The Gulf Country ----A National Disgrace

The Gulf Country ----ANational Disgrace

An edited version of an essay by Tony Roberts 2009

 

To what extent did the governments in Adelaide condone or turn a blind eye to frontier massacres in the Gulf Country of the Northern Territory until 1910.

 

In 1881, a massive pastoral boom commenced in the top half of the Northern Territory, administered by the colonial government in Adelaide. Elsey Station on the Roper River – romanticised in Jeannie Gunn’s We of the Never Never – was the first to be established. These were huge stations, with an average size of almost 16,000 square kilometres.

 

By the end of 1881 the entire Gulf district had been leased to just 14 landholders, all but two of whom were wealthy businessmen and investors from the eastern colonies. Once they had taken up their lease, landholders had three years to comply with a minimum stocking rate. By mid-1885 all 14 stations were declared stocked.

 

Over the next 30 years at least 600 men, women, children and babies, or about one-sixth of the aboriginal population, were killed. The death toll could be as  high as seven or eight hundred, yet, no one was charged with these murders.

 

By contrast, there were 20 white deaths, and not a single white woman or child was harmed in any way. The South Australian government of Sir John Cox Bray (1881–84)knew the region was heavily populated. And it knew wholesale pastoral settlement would mean starvation, sickness, degradation and massacre of the natives.

There was no regard for the legal and human rights of the Aboriginal owners of the land: no explanations, no consultations.

 

In four years the Aboriginal population of at least 4000, from 15 tribes or language groups was dispossessed of its land, breaking their spiritual links with profound consequences. The government was willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives and dispossess thousands of people in order to support the pastoral industry that failed. Six of the 14 stations were abandoned within ten years,others changed hands and nearly all were greatly reduced in size.

 

The region was still a ‘frontier’ and even before the Gulf leases were granted,there were pitched battles and massacres. At the Cox River, whites encountered a large number of natives painted for ceremonies. They were fired upon from a distance, yet, for nearly a half-hour the natives held their ground as they were shot. After the natives surrendered their weapons were placed on a fire and burnt, as the blacks tended to their dead and wounded.

 

Such encounters continued for the next 15 years and during the Kimberley gold rush of 1886, prospectors and overlanders shot the blacks on sight, according to the Northern Territory judge Charles Dashwood. Others heard of the “warlike savages” and shot them on sight out of fear.

 

Much early frontier violence took the form of punitive expeditions in reaction to the spearing of cattle and horses or attacks or upon whites as the natives avenged shootings or abductions of women and girls. It was said, “a severe lesson” they will never forget was needed, another term for wholesale slaughter. After slaughtering the occupants of a camp, the police and others burnt the bodies,homes, weapons, canoes and shoot their dogs.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/november/1330478364/tony-roberts/brutal-truth