s guns, he refused to surrender and when they approached him he hurled his weapons at them. Lefroy shot him through the leg. White assisted in the attack. A cryptic account of the incident states: “A fierce fight followed in which Joolagoora suffered a good deal of bodily punishment.”
In three days he was dead. There was another manslaughter charge made against White, and another acquittal.
By the late 1800s many of the Aboriginal girls and women were house servants. Their tamed warriors had become shearers and labourers. One swarthy tribesman, Tiger, earned local fame by hand shearing 63 ewes in a day.
Aboriginal chain gangs were to remain a feature of Carnarvon for many years to come, although the town was trying to acquire a veneer of sophistication. By the turn of the century the Aboriginal tribe that traditionally occupied the town site, the Mandi, were extinct from European diseases against which they had no immunity. Surrounding tribal groups – the Wadjarri, Ingarrda, Maia and Baijungu – moved in to occupy the delta country at the Gascoyne river mouth.
-B.J.C.
Was Brickhouse really once called Mungarra?
There is another station in the area called Mungarra.
Thanks,
Stuart
— Stuart Duncan · 12 06 2008 - 19:32 · #