On the utmost verge: race and ethnic relations at Moreton Bay, 1799-1842

Queensland Review, Feb, 2008 by Raymond Evans

The problem of 'appropriate response' was a more insuperable one. The 'mogwi', 'targan' or 'duggai' seemed to have lost their moral and cultural bearings, and it was difficult to continue making allowances for this. Though they often returned with an initial offering of exotic gifts, they subsequently became selfish and loathe to share. They had apparently forgotten that 'the humans who are of a land's-stuff do not, and cannot exclusively control that site ... [and that] they do not have exclusive rights to the foodstuffs produced'. (48) They did not appear to recognise their kin and tended to shun gestures of familiarity. Overall, they had become unmindful about how to behave. They had lost touch with the many rules of social intercourse, with how to hunt and gather or how to sing and dance. Their movements were ungainly and disorientated. They also seemed culturally bereft, laughing little and even forgetting how to speak properly. For the sounds they now made, instead of being soft and mellifluous, struck the ear as harsh and unpleasant. Furthermore, within their exclusive community, the reincarnates were seen to treat each other with great cruelty. They brought few women, and when these did begin to appear in any numbers, few seemed to mix and bond with the men.

The various arrivals, first occurring as short visitations, gradually became an extended sojourn and, as time passed, adopted an air of permanency. As an imposed, fixed and restrictive community, they were beginning to test the bounds of cordiality and to outstay their welcome. It is impossible to guess when the unthinkable began to dawn: that not only had these visitors en masse become an enduring presence but also that they now claimed exclusive monopoly over the fingers of land they occupied. For, in the Aboriginal world-view, land could not be so taken and exclusively held, any more than another person's being could be subsumed. The actions of the whitefellas and the claims they attached to these were unlawful--fundamentally unjust. If they were returning kin, they were not as they once were. They lacked ethics and, ultimately, could be as monstrous as they had first appeared fabulous. If provoked, their rage was awesome, for they possessed weapons of uncanny power that could kill and maim from a distance, with terrible noise, smoke and a pungent odour, as if by an invisible force and without leaving their hands. Conflict between returning kin and their living descendants was usually not long in coming.

Rapprochement and confrontation usually balanced on a knife's edge as the two peoples met and gingerly surveyed each other. Violence tended to shadow such meetings from the earliest encounter. Three of Flinders' sailors in July 1799 attempted to dance a Scottish reel for the Jindoobarrie and these later responded by singing the crew 'a melancholy soothing strain'. Yet, a week or so earlier at Skermish Point, the explorers had shot two or three Aborigines after one had tried to sample a white cabbage-tree hat that had taken his fancy. For days afterwards, the sailors remained on alert, each provided with 'a competent number of musquet balls, pistol balls and buckshot'--it being intended, Flinders wrote, 'that not a man should escape if they commenced firing'. (49) Similarly in September 1824, a member of Oxley's party, Lieutenant Bradley, shot and wounded Aborigines at both Breakfast Creek and Toowong Reach. (Interestingly, the taking of hats again featured prominently.) Once more, during June 1829, Cunningham employed armed sentries and savage hunting dogs in the Upper Brisbane Valley to ward off four attacks by members of the Yuggera, using incendiarism against his party--eventually wounding one of their leaders in the legs. (50) Other early encounters are less well documented. Flinders had noted in 1799 that whalers were already operating around Moreton Bay and some of their crews had probably behaved damagingly. For in 1823, the first human sounds heard by the three stranded cedar-cutters were, amazingly, the sentences: 'What do you want? Do you wish to kill me?' spoken to them in communicable English by a Ngugi male on Moreton Island. It might be speculated that this man had learned English after being pressed into labour on a whaling vessel. The previous year, without detailing specifics, William Edwardson had found the northern 'natives', from Stradbroke to Hervey Bay, both 'too numerous' and 'hostile' to attempt a landing on the mainland. (51)