The architecture of colonial jurisdiction: the annexation of Queensland's offshore islands

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between architecture and colonial sovereignty. It considers the case of the British colony of Queensland’s offshore islands, which existed somewhere between competing colonial jurisdictions and international waters following Queensland’s separation from the colony of New South Wales in 1859. The discussion situates this nineteenth-century moment within a broader history of British colonial occupation and development along Australia’s eastern seaboard dating to the late eighteenth century. This paper argues that anomalies of colonial law did not constitute an impediment to colonial sovereignty — rather, they were its very modes of articulation. Whereas Queensland’s offshore islands had previously constituted a maritime frontier that was actively exploited by private enterprise, as a result of the Queensland Coast Islands Act 1879, the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait Islands were gradually transformed into a geography of regulation that assisted in governing the political community of the colony as a whole. This paper adopts an infrastructuralist analysis, reading the architecture of colonial development alongside other technologies and media as instruments in the implementation and clarification of colonial jurisdiction.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrew Leach, Nathan Etherington, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 290.

2 Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, vol. 2: The Nation-State and Violence (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1987), p. 5.

3 According to Steve Mullins, historians have tended to distort the history of the Queensland Coast Islands Act 1879 as forming part of a supposedly inevitable land grab culminating in the 1883 attempted annexation of New Guinea. Mullins cautions against this ‘delusion of inevitability’, which views ‘the annexation of the Torres Strait Islands in terms of large and seemingly irresistible processes, such as imperialism or developmentalism’. Instead, he argues for a more nuanced understanding of how the Torres Strait Islands — and by extension, the Great Barrier Reef Islands — were viewed by the colonial government both prior to and as a result of the Act. See Steve Mullins, ‘Queensland’s Quest for Torres Strait: The Delusion of Inevitability’, Journal of Pacific History, 27.2 (1992), 165–80 (pp. 165–7).

4 Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, ‘Introduction’, in Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants and States in the Postcolonial World, ed. by Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 1–36 (p. 10).

5 Stephen Legg, ‘Security, Territory, and Colonial Populations: Town and Empire in Foucault’s 1978 Lecture Course’, in Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture, ed. by A. Teverson and Sarah Upstone (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 146–63 (p. 147). For an in-depth discussion of these governmental functions and their spatial correlates, see Stephen Legg, ‘Chapter One: Imperial Delhi’, in Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 1–36.

6 See Shiri Pasternak, ‘Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: Where Do Laws Meet?’, Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 29.2 (2014), 145–61 (p. 152), emphasis by the author; and Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, ‘Toward an Architectural Theory of Jurisdictional Technics: Midcentury Modernism on Native American Land’, Architectural Theory Review, 27.2 (2023) <https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2250882>.

7 Pasternak, ‘Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism’, p. 152.

8 Supdita Sen, ‘Unfinished Conquest: Residual Sovereignty and the Legal Foundations of the British Empire in India’, Law, Culture and the Humanities, 9.2 (2012), 227–42 (p. 228), emphasis in original.

9 On the ‘deep interior’ of colonial law see Kah-Wee Lee, ‘Architecture as Evidence: Reflections on Doing Architectural History in the Legal Archive’, paper presented at the Virtual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Reference, 14 April 2021.

10 Cait Storr, International Status in the Shadow of Empire: Nauru and the Histories of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), p. 16.

11 Pasternak, ‘Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism’, p. 146.

12 Ryan Bishop, ‘Frictionless Sovereignty: An Introduction’, Boundary 2: An Online Journal, 5.2 (2020) <https://www.boundary2.org/2020/08/ryan-bishop-frictionless-sovereignty-an-introduction/> [accessed 18 December 2023], emphasis by the author.

13 Bishop, ‘Frictionless Sovereignty’.

14 Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 4–5.

15 Bremner has discussed the narrow focus of the historiography of Australian architecture in his volume on the British Empire; see G.A. Bremner, ‘Introduction: Architecture, Urbanism, and British Imperial Studies’, in Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire, ed. by G. A. Bremner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 1–16 (p. 15).

16 G. A. Bremner, ‘Tides That Bind: Waterborne Trade and the Infrastructure Networks of Jardine, Matheson & Co.’, Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, 52 (2019), 31–47 (p. 43).

17 John Durham Peters, The Marvellous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2015), pp. 37–8.

18 See Peters, The Marvellous Clouds, p. 31; and Ford, Settler Sovereignty, p. 5.

19 Peters, The Marvellous Clouds, p. 32.

20 See, for example, Nicole Starosielski, The Undersea Network (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), p. 31.

21 Denis Byrne, ‘Nervous Landscapes: Race and Space in Australia’, in Making Settler-Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity, eds. Tracey Banivanua Mar and Penelope Edmonds (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 103–28 (p. 103).

22 See, in particular, G. A. Bremner, Making Greater Britain: Architecture, Imperialism, and the Edwardian Baroque Revival, 1885–1920 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023); Stuart King and Andrew Leach, ‘Architectural History and the Material Geographies of the Colonial Tasman World’, Architectural Theory Review, 25.1/2 (2021), 28–41; Stuart King and Julie Willis, ‘The Australian Colonies’, in Architecture and Urbanism, ed. by Bremner, pp. 318–55; and Jonah Rowen, ‘Strategies of Containment: Iron, Fire, and Labour Management’, Grey Room, 76 (2019), 24–57.

23 See, for example, Harry Margalit, Australia (London: Reaktion Books, 2019); Lenore Coltheart, Significant Sites: History and Public Works in New South Wales (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1989); John Maxwell Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1968); and Morton Herman, The Early Australian Architects and Their Work (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1954). Although it disturbs the geographic delimitations of these latter works in favour of a transnational approach, see also G. A. Bremner, Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire, c. 1840–1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).

24 See, in particular, The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, ed. by Julie Willis and Philip Goad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Don Watson and Judith McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century: A Biographical Dictionary (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1994); Towards the Dawn: Federation Architecture in Australia, 1890–1915, ed. by Trevor Howells and Michael Nicholson (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1989); Miles Lewis, ‘Architecture from Colonial Origins’, in The Heritage of Australia: The Illustrated Register of the National Estate, ed. by the Australian Heritage Commission (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981), pp. 68–82; Janet Hogan, Building Queensland’s Heritage (Melbourne: Richmond Hill Press, 1978); Queensland Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Buildings of Queensland (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1959); and Walter Bunning, Homes in the Sun (Sydney: W J Nesbit, 1945).

25 Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1966), p. xviii.

26 Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the Early Colony, 1788–1817 (Sydney: Newsouth Publishing, 2018), p. 9.

27 Ibid., p. 201.

28 Ford, Settler Sovereignty, pp. 28–9.

29 Blainey, Tyranny of Distance, 72.

30 Blainey states: ‘There were some early years in the nineteenth century when Australia seemed to be a satellite of India as well as a colony of England. In 1817, for example, probably two of every three ships which left Sydney for foreign ports went to Java or India; those ships were usually in ballast and usually passed through Torres Strait. In the same year, 3 of every 10 ships that reached Sydney from overseas ports came from Calcutta.’ See Blainey, Tyranny of Distance, p. 61.

31 For an overview of this period, see Bernard Attard, ‘The Economic History of Australia from 1788: An Introduction’, Economic History.net Encyclopedia, 2008 <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-history-of-australia-from-1788-an-introduction> [accessed 18 December 2023]. On the architecture of the sealing and whaling industries, see Harriet Edquist, ‘Portland Bay and the Origins of European Architecture in Port Philip, 1828–1836’, Fabrications, 29.3 (2019), 359–78.

32 N. G. Butlin, Investment in Australian Economic Development, 1861–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 5–6.

33 Butlin, ‘The Inducements to Invest’, in ibid., pp. 85–110.

34 On the later northern frontier in Queensland, see Jasper Ludewig, ‘Mapoon Mission Station and the Privatisation of Public Violence: Transnational Missionary Architecture on Queensland’s Late-Nineteenth-Century Colonial Frontier’, Architecture Beyond Europe, 17 (2020) <https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.8032>; Jonathan Richards, ‘”A Question of Necessity”: The Native Police in Queensland’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Griffith University, 2005); and Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal-European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier, 1861–1897 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1982).

35 Byrne, ‘Nervous Landscapes’, p. 115.

36 These figures are based on the University of Newcastle’s Colonial Frontier Massacres Map. Importantly, a massacre refers only to instances where six or more people were killed. See Lyndall Ryan, Jennifer Debenham, Mark Brown and William Pascoe, ‘Colonial Frontier Massacres in Eastern Australia 1788–1872’, interactive resource, Centre For 21st Century Humanities, University of Newcastle, 2020 <http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1340762> [accessed 18 December 2023].

37 Ford, Settler Sovereignty, p. 5.

38 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), pp. 17–8.

39 Peter Read, ‘A History of the Wiradjuri People of New South Wales, 1883–1969’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Australian National University, 1983), p. ix.

40 A fuller discussion of how the frontier concept pertains to the colony of New South Wales can be found in Dallas Rogers, Andrew Leach, Jasper Ludewig, Amelia Thorpe, and Laurence Troy, ‘Mapping the Frontiers of Private Property in New South Wales, Australia’, Geographical Research, (2023), 1–13 <https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12581>.

41 Pasternak, ‘Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism’, p. 152.

42 Island lighthouses were constructed via a public tender process overseen by the Public Lands and Works Department. Lady Elliot Island, Cape Capricorn, North Reef, Low Isles and Goode Island, among others, all received lighthouses as a result of this process. Designs were prepared by the Colonial Architect and consisted of concrete slabs, hardwood frames, galvanised iron sheeting, and instrumentation imported from England. See Ian Cameron, 125 Years of State Public Works in Queensland, 1859–1984 (Brisbane: Boolarong Publications, 1989), p. 27.

43 See Pasternak, ‘Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism’, p. 153; and a similar argument in Nicholas Blomley, ‘Law, Property, and the Spaces of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey, and the Grid’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93.1 (2003), 121–41.

44 Annual government expenditure on the colony’s logistics infrastructure subsequently tended to exceed the funding of other public works projects by a factor of five. See Queensland Treasury Department, Financial Statement of the Colonial Treasurer, 1874–1898 (Brisbane: Government Printer, n.d.); and Queensland Treasury Department, Treasurer's Financial Statement & Tables, 1899–1909 (Brisbane: Government Printer, n.d.).

45 Queensland’s economic position was initially largely dependent upon territorial revenue, i.e. revenue generated from the administration of land; however, by the 1890s, tax revenue was worth twice as much to the colony as territorial revenue.

46 Cameron, 125 Years, pp. 70–1.

47 See Lenore Coltheart, A Guide to the History of the Public Works Department, New South Wales (Sydney: Public Works Department, 1991), p. 27; and Nathan Etherington, ‘The Architecture of Territory: The Lands Building and State Expansion in New South Wales’, Fabrications, 32.3 (2022), 423–47.

48 Governor Bowen to the Duke of Newcastle, Despatch 57, 3 November 1862, Queensland State Archives, GOV/23, referenced in J. C. H. Gill, ‘Governor Bowen and the Aborigines: A Documentary Review’, Queensland Heritage, 2.7 (1972), 3–29 (p. 10).

49 Stuart King, ‘Colony and Climate: Positioning Public Architecture in Queensland, 1859–1909’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne, 2010), p. 133.

50 Quoted in Thirty Years of Colonial Government: A Selection from the Despatches and Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Ferguson Bowen, vol. 1, ed. by Stanley Lane-Poole (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889), pp. 215–6.

51 This included a Police Magistrate’s Residence, a Customs House, a Soldiers Barracks, a Medical Superintendent’s Residence, and a hospital. See Watson and Mckay, Queensland Architects, p. 194. As Stuart King has observed, the use of the verandah throughout Tiffin’s simple designs for the suite of buildings at Somerset corresponded with the de facto architectural language of official buildings found in Queensland’s colonial centres; see King, ‘Colony and Climate’, p. 165.

52 Law Officers to Colonial Office, 26 May 1863, Australian Joint Copying Project reel 1911, CO 234/9.

53 Mullins, ‘Queensland’s Quest’, p. 168.

54 J. Malbon Thompson to Arthur Palmer, 23 July 1872, Queensland State Archives, COL/A196.

55 Advertisement, ‘Anglo-Australian Guano Company (Limited)’, Rockhampton Bulletin and Central Queensland Advertiser, 20 October 1868, p. 4.

56 Ben Daley and Peter Griggs, ‘Mining the Reefs and Cays: Coral, Guano and Rock Phosphate Extraction in the Great Barrier Reef, 1844–1940’, Environment and History, 12.4 (2006), 395–433.

57 Annual imports of guano into the colony of Queensland increased consistently throughout the nineteenth century until royalties began to be charged on its export in the early-twentieth century; see Queensland Treasury Department, Financial Statement of the Colonial Treasurer, 1874–1898 (Brisbane: Government Printer, n.d.).

58 Albert F. Ellis, Adventuring in Coral Seas (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1937), p. 76.

59 Harry Evans Maude, ‘J. T. Arundel and Raine Island’, 1989, The University of Adelaide, H.E. Maude Digital Archive, Part II, Series 4, Section 8: Correspondence with Raine Island Corporation. See also Jasper Ludewig, ‘”Lonely Dots”: John Thomas Arundel and the Architecture of Greater British Enterprise in the Pacific’, Fabrications, 32.1 (2022), 340–67.

60 Daley and Griggs, ‘Mining the Reefs and Cays’, p. 407.

61 Application 21, J. F. Levien of Geelong, 17 January 1871, Register of Special Leases, 1868–1883, Queensland State Archives, 24547. On Levien’s guano mining activity off Port Philip in the southern colony of Victoria, see Brad G. Duncan, ‘The Maritime Archaeology and Maritime Cultural Landscapes of Queenscliffe: A Nineteenth-Century Australian Coastal Community’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, James Cook University, 2006), Appendix B-2, 11–2.

62 Regina Ganter, The Pearl Shellers of the Torres Strait: Resource Use, Development and Decline, 1860s–1960s (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994), pp. 18–20.

63 This does not take into account the revenue generated from charging license fees. In the decade between 1890 and 1900, license fees constituted approximately 4% of the colony’s overall annual taxation revenue. Eventually, pearl shelling and bêche-de-mer stations were constructed on Tuined (Possession Island), Waier (Murray Island Group), Palilug (Goode Island), Bourke Isles, Poruma (Coconut Island), Muralug (Prince of Wales Island), Night Island, Tappoear (Campbell Island), Gialug (Friday Island), Moa (Banks Island), Badu (Mulgrave Island), Mer (Murray Island), and Nagir (Mount Ernest Island). See Ganter, ‘Appendix 1: The Network of Early Stations’, in The Pearl Shellers, 243–7. The overall growth of the industries was punctuated by downturns in 1898–1905 and 1913–1914; see Anna Shnukal, ‘Marine Industries and Mabuyag, 1870–1980’, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum – Culture, 8.2 (2015), 235–82 (p. 237).

64 This is referring, specifically, to the British Imperial Pacific Islander Protection Act 1872 (the Kidnapping Act), which attempted to regulate Islander employment and labour conditions throughout the colony. This legislation also had significant implications for Queensland’s sugar plantation industry. For an analysis of the role of Islander labour within the political and economic history of Queensland, see Adrian Graves, Cane and Labour: The Political Economy of the Queensland Sugar Industry, 1862–1906 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993).

65 Ganter, The Pearl Shellers, p. 23.

66 Frank Jardine to Colonial Secretary, December 1869, Queensland State Archives, Letterbook – Somerset Settlement 1, 313070.

67 Ganter states that Henry M. Chester employed fifteen Badu Islanders to dive for pearl shell at Muralag (Prince of Wales Island). Frank Jardine used government vessels for private pearl shelling out of Nagir (Mount Ernest Island) until he was reprimanded by the colonial secretary. And Charles E. Beddome (Jardine’s replacement) also ran five vessels out of Nagir in 1875. See Ganter, The Pearl Shellers, p. 32.

68 Henry M. Chester, police magistrate at Somerset in 1870, wrote to the colonial secretary in Brisbane describing an act of ‘retributive justice’ that was meted out upon a group of Torres Strait Islanders on Maururra (Wednesday Island). Having supposedly found articles taken from a ship on which numerous Europeans had been killed a year prior, Chester ordered that the camp be torched and the men rounded-up and shot by Native Troopers. Three men were then executed on the beach. Chester assured the colonial secretary that ‘every care was taken to explain the reason of their [the men’s] punishment’ and that the violence had produced ‘a moral effect’ without ‘unnecessary bloodshed’. Colonial law was instituted on the frontier in part by extrajudicial acts of violence that were later rationalised within the bureaucracy of the state. See Henry M. Chester to Colonial Secretary, 14 April 1870, Queensland State Archives, Letterbook – Somerset Settlement 1, 313070.

69 Legg, Spaces of Colonialism, p. 22.

70 Christopher Aplin to Colonial Secretary, ‘Report on the Pearl Fisheries of Torres Strait’, 3 March 1875, Queensland State Archives, Letterbook – Somerset Settlement 2, 313071.

71 Christopher Aplin to Colonial Secretary, ‘Report of a Visit to Some of the Northern islands of the Prince of Wales Group with the View of Examining the Sites which have been Recommended in Place of the Present Harbour of Refuge at Somerset’, 19 February 1875, Letterbook – Somerset Settlement 2, 313071.

72 Mullins, ‘Queensland’s Quest’, p. 170.

73 Shnukal, ‘Marine Industries and Mabuyag’, p. 244.

74 Benton, A Search for Sovereignty, p. 2.

75 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

76 Legg, Spaces of Colonialism, pp. 6, 22.

77 [Anon.], ‘Our Pacific Island Territory’, The Queenslander, 8 July 1882, p. 49.

78 On this double function of land administration within colonial political economies, see Brenna Bhandar, ‘Introduction: Property, Law, and Race in the Colony’, in Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), pp. 1–32.

79 The New Maritime Boundary of Queensland (Despatches Respecting), ‘Memorandum for his Excellency the Governor’, 27 December 1877, p. 1.

80 Sen, ‘Unfinished Conquest’, p. 240.

81 Tracey Banivanua Mar, Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labour Trade (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), p. 92.

82 Ibid., p. 71.

83 Chandra Mukerji, ‘Jurisdiction, Inscription, and State Formation: Administrative Modernism and Knowledge Regimes’, Theory and Society, 40.3 (2011), 223–45 (p. 229).

84 Queensland Department of Lands, ‘Statistics Concerning Telegraph Lines Constructed Throughout the State as at December, 1907’, Queensland State Archives, 25071.

85 Of the 70 patients removed to Friday and Stradbroke Islands between 1889 and 1898, only 16 patients were white, while the rest were comprised of primarily South Pacific Islander and Chinese, followed by Aboriginal, Southeast Asian, Indian and African inmates. The exact breakdown is as follows: ‘5 Qlds [Queenslanders], 7 English, 4 Irish, 1 Maori, 4 Aboriginal, 18 Chinese, 1 Machase [sic., Macassan], 1 Manilla Man, 1 Malay, 1 Half Caste, 1 Mauritius, 24 South Sea Islander, 2 Singhalese’. Unknown Official, ‘Report of Lepers at Friday Island and Stradbroke Island Lazarette’, Correspondence regarding Leprosy, Queensland State Archives, 18271.

86 On Palm Island, see Toby Martin, ‘”Socialist Paradise” or “Inhospitable Island”? Visitor Responses to Palm Island in the 1920s’, Aboriginal History, 38 (2014), 131–53.

87 London Missionary Society, June,1882, Register of Special Leases, 1882–1887, Queensland State Archives, 24548.

88 Police Sub-inspector Brett complained to his superiors about Government Resident Milman, stating: ‘Although I have repeatedly told him that I cannot take instructions or orders on any matter affecting Police administration from any person other than the Commissioner of Police or my immediate superior officer, he seems to forget all about it the very first time anything turns up.’ See Sub-inspector Brett to Commissioner of Police, n.d. (c. August 1907), Police Stations – Thursday Island 2, Queensland State Archives, 290219.

89 Commissioner of Police to Chief Secretary’s Department, 17 December 1907, Police Stations – Thursday Island 1, Queensland State Archives, 290218.

90 Colonial Architect’s Office, Specification Leper Lazarette, Dunwich, Stradbroke Island, 1895, Queensland State Archives, 1014061.

91 For a useful discussion of the implications of maintenance for the historiography of governance, see Andrew L. Russel and Lee Vinsel, ‘After Innovation, Turn to Maintenance’, Technology and Culture, 59.1 (2018), 1–25.

92 Paul N. Edwards, Lisa Gitelman, Gabrielle Hecht, Adrian Johns, Brian Larkin, and Neil Safier, ‘AHR Conversation: Historical Perspectives on the Circulation of Information’, American Historical Review, 116.5 (2011), 1393–435.

93 According to Sen, ‘sovereignty in this rendition was thus a result of an equation involving two distinct political entities, where rights of the powerful had not been entirely consumed’. See Sen, ‘Unfinished Conquest’, pp. 232, 241.

94 Australian Institute of Torres Strait Islander Studies, ‘The Mabo Case’, n.d. <https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case#_edn1> [accessed 18 December 2023].

95 Quoted in Brian Keon-Cohen, ‘The Mabo Litigation: A Personal and Procedural Account’, Melbourne University Law Review, 24.3 (2000), 892–951 (p. 893).

96 High Court of Australia, Mabo vs Queensland (no 2), 1992, HCA 23 <https://eresources.hcourt.gov.au/showbyHandle/1/8925> [18 December 2023].

97 Ibid., emphasis by the author.