First Nations Australians

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this section contains images and names of deceased persons.

We have information about TLM-P's interactions with First Nations Australians, and his comments about general conditions in mid-19th century rural Australia, chiefly because his daughter Rosa Praed asked him to record his experiences. The result was a 59pp document now in the Rosa Praed papers, Box 3, 8370, packet 3/1/1, Oxley Library. All references in this section are to this document unless otherwise stated. Rosa subsequently used the memoir in her Australian life: black and white, published in 1885. You can access the book for free at Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook but note that there are some transcription errors.

Rather than write his memories himself, TLM-P dictated them to his wife Nora. On one occasion Nora added her own comment and most likely influenced the final document by the way she summarised what her husband said and also by prompting him to recall specific events. His memoir is a particularly rich source because, as his diaries also make clear, one of TLM-P's defining characteristics was his deep-seated curiosity about the world and a keen desire to learn.

Things to note about this memoir:

• Language: the meanings of some words are different to their modern meaning and some which were commonplace then are deeply offensive now. While appreciating the sensitivities, I have avoided censorship and sanitising the text.
  
• It would be easy to misinterpret what was written, especially as it was likely written without revisions. As well, Rosa could ask for clarification and also had shared knowledge: the modern reader has neither advantage.
  
• Though it was possible that TLM-P referred to his diaries, it was heavily based on memory of events around 40 years previously. Memory is always a slippery function, especially in a literate society, and is influenced by hindsight. TLM-P was very aware of this aspect, telling Rosa that 'It is so difficult after some 40 years to remember all details. Facts remain & as the past flits thro' the mind, new lights are thrown upon them.'(p.24)
  
• The First Nations people in this memoir communicated in Pidgin. Pidgin was not the first language for any of those involved, so it limited communication.
  
• Both White and First Nations cultures had strong gender-based divisions, so TLM-P's memories are mostly about men.
  

TLM-P's memories about First Nations Australians are a complex mixture of the realities of immense White power over their lives, but also a strong strand of respect. The words he uses to describe specific individuals include 'gentleman in manner', 'smart', 'intelligent', 'shrewd' and 'full of fun'. These depictions give context to his criticism in his diary about how Australian First Nation people were depicted at the Crystal Palace in England in 1882. He thought they were presented as 'miserable looking specimens' and 'very unlike those I have seen'.¹⁾ Another aspect of his memoir is that he was familiar with First Nation people as most of his properties had a local First Nations community and he employed First Nation workers.

TLM-P admired physical toughness, bush skills and good humour in both men and women of all backgrounds. He recorded his admiration of First Nations' people's acute powers of sight and observation, a 'great aptitude on concealing themselves' in the bush, a talent for mimicry, and strong sense of humour. His described how the acute observational skills extended to detecting subtle differences in rank amongst White people. TLM-P recounted an episode when a rider was seen in the distance, but he could not see them clearly enough to identify them. An unnamed 'black boy' was asked and (correctly) identified him as a 'gentleman bullock driver'. It turned out to be a neighbouring squatter who had driven his bullock team some 150 miles in drought conditions. Given the man was tired, hot and dusty, as TLM-P commented, 'a less shrewd observer might have been pardoned for not at once detecting his position in society'.

Like many squatters, TLM-P relied on First Nation knowledge of the land and their soon-acquired horse riding skills. Dispossessed youths attached themselves to TLM-P and other squatters in order to survive. They also adopted, or were given, English names to fit in with the new regime. In TLM-P's case, the mutual dependence appears to have resulted in good relationships. In 1854 when first acquiring Hawkwood, for example, TLM-P rode long distances with a First Nation boy ('Johnny') when he was scouting the land. He described Johnny as 'about 13 years old … a nice, smart lad, full of fun'. He commented that, in his experience, 'Black boys are very much attached to any one they are with. They have plenty of conversation, are intelligent & make capital companions'.

In earlier decades, TLM-P was a young man determined to make good in the colony. His focus was on rural success and, like other colonists, he did not comprehend the rights of First Nation owners. As outlined in Gaining Colonial Experience, while at Hawkwood station he had no compunction about taking part in a murderous reprisal after the Hornet Bank massacre of the Fraser family. In this document he implicitly justifies the response by detailing incidents and the White people's consequent 'feeling of insecurity' and 'being on the watch' all the time both before and after the massacre. He described how Hawkwood 'was a much safer place' than other properties. The reason, he believed, was the protection he gave the First Nations people who 'had been camped on the run nearly all the time & knew they would not be molested'; in return they had to refuse hospitality to other First Nations people. The latter, he knew, was a difficult condition as 'a law or custom of hospitality … prevents the tribe from turning strangers away'.(p.43)

In recording his memories, especially when at Hawkwood station, TLM-P repeatedly describes the conflict with First Nations people as 'war'. As usual with war, there is no suggestion that there were any repercussions for the numerous killings of First Nations people that he mentions. That the situation was war was also a natural conclusion for a man who had grown up with the army as the son of a career army officer and who, before coming to Australia, was in the navy. Apart from his language, the details he gives of his early life in the colony, especially at Hawkwood, indicates a state of (guerrilla) war. He took it for granted that the Fraser boys slept with a firearm within easy reach and when there was an incident at night at Hawkwood, he took a 'pistol from under my pillow'. Other incidents also depict a state of war. He described riding from Hawkwood to the Scott's property Palm Creek to persuade them to come to Hawkwood which he thought, as noted above, was much safer. Mr Scott, he recounted, was sitting in a squatter's chair on his verandah, ill with rheumatic fever and unable to walk without assistance. Scott sat there with 'his pistols lying all round him within reach'. His wife, 'when she went to her kitchen … used to put a double barrelled pistol in her belt - she could use it too'.(p.57) At night, the Scotts had strong bars over their shutters and doors.(pp.57-58) TLM-P also described the First Nation people as being at war. He considered that it was a serious weakness for them as warriors that, unlike native Americans, first they 'must have a corroboree - & a long woolla (council of war) of what they meant to do'.(pp.26-30) This was likely to be accurate, but also reflected white nervousness at any large gathering including the annual Bunya pinenut gathering ones.(p.25)

The complex and mutually dependent relationship between TLM-P and his First Nations workers at Bromelton is illustrated in his recollections of 'Charlie'. In c.1848, 'Charlie' had been a potential outcast as he wanted to transgress the strict First Nation marriage laws by marrying 'Sallie' who 'belonged to a caste into which he could not legally marry … [because her caste was] within the [proscribed] degree of relationship'). By his framing it as a legal issue, TLM-P respected the rule of law in First Nations culture. In recounting how he persuaded the 'tribe' to accept Charlie's transgression, he mentioned that 'their camp was close to our kitchen' - perhaps because both groups needed access to handy sources of fresh water. This was one indication how closely the competing groups lived with each other. TLM-P pretended that he had had a supernatural visitation at night to say that Charlie, who was ill at the time, should be forgiven. 'Charlie with a little care & treatment soon got quite well. He was a good boy & I did not wish to lose him naturally, so I told him that he must not go with the blacks again or he would die…. (In the mean time I had persuaded the other blacks to forgive him & let him have Sallie)'. Charlie consequently stayed with TLM-P 'for years'.

Charlie was an employee but he exercised what little power he had to fulfil his cultural obligations. Charlie insisted to TLM-P that these obligations were non-negotiable: 'a black man is not like a white man'; he had been told that he should 'go corroboree, when like it that blackfellow must go'. Charlie went but fell sick & died. TLM-P later learnt that Charlie had 'cried out very much' for him and tried to send a message to him to collect him in a dray and ensure he would not die. 'Poor Charlie - had I got the message I should certainly have gone'. Charlie was aware of the immense power Whites could wield with relative impunity. In another incident, TLM-P described frightening Charlie at a time when his horses had all been worked so hard that they were not fit to ride. The exception was TLM-P's favourite horse who Charlie rode when TLM-P was absent so that that horse too was 'regularly broken down'. With the help of 'Tinko', a Chinese worker, TLM-P pretended he would kill him - far from a harmless prank given how easily he could do so with little fear of legal consequences. Charlie explained that he had worn the horse out because he could not resist chasing after an emu then a dingo which he (correctly) thought TLM-P would wish to have killed.

TLM-P's reminiscences also reveal the self-justifying interpretations squatters put on the massacre of First Nation Australians. The Myall_Creek_massacre - an unprovoked killing of men too old or unwell to work, women and children - is seen as an understandable retaliation for other attacks by different First Nation groups. On the other hand, he did not minimise the blood lust of the white men involved, claiming that they made a bonfire and threw all those they shot on it '(several I have been told were not quite dead'). TLM-P reflected the conventional squatter view: 'No doubt it was a cruel murder, but the circumstances of the case, the provocation to the whites, was not sufficiently taken into consideration , nor the harm which would result from the encouragement to the black to commit more outrages.' He cites with incredulity Attorney-General John Plunkett who declared 'that he would hang any man who could be proved to kill a black.' Rosa probably agreed with her father at the time but by the time she published her next memoir, My Australian Girlhood (1902) she thought very differently: '“All hail to thee, Plunkett! Had there been more like thee, the national conscience would have less cause for self-reproach.'(My Australian Girlhood, 1902, p.17)

As was also conventional among squatters, TLM-P praised the dreaded Mounted Police²⁾ under Major Nunn including their forays against bushrangers and First Nation resistance: 'Many were the stories told at the Campfire of the adventures of these Policemen.' One of those stories was likely to be the massacre of Indigenous people by the Mounted Police at Waterloo Creek, south-west of Moree. Like other squatters, TLM-P also supported the equally brutal Native Police. Like many of his compatriots, he particularly relished tales where First Nations police or trackers killed other First Nation people (e.g. story of 'Nelson' taking revenge for an attach and shooting bound prisoners, eventually killing them, p.59). He also included an account of the vigilante group in the aftermath of the Hornet Bank murders, where a 'half-caste' (as the term was then) lad called Paddy was the only one of the party who could detect First Nation men hiding in the scrub - Paddy, TLM-P wrote, walked in and shot two men before the rest ran away. Nora added her own anecdote featuring 'a black trooper (always the worst against the wilder blacks)'. TLM-P amply illustrates the Native Police's savage, murderous attacks on First Nations people. He describes a long ride during summer with one of the stops being Taroom station. The station hands had been mustering scrubbers (wild cattle) and 'the native police had also shortly before visited the station. The carcasses of wild bulls were lying about the stockyard as well as the bodies of several blacks (Jerry[?] among them)' covered only by a number of boughs.(p.56)

The complex accommodations that First Nations people made to survive and their entanglement with the Native Police is illustrated by the story of stockman Billy Hay. TLM-P recalled that his manager at Hawkwood, 'Ernest Davis went to the [nearby] Auburn [River] & took my boy Billy Hay with him. Billy made his camp close to Davis' room. In the middle of the night the policeman came up'. They mistook Billy for 'Auburn Boney' who TLM-P described as 'a great chief & a very dangerous enemy'. The Native Police 'pounced on Billy' who 'struggled bravely' and called out to 'Mister Davis' who was able to confirm his identity. On his return to Hawkwood Billy recounted the story, proud that the Commandant John_O%27Connell_Bligh had apologised to him for the error. As Bligh and his troops were responsible for numerous massacres, Billy was lucky. One reason for this luck was that, as TLM-P later noted, 'Billy had been a good deal with the native police'.

Billy Hay, his wife Mary Anne (Nora spelt the latter in various ways) and TLM-P had an ongoing relationship. TLM-P recalled that 'Billy had been well-trained & was a gentleman in manner. His gin [a Australian First Nations woman, now a highly derogatory term] Mary Anne had followed me up from Bundoona [? there are a number of possibilities, all in remote Queensland]. She had two half-caste children with her, the eldest Jenny [or Jinny?] was about 6 years old and came to us for some time. I thought that Billy & Mary Anne had better be coupled'. He described how he asked each one if they wanted to marry the other and when they both said yes, he said 'All right Billy, mine give him, now you are married.' There was a small one-roomed hut with a chimney close to the house' with a verandah and a bark roof. They lived there and did the hut up 'smartly', with the usual habit of hanging up a firearm over their bed 'handy at a moment's warning'. One time, he recollected, a 'black [man] had come right into the kitchen & had frightened Mary Anne out of her wits, but had gone away without doing any harm.'(p.55) Mary Anne, TLM-P asserted, 'was a capital cook & used to make good bread, curries etc. In fact the black boys had the nicest quarters & the best living on the station. They were very seldom put to labour, their duty being to look for lost sheep to ride about among the cattle & to bring up the horses. I used to be quite proud of my boys. Maryanne washed their clothes & their moleskins were always white & their shirts clean. They used to wear a silk or coloured handkerchief over one shoulder & knotted under the other arm, which gave them a dressy showy look. … Billy, Freddy, & a small Wide Bay boy Tombo (who had a beautiful voice) used to sing songs they had picked up, & made their camp quite jolly. Billy afterwards went North & purchased a dray & a team of bullocks. When I last heard of him he was doing well.'(pp.50-52) There is also mention in TLM-P's many papers, in a reference we will follow up, a story of a First Nations man complaining about foolish White men, with TLM-P commenting that he would appoint him head stockman if he could, but that the other men would not accept a black man in authority over them.[to do]

From the above description of the First Nations stockmen at Hawkwood, it is likely that this faded and damaged photo ³⁾ is of Billy Hay and his fellow stockmen:

While Billy Hay appeared to survive well in the hostile new world, Mary Anne and her daughter Jenny/Jinny (there is no information about her second daughter) were much more vulnerable. As both daughters had an (apparently absent) White father, it is quite possible that their conception was based on rape. When TLM-P first meets them, he and his family were making a long and arduous trip to Hawkwood and Jenny/Jinny was around six-years-old. TLM-P told Rosa that he believed that, because she had a White father, she could be killed and (in an example of a bizarre belief) eaten. He accordingly asked her to come and live with him, his wife Matilda and family. It would be up to Matilda to look after and teach her and, with young children of her own, it is not surprising that, as he wrote, 'My wife did not quite like the responsibility'. In addition, he 'agreed to take her provided that Mary Anne should have nothing more to say to her.' He claims that the child was not there when they left but that 'Mary Anne overtook us on the road & begged us to take Jenny. So I gave her an old shawl & a clasp knife by way of ratifying the bargain' and took the girl. Goodness knows what 6-year-old Jenny thought, especially when that night they reached Cadarga (in Queensland's western Downs). There TLM-P shaved her head (the usual means of dealing with lice infestations) and she was thoroughly washed by Mrs Galbraith, a 'a very kind old lady' and her servant, 'a German girl'. Jenny was then dressed in 'some of our children's clothes'. TLM-P's recollection was that 'she looked clean & pretty & much pleased with herself' and added that she 'used to sleep in our room'. In a diary for 16 October 1863, he 'asked Mr Reid to give Jinnie 6d. per week for me', possibly the same girl he recalled in his memoir. As Mary Anne later followed TLM-P and lived on the property, she did manage to stay near her daughter despite the 'bargain' not talk to her. First Nations people in TLM-P's world had very little power, but the ones he particularly remembers were assertive and resisted as much as possible.

Another of the stockman TLM-P remembered, Freddy, had a more typically unhappy story. TLM-P wrote that 'Freddy rejoined his tribe near Brisbane, took to drink, gave up his cleanly habits & I have little doubt did not live long.' He added that 'Rosie may remember meeting him in Queen Street, Brisbane on one occasion afterwards, when he recognised her & wished to renew an old acquaintanceship.'(p.53) Rosa's version was told in Australian life: black and white Chapter 2 with down-and-out looking 'Tambo' grabbing her hand when she was a guest at an official function - she was young and mortified. TLM-P also recounted his memory of the story of a First Nation boy he recalled as 'Charlie Coxen' (actually John Bungarie) who was taken from his family and raised with the family of Charles Coxen, including going to school with the Coxen sons. He did well at school but TLM-P recalled him expressing profound loneliness at being caught between two worlds. A more accurate, but no less sad, version of his life is at John Bungarie

TLM-P was ever curious and he makes it clear that he attempted to know as much as possible about First Nation culture. He was aware that much knowledge was revealed only to the initiated: regarding religion, he wrote that 'either they have no information to give, or they are so bound that they will not divulge anything.' TLM-P did learn of the importance of ceremonies on the Bora grounds, describing them and the initiation ceremonies in as much detail as he had gleaned. His information, he knew, was limited: 'The boys [to be initiated] are brought in one by one. Some ceremony which I never could get any of them to explain to me is gone through'. A few days later, there is a 'grand corroboree' for the newly initiated warriors. No White person he knew had ever learnt more - 'Black boys [who] were questioned have shown great fear', saying they would be killed if they revealed secret lore. TLM-P also described what he recalled as a gathering of around 1,000 warriors engaged in a 'great tribal fight'.(p.31) As was usual in such cases, the intention was to harm not kill, a method of settling scores that put the First Nation warriors at a disadvantage when confronted with European notions of total war.(p.43)

TLM-P also makes it clear that the Australian tradition of telling 'tall tales' to the gullible outsider was very much part of First Nation culture: 'So little do the whites know of the customs & religion of any of the Australian natives, that any story told by black man to white, may, or may not be true.' He then goes on to repeat a story of cannibalism, a common British fantasy about First Nation people worldwide. One example suggests that cremation was mistaken for 'roasting' a body. TLM-P himself was 'inclined to think from what I have been told by the blacks that it is some kind of religious ceremony - the feasters believing that the eating part of a great warrior transmits to the eater, some share of his courage.'

TLM-P was not above telling tall tales himself, especially relying on claims that he could will First Nation people to be sick. He told Rosa that a few times he warned away First Nation men he considered a threat by telling them that he could will them to become sick. It did not work when he made this claim to a senior initiated man. The response was periodic messages from the wiseman that 'he was quite well' and that he knew that TLM-P's 'debil-debil' story was 'gammon' (nonsense).(p.48) As in this case, the voices of the First Nation people in the stories he recalls are generally strong with a clear sense of their rights. He recalled a First Nations woman telling him that, when she had been told he was dead, 'she was very glad'. As with other such anecdotes, TLM-P implies that this blunt truth-telling was usual. With this particular woman who he calls Nanny (?unclear) he gave her gifts of tobacco '& she became quite friendly & took me to the camp 'to see a young man' called 'Jimmy' who TLM-P judged to have a bad bout of influenza 'brought on by exposure to the cold'. 'Nanny' presented TLM-P as a doctor so he went along with the concept prescribing tea and warmth and rest. He went back to the camp in the morning to see Jimmy and to say he thought he would live: 'At this there was great shouting in the camp. Jimmy's eyes fairly glistened, hope came back & he looked at once a different man. I was never again in that part of the country [the Burnett], but I have little doubt that with this treatment, youth & imagination, Jimmy did recover.'(pp.49-50)

Finally, TLM-P has a timely warning about nostalgia. When he lived at Hawkwood, he described visiting the Scotts on a neighbouring property and the state of war they lived under as well as Mr Scott's severe illness. He went on to comment that 'Mrs Scott has given you a good many of her reminiscences. When she talks now of her bush life. she sighs & says “Ah! those were the happy days.” The less plucky listener finds it hard to discover where the happiness came in.'(p.58)