‘Are we in Danger of a Hostile Visit from the Aborigines?’ Dispossession and the Rise of Self-Government in New South Wales

Abstract

This article considers the place of Indigenous imagery and policy in debates about self-government for New South Wales during the 1840s and 50s. In doing so, it aims to bridge the frequent disciplinary gap between histories of Aboriginal dispossession and histories of colonial political development. What emerges is a process of exclusion, where Indigenous people were written out of the political world, while at the same time images of supposed Indigenous primitivism or savagery were used as rhetorical tools in wider political debates, to dismiss certain forms of colonial governance as outmoded or ridiculous.1

¹This research was conducted as part of an honorary creative fellowship at the State Library of Victoria.

Notes

¹This research was conducted as part of an honorary creative fellowship at the State Library of Victoria.

²Ann Curthoys, ‘Self-Government and Indigenous Dispossession: Linked Fates, Separate Histories, Long Shadows’, conference paper, Governing by Looking Back, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 14 December 2007.

³Elsewhere, I have addressed the rather different racial politics surrounding the rise of regional government in Port Phillip and Moreton Bay at this time. See Jessie Mitchell, ‘“The Galling Yoke of Slavery”: The Politics of Race and Separation in Colonial Port Phillip’, Journal of Australian Studies forthcoming 2009; Jessie Mitchell, ‘“The Gomorrah of the Southern Seas”: Population, Separation and Race in Early Colonial Queensland’, History Australia, forthcoming 2009.

⁴Julie Evans, Patricia Grimshaw, David Phillips, and Shurlee Swain, Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies, 1830–1910 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 44–58, 74–79.

⁵Evans et al. (eds), 63–70; Heather Goodall, ‘New South Wales’, in Ann McGrath (ed.), Contested Ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 62–70.

⁶Peter Cochrane, Colonial Ambitions: Foundations of Australian Democracy (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2006); John Hirst, Australia's Democracy: A Short History (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2002); Terry Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales before 1856 (Sydney: Federation Press, 2006); Edward Sweetman, Australian Constitutional Development (Melbourne: McMillan & Co., 1925); John M. Ward, ‘The Responsible Government Question in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, 1851–1856’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 63 (March 1978): 221–46; F. L. W. Wood, The Constitutional Development of Australia (London: George G. Harrap, 1933).

⁷Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004).

⁸Ann Curthoys, ‘A Historiographical Paradox: Brian Fitzpatrick, the British Empire, and Indigenous Histories’, in Stuart Macintyre and Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds), Against the Grain: Brian Fitzpatrick and Manning Clark in Australian History and Politics (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007), 71.

⁹Lyndall Ryan, ‘Aboriginal Policy in Australia – 1838 – A Watershed?’, Push from the Bush no. 8 (1980): 21, 202–203, 209.

¹⁰Henry Reynolds and Dawn May, ‘Queensland’, in McGrath (ed.), 171. Also, Henry Reynolds, ‘Pastoral Leases in Their Historical Context’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin vol. 3, no. 81 (June 1996): 9–11.

¹¹Mitchell, ‘“The Galling Yoke of Slavery”’; Mitchell, ‘“The Gomorrah of the Southern Seas”’.

¹²Tom Griffiths, ‘Past Silences: Aborigines and Convicts in our History-making’, in Penny Russell and Richard White (eds), Pastiche I: Reflections on Nineteenth Century Australia (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994), 17.

¹³Cochrane, 8.

¹⁴ Atlas, vol. 3, no. 151, 16 October 1847: 497.

¹⁵ Argus, 17 August 1853 p. 4, 30 December 1853: 4.

¹⁶Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle-Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 152–153, 257–258.

¹⁷Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 6–8.

¹⁸ Sydney Gazette, 1 March 1842: 2.

¹⁹ Sydney Chronicle, 27 January 1848: 2.

²⁰George Arden, ‘The New Colonial Constitution’, Arden's Sydney Magazine of politics and general literature, vol.1, no. 1 (September 1843): 1, 4.

²¹Kirsten McKenzie, ‘Of Convicts and Capitalists: Honour and Colonial Commerce in 1830s Cape Town and Sydney’, Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 118 (2002): 205.

²² Port Phillip Herald, 2 June 1846: 4.

²³ Port Phillip Herald, 23 May 1843: 1.

²⁴Deborah Bird Rose, ‘Hard Times: An Australian Study’, in Klaus Neumann, Nicholas Thomas and Hilary Ericksen (eds), Quicksands: Foundational Histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999), 10; Deborah Bird Rose, ‘The Redemptive Frontier: A Long Road to Nowhere’, in Deborah Bird Rose and Richard Davis (eds), Dislocating the Frontier: Essaying the Mystique of the Outback (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2005), 50.

²⁵Richard Thompson (ed.), Report of the Proceedings at the National Banquet, held at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Sydney, on the 17th of July, 1856, to celebrate the establishment and inauguration of responsible government in the colony of New South Wales (Sydney: Thomas Daniel, 1856), 35.

²⁶Thompson (ed.), 25, 27.

²⁷J. C. Byrne, Twelve Years’ Wanderings in the British Colonies, from 1835 to 1847, vol.1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1848), 270–80, 365–70. See also: Alexander Marjoribanks, Travels in New South Wales (London: Smith Elder & Co, 1847); Thomas McCombie, Essays on Colonization (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1850); William Westgarth, Australia Felix; or, a historical and descriptive account of the settlement of Port Phillip, New South Wales (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1848); William Westgarth, Australia: Its Rise, Progress and Present Condition (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1861).

²⁸Ann Curthoys, ‘Expulsion, Exodus and Exile in White Australian Historical Mythology’, Journal of Australian Studies 61 (June 1999): 1–22.

²⁹ Sydney Free Press and Commercial Journal, 1 March 1842: 2.

³⁰ Port Phillip Herald, 17 May 1849: 2.

³¹ Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1848.

³²Thompson (ed.), 8.

³³ Colonial Observer, 23 February 1842, vol. 1, no. 21: 1; 9 March 1842, vol. 1, no. 2: 1; 31 August 1842, vol. 1, no.55: 1.

³⁴ Colonial Observer, 31 October 1844, vol. 3, no. 31: 1. Also, 7 November 1844, vol. 1, no. 32: 1, and 14 November 1844, vol. 3, no. 33.

³⁵ Colonial Observer, 9 March 1842 vol. 1 no. 2.

³⁷ Australasian Chronicle, 3 March 1842: 2.

³⁶ Colonial Observer, 9 March 1842 vol. 1 no. 2.

³⁸ Port Phillip Herald, 20 April 1848: 2.

³⁹A. C. V. Melbourne, Early Constitutional Development in Australia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1963), 342.

⁴⁰Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia, 1788–1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49–50.

⁴¹John Dunmore Lang, The Coming Event; or, the United Provinces of Australia: Two lectures delivered in the City Theatre and School of Arts, Sydney (Sydney: DL Welch, 1850), 31–32.

⁴²John Dunmore Lang, Freedom and Independence for the Golden Lands of Australia (Sydney: Cunningham, 1857), 134.

⁴³ Colonial Observer, 31 August 1842 vol. 1 no. 55: 1.

⁴⁴ Weekly Register, 16 September 1843 vol. 1 no. 8.

⁴⁵ Weekly Register, 21 June 1845 vol. 4 no. 100: 290.

⁴⁶ Sydney Herald, 26 November 1838: 2.

⁴⁷ Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 28 November 1838, no. 323 vol. 4: 2, and 26 December 1838, vol. 4 no. 331: 2. Also, 9 January 1839, vol. 5 no. 335: 2.

⁴⁸Byrne, vol. 1, 161–163.

⁴⁹Mitchell, ‘“The Galling Yoke of Slavery”’.

⁵⁰ The Australian, 27 December 1838. Re: Martin as ‘Junius’, see Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://www.adbonline.anu.edu.au/adbonline.htm. I am uncertain as to whether this was the same ‘Junius’ mentioned earlier – the pseudonym appeared in the media at various times.

⁵¹ Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 1838.