Killing For Country David Marr

I have been delving into the history of colonial Australia and in particular its relationship with its First Nations inhabitants. It is something most Australians know little about and spend even less time thinking about . David Marr, the respected writer, has produced a well-researched family history focusing on the Native police and his ancestors part in it. Killing For Country is the result. This illegal force went about the place slaughtering Aboriginal people on behalf of the squattocracy. Their actions were in contravention of the instructions from the British in regard to the native people of Australia. The pastoral leases contracted to the squatters stated that the native inhabitants of the land must be able to access their hunting and fishing grounds. These things were all wilfully ignored. Indigenous killing for country is our birth right in this land.

textile australian flag with crumples
Photo by vectors icon on Pexels.com

Settlers Murdering For Their Land

What actually occurred was a conspiracy of pragmatic murder and massacre between colonial state officials, the judiciary, and settlers. To avoid the negative press which accompanied open admittance of these practices euphemisms like ‘dispersal’ became code words to be shared with stake holders in the process. The Aborigines were dispersed by sub-Inspector Uhr and his troopers. This meant in fact that they were indiscriminately killed by all means possible. Some Indigenous women and children were kidnapped and sold for profit. The activities of the Native police went on for some 60 to 70 years throughout Queensland, NSW, Victoria, WA, SA, and the NT. Estimates of the death toll in Queensland alone may have been as high as 40, 000 First Nations people.

“The 442 officers and 927 troopers of the Queensland Native Police are now considered responsible for the deaths of 41,040 Indigenous people in that colony between 1859 and 1897, and approximately 3,500 in the decade before Queensland became a separate colony.”

How we cleared the natives from their land

Drinking To Dull The Shame

Alcoholism was a common problem among the white officers leading the Native police. It reminds me of the stories about the high rates of alcohol consumption among the SS guards at places like Auschwitz. Those actively involved in foul acts of murder on a mass scale are often self-medicating with booze to dull the senses and feelings of guilt and shame. The drinking problem in regional Australia more broadly may, also, have its roots in the immoral behaviour of the settlers toward the original inhabitants of Australia. Coming in and stealing the land and then, embarking on a genocidal programme of eradication is bound to effect the humanity of the participants. Shame and guilt can last for generations. Raping the Indigenous women they called ‘Gins’ was widely practiced. White settlers purchasing young Aboriginal children for further shameful activities was, also, reported to the authorities on many occasions.

They did nothing about any of these things, as the law bypassed First Nations people.  Aboriginal people could not give evidence in a court of law – they were legally invisible.

dangerous crime safety security
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

An Undeclared War On Aborigines

This undeclared war on the Aboriginal population by the white settlers, was reported upon at the time as the worst example of colonial genocide of natives in the British empire. Many Australians today are blithely unaware of the true nature of their birth right. The mass eradication of First Nations people happened at every frontier, as Europeans poured into places and took their lands and the resources on those lands. Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their waterways and hunting grounds. Any resistance was met with deadly force. Bad press in the mid 19C by journalists with compassion for the fate of the original inhabitants over shooting massacres encouraged more covert actions.

Mass poisonings of camps of Aboriginal men, women and children became the favoured means of settlers clearing their lands of the natives. These benighted people would die agonising deaths.

Certificate - Australian Natives Association, post 1901
Empty Landscapes & Blood Stained Soils

Many people talk about the huge expanses of seeming emptiness in the Australian landscape. These lands were once peopled sparsely, but settlers and the Native police cleared them of their original inhabitants. People who had been here for some 60, 000 years were quickly eradicated by violent means. Scientists tell us that water has memory. I imagine the land remembers the blood which soaked into its soils for some hundred years of mass murdering on this mighty scale. As you walk through landscapes on your travels through Australia may you sense the ghosts of the many dead in the memories of this place. Of course, not all the First Nations people perished in this genocide. Some hardy souls survived; and the Native police were eventually disbanded. Their peoples were greatly diminished, however, which left individuals, in many instances, struggling on the fringes of what they were once part of. White Australia has no conception of this and no care, in most cases, anyway.

Families decimated, tribes gutted, and nations destroyed in large part. This is the butcher’s bill of mass genocide in Australia.

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom. 

©HouseTherapy

By Silas