Making of a nation: AustraliaExpansion, contact, resistance

Today’s lesson

Quiz: Review definitions

“Expansion, contact, resistance” explore meaning.

Definitions

Growth of Queensland (data and graph)

Resistance: Frontier Wars (source exploration)

Change (Explore sources)

Homework

Quiz:Definitions1. The biggest conflict between white people and the aboriginal.

2. South Sea Islanders between 1863 and 1904 were often employed as……….

3. The policy of seeking to extend the power and the territories of a particular, dominant nation to create an empire.

4. Australian term ‘blue collar’ workers refers to this group.

5. The feeling of belonging to a nation.

6. Farmers or agriculturalists engaged in raising animals for food or other resources.

7. Delegates whose aim is to draft or revise a constitution

8. Sometimes referred to as the ‘frontier wars’. Indentured labour, working class, nationalism. Pastoralists, land, imperialism, Constitutional convention, Frontier violence

Definitions

Squatter

• In Australian history, a squatter was one who occupied a large tract of Crown land in order to graze livestock.

• Initially often having no legal rights to the land, they gained its usage by being the first (and often the only) Europeans in the area.

Penal Colony

• A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory.

Prosperity

• Prosperity is the state of flourishing, thriving, good fortune and / or successful social status. 

• Prosperity often encompasses wealth but also includes others factors which are independent of wealth to varying degrees, such as happiness and health.

Massacre

• An indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people. • Massacres on Australia's frontier tended to fall under a veil of secrecy

due to fear of possible legal consequences, • They remained unrecorded as a general rule

Attitudes

• A settled way of thinking or feeling, typically reflected in a person's behavior.

Guerrilla-like warfare

• War tactics which include ambushes, sabotage, raids and elements of surprise. 

Environmental impact

• A change in the make-up, working, or appearance of the environment. These changes may be planned or accidental.

• Many introduced species of animals and plants had an negative effect on the Australian environment.

Source 1: Growth of colonial Queensland

‘Colonial Queensland grew rapidly. In the first six years [from 1859] the population rose from 28 000 to over 96 000. By 1865 the government was raising over £224,000 per year in the sale of Crown lands1. The number of squatting runs2 leased rose to 3 236 representing more than 98 million acres — almost a quarter of the colony. Ironically, the publication and distribution of the atlas [published for Queensland] coincided with the severe economic depression of 1866 which saw sales of land decline from the highs of 1865, but the number of squatting runs continues to increase. The rapidity and wide-scale of this land acquisition saw widespread conflict with Aboriginal groups.’

Stell, M 2011, Queensland Historical Atlas, http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/first-queensland-atlas-1865 

1 Crown land: Land owned by the British Crown (monarch -government)

2 Squatting runs: land taken up by squatters (people who occupied a large tract of Crown land in order to graze livestock, i.e. cattle or sheep). Many of the large properties created in the 19th century on the Darling Downs, for example, were squatters’ run

Source 2: Queensland’s population growth from 1860

to 1884

Source 2: Queensland’s population growth from 1860

to 1884Q

ueensland: her natural, agricultural, pastoral and mineral resources.

Brisbane: P

ublic Relations O

ffice. Prem

ier and Chief S

ecretary's Departm

ent, Queensland,

1900? Record no. 695039. - http://w

ww

.slq.qld.gov.au/resources/maps

 

Resource rich Queensland

1. Population growth in Qld• 1869 and 1879 107,974• 1879 and 1884 92,062

2. The obvious reason is that it was profitable, as stated: ‘the government was raising over £224,000 per year in the sale of Crown lands’. But it can also be inferred that it suited the government to encourage settlement on the land by the growing number of Queenslanders because it would mean that the government derived money from tax as well as sales. The government also wanted to encourage settlement on the frontier.

3. Somewhere around 25%.

4. Sheep dominate the central interior but not the far north. Cattle dominate the west and far north, but not the wetter coastal areas.

5. To indicate their significance to the Queensland economy.

Source 4: Cornerstone of Q’ld Economy

‘By 1859 the pastoral grazing of sheep and cattle had completely transformed at least a quarter of the land use in Queensland and had become the cornerstone of the colonial economy. Three and a half million sheep and some 500 000 cattle grazed across a quarter of the colony’s land mass, and pastoral concerns generated 70 per cent of revenue and over 90 per cent of exports. “Wool, tallow1, and hides are the great staple products of our colony”, observed the Brisbane Courier in 1861. “Upon the successful working of the princely properties on which this produce is raised depends... the growth and stability of the wealth of the country”’

Ginn S 2010, Pastoralism 1860s – 1915, http://www.qhatlas.com.au/pastoralism-1860s-1915

Tallow: Hard fat obtained from parts of the bodies of cattle, sheep or horses and used in foodstuffs or to make candles, soap and lubricants.

Source 5: Value of the pastoral industry

‘Any examination of Queensland’s… official statistics clearly demonstrates the importance of the pastoral sector [i.e. raising of sheep and cattle] to the development of Queensland’s economy.

‘Queensland’s development laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries focused almost entirely upon building more rail networks. These were linked to a growing pastoral industry… the government and many others wanted to increase farm production (wool, beef and so on) so that Queensland could sell products both interstate and overseas…

‘Pastoralism suited the politics and economics of Britain. Pastoralism provided a significant source of raw materials for British factories. It also helped with the economic and demographic [population related] expansion of the British Empire. Queensland’s economy was also dominated by the same desires [for raw materials and food and products to sell, expanding settlement, etc.]… The way Queensland’s political economy worked benefitted the pastoral sector…’

Adapted from ‘Political Economics: the State and Economic Growth in Queensland, 1900 – 1913’ in Cameron, David Bruce 1999, An historical assessment of economic development, manufacturing and the political economy of Queensland, 1900 to 1930, University of Queensland, http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:157921/n04chapter2.pdf

Source 6: Riding on the sheep’s back

Importance of the pastoral industry

6.

‘…had completely transformed at least a quarter of the land use in Queensland and had become the cornerstone of the colonial economy’ (Source 4) and ‘pastoral concerns generated 70 per cent of revenue and over 90 per cent of exports’ (Source 4) and note also that state development was linked to pastoral industry requirements as with building the railways (Source 5).

7.

Erosion and damage to the soil (the animals have hard hooves and are very numerous). The pastoralists would need to chop down trees to build yards and fencing and perhaps to feed livestock during droughts.

Source 7: Explorer Thomas Mitchell, 1846

‘[Cattle] find these places [i.e. waterholes] and come from stations often many miles distant, attracted by the rich verdure [plants] growing about them, and by thus treading the water into mud, or by drinking it up, they literally destroy the whole country for the Aborigines.’ Mitchell T 1846, ‘Journal of an expedition’, cited in Reynolds, H 1981, The Other Side of the Frontier, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 156 – 157

Source 8: North Queensland pioneer, 1898

‘They [the cattle] trample out the signs of turtles found in dried-out swamps; the trail of the crocodile to his nest; they eat the tops of the yams, and eat and destroy the lilies; all of which make their [the Aborigines’] food scarcer and harder to find.’‘Bulleta: The case for the Aboriginals’ (12 November 1898), Queenslander, cited in Reynolds, H 1981, The Other Side of the Frontier, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 158 – 159

 

Source 9: Kangaroo sticking on the Darling Downs, 1894

Source 9 Answers

8. Note this quote: ‘they trample out the signs of turtles found in dried-out swamps; the trail of the crocodile to his nest; they eat the tops of the yams, and eat and destroy the lilies; all of which make their [the Aborigines’] food scarcer and harder to find’ (Source 8). Note also that Mitchell says the cattle ‘destroy the country for the Aborigines’ (Source 7). The cattle dirtied the water and destroyed the vegetation around the waterholes (Source 7).

9. As indicated conflict arose not only over ‘water rights’, European settlers also directly competed for other food sources.

10. The effect of these activities would be detrimental to the relationship between Europeans and Aborigines because of competition for sometimes scarce resources such as water and pasture (for the Europeans’ cattle and sheep and for the Aboriginal peoples’ reliance on hunting animals such as wallabies).

Source 10: The Moreton Bay Courier, 1846

‘The first footmark of civilisation on the hitherto trackless wilds, the first symptom of the victory which sciences and the arts were about to achieve over barbarous ignorance. The first faint rays from the beacon flame of knowledge, meeting and dispelling the darkness of lower superstition. The home of the savage had become the home of civilised man.’

Part of a transcript of an interview with Lecturer at CQU, Denis Cryle 2005, in an ABC radio interview with Donna McLachlan, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifelonglearning/the-colonial-press/3422828#transcript

(transcript of an interview with Denis Cryle, Lecturer at CQU, in an ABC radio interview with Donna McLachlan, (2005), http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifelonglearning/the-colonial-press/3422828#transcript)

Source 11: Queenslander, 1880

‘This, in plain language, is how we deal with the aborigines: On occupying new territory the Aboriginal people are treated exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there. Their lives and their property, the nets, canoes, and weapons which represent as much labour to them as the stock and buildings of the white settler, are held by the Europeans as being at their absolute disposal. Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women carried away, entirely at the caprice [whim] of the white men. The least show of resistance is met by a rifle bullet.

‘Evidently settlement must be delayed until the work of extermination is complete… or until some more rational and humane way of dealing with the blacks is adopted. It is surely advisable, even at this the eleventh hour, to try the more creditable alternative… to see if we can efface [wipe away] some portion of the stain which attaches to us.’

Queenslander, 1 May1880, cited in Kidd R 1997, The way we civilise, QUP, Brisbane, pp. xv - xvii

Source 12: Wikipedia on frontier wars in Q’ld

‘Fighting between Aborigines and settlers in colonial Queensland was more bloody than any other state and colony in Australia, likely due to Queensland having a larger pre-contact indigenous population than other colonies in Australia, singularly accounting for over one third and in some estimates close to forty per cent of the entire pre-contact population of Australia. The latest and hitherto most comprehensive survey states that some 1 500 European settlers and their allies (Chinese, Aboriginal and Melanesian assistants) were killed in frontier skirmishes during the nineteenth century; the same study similarly indicates the actual casualties Aboriginal people suffered, in the skirmishes with the native police and settlers and by contemporary political leaders frequently classified as “warfare”, “a kind of warfare”, “guerrilla-like warfare” and at times as a “war of extermination”, is highly likely to exceed 30 000. That is a tripling of the hitherto used estimates for Queensland.[6] A Queensland government paid force, the so-called “Native Police Force” (sometimes 'Native Mounted Police Force'), was a key instrument in the dispossession and oppression of indigenous people.’[7]

‘The three largest massacres on whites by Aborigines in Australian colonial history all took place in Queensland. On 27 October 1857 Martha Fraser's Hornet Bank station on the Dawson River, in central Queensland took the lives of 11 Europeans.[8] The tent camp of the embryo station of Cullin-La-Ringo near Springsure was attacked by Aborigines on 17 Oct 1861 killing 19 people including the grazier Horatio Wills.[9] Following the wreck of the brig Maria at Bramble Reef near the Whitsunday Islands on 26 February a total of 14 European survivors [were] massacred by local Aborigines.’[10]

Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited: Colonial Queensland and the 'History War, Brisbane 2011; Evans, Raymond: The country has another past: Queensland and the History Wars, in ‘Passionate Histories: Myth, memory and Indigenous Australia’ Aboriginal History Monograph 21, September 2010 (Edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys and John Docker).; Queenslander 1 May 1880 & Brisbane Courier, 8 May 1880, p.2e-f, editorial; The Way We Civilise; Black and White; The Native Police: - A series of articles and letters Reprinted from the ‘Queenslander’ (Brisbane, December 1880); Rusden: History of Australia Vol 3 pp.146-56 & 235

Wikipaedia References

Welcome to Frontier". Abc.net.au. http://www.abc.net.au/frontier/stories/ep3.htm. Retrieved 2010-08-04.

Australia. "Stories of the Dreaming - Australian Museum". Dreamtime.net.au. http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/timeline2.cfm. Retrieved 2010-08-04. ; NSWV&P re 26 Oct 1857; MBC Nov 14, 1857. Book: Reid, Gordon: A Nest of Hornets: The Massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank Station, Central Queensland, 1857, and related events, Melbourne 1982.

Queensland State Archive re 11 Nov 1861 - COL/R2/61/893; 12 Nov 1861 - COL/R2/61/894; 30 Oct 1861 - COL/A22/61/2790; Rockhampton Bulletin 29 Oct 1861; Brisbane Courier 5 Nov 1861, p2d. Brisbane Courier 9 Nov 1861, p2c-d; Brisbane Courier 11 Nov 1861, p2g-3a; Brisbane Courier 9 Dec 1861, p3c-d Book: Reid, Gordon: A Nest of Hornets: The Massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank Station, Central Queensland, 1857, and related events, Melbourne 1982.

Sydney Morning Herald 7 Mar 1872; Sydney Morning Herald 11 Mar 1872; Port Denison Times 28 Mar 1872; Brisbane Courier 4/4/72; Queensland State Archive COL/A172/72/1812; Queenslander 6 Apr 1872, p9; Sydney Morning Herald 2 Feb 1874, p3e-f.

Source: History of Queensland. In Wikipedia. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Queensland#cite_note-5

Source 13: The cycle of violence on the frontier, Cullin-

La-Ringo, 1861 ‘Thomas Wentworth Wills1 narrowly escaped death on 17 October 1861 when his father [Horatio] and 18 others were killed at Cullin-La-Ringo Station on Garden Creek, near Springsure [central Queensland]...

‘The attack at Cullin-La-Ringo… was the largest massacre of whites by Aborigines in Australian history. It was a payback massacre, part of the savage frontier guerrilla war that was being waged at the time. Fifty miles from Cullin-La-Ringo and north of the Expedition and Staircase Ranges, some local graziers in 1861 were poisoning Kairi Kairi water holes and shooting Aboriginal people, while the native mounted police were being encouraged to forcibly evict Aboriginal people from station and river camps.

‘Tommy [Wills] was away at Albinia Downs collecting stores with his stockmen Jim Baker and Bill Albury when the massacre occurred. Horatio [Wills] had a very positive relationship with Aboriginal people in Western Victoria and he insisted on locking all firearms away.

‘Of course, [after the massacre at Cullin-La-Ringo], another payback massacre followed and more than 200 local tribesmen and their families were slaughtered as they fled towards Mount Wandoo. P.F. McDonald later wrote, “It is not easy that a place so gifted by nature should be the scene of such a cruel massacre…” Charles Dutton of Bauhinia Downs wrote “The Aborigines have one feeling in common with whites — that of deep implacable revenge for unprovoked injury”.

‘This young colonial grazier who had witnessed the murder of his father, at the age of 26, stayed on to build the 200 000 square mile Cullin-La-Ringo property, with the few remaining shepherds, into a working station, complete with a flock of 10 000 sheep and cattle, yards, sheds and fences. 

1 Thomas Wills’ (Tommy) grandfather was a highway robber named Edward Wills, who was transported to Australia in 1799. The Wills family had become well known pastoralists. Tommy Wills is also famous as a champion cricketer and as one of the founders of Australian Rules football.

Text is from Queensland Historical Atlas 2010, http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/thomas-wentworth-wills-and-cullin-la-ringo-station

Source 14: A painting of the aftermath of the Cullin-La-

Ringo massacre, 1861

Source: Painting by T.G. M

oyle. (1861).  htt

p://en.wikipedia.org/w

iki/File:Cullin-La-Ringo_massacre.jpg

 

Word association

Words associated with Europeans

Words associated with Aboriginal peoples and their land

• civilisation, • sciences and the

arts, • beacon • flame of

knowledge,• civilised man.

trackless wilds, barbarous ignorance,darkness of lower superstition, the savage.

12.Europeans deserved to do as they please because of their superior civilisation.

Interpreting text answers

13. … They are treated exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or birds that the settlers may find on the land. The lives of the Aboriginal peoples and their property, their nets, canoes, and weapons are held by the Europeans as being at their absolute disposal. Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women carried away, entirely at the caprice [whim] of the white men. The least show of resistance is met by a rifle bullet…

14. ‘…settlement must be delayed … until some more rational and humane way of dealing with the blacks is adopted. It is surely advisable, even at this the eleventh hour, to try the more creditable alternative… to see if we can efface [wipe away] some portion of the stain which attaches to us…’

Interpreting text answers

15. This was ‘likely due to Queensland having a larger pre-contact Indigenous population than other colonies in Australia’.

16. ‘the actual casualties Aboriginal people suffered, in the skirmishes with the native police and settlers and by contemporary political leaders frequently classified as “warfare”, “a kind of warfare”, “guerrilla-like warfare” and at times as a “war of extermination”, is highly likely to exceed 30,000.’

17. The list of references certainly improves the reliability; even though we do not know who the author is. This information seems to have serious and reputable references to back it up, enhancing its reliability.

18. Work through the TADPOLE checklist, focusing on the elements that are applicable to this source. Consider the purpose of the source (inform/educate rather than to persuade/warn), check to see if verifiable facts have been included rather than unsubstantiated opinion (yes), check the content for references (in this case, scholarly and specialised) and look for corroborating ideas and evidence in this source and in others.

Cullin-La-Ringo questions

19.The source states that the killing of 19 whites at Cullin-La-Ringo was a ‘payback massacre’ because ‘some local graziers in 1861 were poisoning Kairi Kairi water holes and shooting Aboriginal people, while the Native Mounted Police were being encouraged to forcibly evict Aboriginal people from station and river camps’.

20.‘Tommy [Wills]… had a very positive relationship with Aboriginal people in Western Victoria and he insisted on locking all firearms away’.

Cullin-La-Ringo questions

21. ‘Another payback massacre followed’, ‘The Aborigines have one feeling in common with whites – that of deep implacable revenge for unprovoked injury’.

22. The use of ‘massacre’ and ‘slaughtered’ — evaluative language of judgement — imply that the killings were not justified. The fact that it mentions ‘families’ (which implies women, children and the elderly) also strongly suggests an unfavourable judgement.

23. While the sources mentioned in Source 13 are all European, their points of view vary from P.F. McDonald who wrote of ‘such a cruel massacre’ and Charles Dutton’s observation that the Aborigines and Europeans shared the feeling of ‘deep implacable revenge for unprovoked injury’. Overall the source is fair and balanced because it identifies motives for the massacre and shows atrocities committed by both sides.

Cullin-La-Ringo massacre, 1861 questions

24. See annotations on the painting above.

25. That of the white settlers. Explain your choice. Student responses will vary; they may suggest that the style of painting is European, or that the content of the painting focuses on the European response to events. They may indicate that apart from one or two native police, Aboriginal peoples are absent from the painting.

26. They may suggest that this was a time when graphic violence was not exhibited; they may suggest that the painter did not want to portray the real barbarity of the killings; they may suggest that the painter did not actually see the bodies and was constructing this sanitised image from imagination.

Source 15: Changes over time

Changes over time answers

27. It is depicted as free and living in family groups as hunter-gatherers in harmony with Nature. It is an idealised view of life before European settlement.

28. The Aborigines are portrayed as dislocated people, town dwellers dressed in western attire, the men debilitated by alcohol and the women and children impacted by that.

29. The cartoonist seems critical of the impact of European ‘civilisation’ on Aboriginal peoples in terms of robbing them of their land and lifestyle, moving them to towns, and then degrading them by dressing them as Europeans and introducing them to alcohol.

Strengths and weaknesses

Source Strengths WeaknessesSource 13Text from Qld Historical Atlas

Mentions a range of European views from people both anti and pro the Aboriginal peoples.

Quotes directly from P. F McDonald and Charles Dutton, the latter a nearby grazier of that time.

The fact that this is cited in the Queensland Historical Atlas underpins its validity.

No Aboriginal views are represented.

Source 14Painting by T.G Moyle

The painting was done in 1861, the year of the massacre.

That this painting is stored at the John Oxley Library suggests its value as a primary source.

The image appears ‘sanitized’, and the horror of the massacre is not evident. Without the previous source, it would be difficult to understand the image. Even when one knows this was a massacre, it is difficult to establish details.

Homework.

Write down homework activities in diary.

Review today’s lesson

Quiz: Review definitions

“Expansion, contact, resistance” explore meaning.

Definitions

Growth of Queensland (data and graph)

Resistance: Frontier Wars (source exploration)

Change (Explore sources)

Homework