Indigenous Australians

In earlier decades, TLM-P was a young man determined to make good in the colony. His focus was on owning a successful rural property and, like other colonists, he did not comprehend the rights of Indigenous owners. As outlined earlier Gaining Colonial Experience, while at Hawkwood station he had no compunction about taking part in a murderous reprisal after the Hornet Bank massacre. Yet the story of colonial conquest is nuanced. When first acquiring Hawkwood, he had ridden long distances with an Indigenous boy ('Johnny') when he was scouting the land. He described Johny as'about 13 years old … a nice, smart lad, full of fun'. TLM-P admired bushcraft and physical toughness in men and perhaps largely because of those qualities, 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'.¹⁾ That qualification indicates the huge gap between the two cultures, including language, and that the expectation was that the conquered had to do virtually all the adjusting to the alien culture. Most obviously, the squatters 'right' to the land over-rode all other considerations. In other ways the relationship was revealed: TLM-P communicated in Pidgin and used English names for the Indigenous people he knew.

We have more information than usual about TLM-P's interactions with, and attitude to, Indigenous Australians because his daughter Rosie Praed asked him about his experiences which she then used in her books. He dictated to Nora what he knew (or thought he knew) about the Indigenous Australians he had encountered - and, on one occasion, Nora added her own anecdote - as well as a summary of governmental land policy. The latter included an account of what he considered was corrupt dealing in unbranded cattle by Commissioner Mayne. Regarding the sections on Indigenous Australians, TLM-P's memories are a fascinating mixture of brute power and respect; ignorance and at least an attempt to learn Indigenous customs. TLM-P gave numerous examples of Pidgin speech, and described Indigenous people (almost all men, there is little reference to the women) as having acute powers of sight and observation, a talent for mimicry, and a deep-seated sense of humour. The acute observations was not just the natural landscape but extended to detecting subtle differences in rank amongst white people. In one case TLM-P recounted when a man was riding in the distance but he could not see him clearly to know who it was. 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. As TLM-P commented, 'a less shrewd observer might have been pardoned for not at once detecting his position in society'.

The complex and mutually dependent relationship between TLM-P and his Indigenous 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 Indigenous 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 Indigenous 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 ²⁾ 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', but it would be wrong to assume that he was totally subservient. Charlie reminded TLM-P that 'a black man is not like a white man' in that he had tribal obligations: 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 you' 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'. This is not to suggest, however, that TLM-P or any of his compatriots rose above his culture's assumption of the superiority of British people, nor of the immense power he 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 without legal consequences. Charlie explained that he could not resist chasing after an emu then a dingo which he (correctly) thought TLM-P would wished to have killed.³⁾

TLM-P's reminiscences also reveal the self-justifying interpretations squatters put on the massacre of Indigenous 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 Indigenous 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 Plunkett, the Attorney-General, declaring 'that he would hang any man who could be proved to kill a black.' He writes this with incredulity which makes sense if the squatters believed they were engaged in war - ironically a war that many conservatives now claimed never happened. As was also conventional among squatters, TLM-P went on to praise the Mounted Police including their forays against bushrangers.

TLM-P was ever curious and he makes it clear that he attempted to know as much as possible about Indigenous culture. He was aware that much knowledge was withheld (as belonging only to the initiated): regarding their 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 were questioned have shown great fear ' and said they would be killed if they revealed secret lore.

TLM-P also makes it clear that the Australian tradition of telling 'tall tales' to the gullible outsider was very much part of Indigenous 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 Indigenous people. 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.'