isodes are covered in Bill Rosser's moving book Up Rode the Troopers, The Black Police in Queensland (Queensland University Press, 1990). <В
Sheehan loathes critical Australian historians
The following short piece of purple prose is from the second-last page of Sheehan's book:
"Thirty years of poisoning of the nation's history has taken its toll. Many histories now parrot a hatred of Australia. The politically-motivated accusations of racism, made hollow by overuse, have been pumped up to include 'genocide' and 'holocaust'. The mud has stuck. The nation's sense of certainty at the end of the century has been eroded by the politics of stealth and division. "
Well, at the risk of incuring Mr Sheehan's displeasure by further poisoning the nation's history, as he puts it, I hereby read into the record some material from a historian, Sir Hudson Fysh, of whom Sheehan possibly approves. <В
The brutal butcher Kennedy and Sir Hudson Fysh
From the more civilised standpoint that is now happily accepted by most Australians, it is quite difficult to remember just how barbaric was the conquest of Australia from its original inhabitants, and how sickening the celebration of this conquest by British White Australia up until very recent times. I recently acquired at a book fair a standard piece of the Australiana of the 1930s, a book Taming the North by Hudson Fysh (Angus and Robertson, 1933), later Sir Hudson Fysh, the founder of Qantas. p> The version I have is the revised and enlarged edition published in March 1950. This book ought to be reprinted as a reminder of the brazen way British White Australia justified its ruthless suppression of all Aboriginal resistance to conquest. The book is a biography of the quite famous squatter, Alexander Kennedy, the Scottish settler who "opened up" the area north and west of Cloncurry for white settlement.
This area was the tribal land of the warlike Kalkadoons. After the Kalkadoons had been constantly provoked by the squatters pushing further and further into every corner of their tribal lands, they finally speared a couple of the most offensive intruders. The vengeance of the bloodthirsty squatters, aided by the native police, led by the notoriously vicious F.C. Urquhart, who ended up Queensland Police Commissioner, was absolutely awesome.
Using their superior firepower, they wiped out several hundred Kalkadoons. What is most amazing about these brutal incidents is the unctuous and brutally frank way Sir Hudson Fysh describes them and other events in this war of extermination against the Kalkadoons and praises the bloodthirsty Kennedy and Urquhart.
The illustrations and the cover of the book are also extraordinary expressions of the ideology of conquest that pervaded British Australia. These illustrations portray the "rugged and manly" white settlers, with their carbines, pursuing and shooting the "naked savages". Fysh routinely repeats, as if they were true, the fairy stories about Aboriginal cannibalism. He says:
There is no doubt that the blacks right through northern Queensland were cannibals. Urquhart says that his boys always told him the blacks did not like the taste of whites much - They were too salt - but they relished Chinamen, hundreds of whom were killed when taking provisions across the Peninsula to the Palmer River goldfield in the early days following its discovery by Mulligan. This fact was put down to the salt-beef diet of the early whites, while the Chinamen lived mainly on rice.
The following extracts from Fysh's book celebrate several of the massacres.
At last, Eglington, the white officer in charge, arrived on the scene and soon the situation was under control. A brush with the murderers ensued and many of the natives were killed, the rest making their escape to the rough country. Kennedy returned about this time and asked Eglington if he thought he had got all the murderers. "Yes," said Eglington.
"Did you get a piebald black? "asked Kennedy.
"No," was the answer.
"Well, come along. That fellow is one of a mob that I have had my eye on for a long time - A cheeky trouble-making chap. We shan't be safe now till they are out of the district. "p> A long trip into the hills followed, the native police hot on the trail and Kennedy as keen as the rest. A yell of defiance was heard, the pursuers were discovered by the retreating party and hurled threats from their supposed safety in the rugged hilly country. However, they did not reckon on the deadly carbines of the whites and the native troopers, who speedily shot the warlike bucks down.
The piebald lay dead. He was a most peculiar freak, normal in physique, build, and intelligence, but his dusky skin was patched here and there with healthy, pinkish-white areas.
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