3. J. Morrill, Seventeen Years Wandering Among the Aboriginals, reprint of 1864 edn., Aboriginal Culture Series No. I, Virginia, NT, D. Welch, 2006, pp. 1–10.
4. Ibid., p. 11.
5. Ibid., pp. 7–21.
6. Ibid., p. 22; see also James Morrill, Sketch of a Residence Among the Aboriginals of North Queensland, Brisbane, Courier Office, 1863, pp. 8–10.
7. [Brisbane] Courier, March 11, 1863, p. 3.
8. S. Anderson, Pelletier: The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York, commentary on and translation of original book by Constant Merland, Dix-sept ans chez les sauvages: Les aventures de Narcisse Pelletier (1876), Melbourne, Melbourne Books, 2009, p. 327.
9. Merland, Dix-sept, in Anderson, Pelletier, pp. 34–45, 327.
10. Anderson, Pelletier, pp. 75–77.
11. Merland, Dix-sept, pp. 136–52.
12. Ibid., p. 150.
13. Ibid., pp. 153–54.
14. A. Chase, “Pama Malngkana,” in Anderson, Pelletier, p. 108; Merland, Dix-sept, pp. 155–56.
15. H. Brayshaw, Well Beaten Paths: Aborigines of the Herbert-Burdekin District of North Queensland: An Ethnographic and Archaeological Study, Townsville, James Cook University, 1990, pp. 12–13.
16. Morrill, Seventeen Years, p. 54.
17. Ibid., pp. 55–56.
18. Ibid., p. 70; [Brisbane] Courier, March 18, 1863, p. 3.
19. Chase, “Pama Malgnkana,” pp. 91–94.
20. Ibid., pp. 92–95.
21. Merland, Dix-sept, pp. 238–72; on the subject of firestick farming, see Bill Gammage’s important book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2011, passim.
22. Anderson, Pelletier, pp. 48, 57; Merland, Dix-sept, pp. 178, 266–72.
23. Merland, Dix-sept, p. 257.
24. Ibid., p. 181.
25. J. Farnfield, Frontiersman: A Biography of George Elphinstone Dalrymple, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1968, esp. pp. 58–62; G. C. Bolton, A Thousand Miles Away: A History of North Queensland to 1920, Canberra, Jacaranda Press, 1970, p. 27.
26. E. Dortins, “The Lives of Stories: Making Histories of Aboriginal-Settler Friendship,” PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2012, p. 14. I am grateful to Emma Dortins for allowing me to read and quote from this strikingly original and nuanced thesis; N. Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal-European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier, 1861–1897, Canberra, Australian National University, 1982, pp. 28–42; B. Breslin, “Exterminate with Pride,” Aboriginal–European Relations in the Townsville–Bowen Region, 1843–1869, Townsville, James Cook University, 1992, passim.
27. For a fine account of his experiences, see H. Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, Townsville, James Cook University, 1981, pp. 14–16; Morrill, Seventeen Years, p. 42.
28. Morrill, Seventeen Years, pp. 42–43, 50; J. H. Peake, A History of the Burdekin, Ayr, Shire of Ayr Council, 1951, p. 4.
29. Morrill, Seventeen Years, p. 50.
30. Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp. 118–22.
31. Anderson, Pelletier, pp. 42–43; S. Jensen, “‘On Such a Full Sea’: John MacGillivray (1821–1867),” unpublished PhD thesis, ANU, 2009, pp. 6–11.
32. Anderson, Pelletier, p. 43. I am deeply grateful to Stephanie Anderson for finding and giving me access to the testimony of the John Bell’s captain, in her “Addendum,” which has subsequently been published in the second revised paperback edition of her marvelous book and also in the electronic version. See Stephanie Anderson, Pelletier: The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York, 2nd revised edition, Melbourne, Melbourne Books, 2013, pp. 318–21.
33. The Times, July 21, 1875, quoted in Anderson, Pelletier, p. 45.
34. Merland, Dix–sept, p. 275; Anderson, Pelletier, p. 62.
35. Dortins, “Lives of Stories,” pp. 25–28. For the broader context of Morrill’s difficult circumstances, see H. Reynolds, “Aboriginal Resistance in Queensland,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 22 (April, 1976), pp. 214–26.
36. See the sophisticated analysis of his ambivalence in Dortins, “Lives of Stories,” pp. 14–15, 18.
37. Morrill, Seventeen Years, pp. 50–51.
38. Ibid., p. 71; Farnfield, Frontiersman, p. 69.
39. Courier, March 20, 1863, p. 3 and June 19, 1863, p. 2.
40. Farnfield, Frontiersman, p. 59; Morrill, Seventeen Years, pp. 70–71.
41. Port Denison Times, November 1, 1865.
42. S. Anderson, Pelletier, “The Two Lives of Narcisse Pelletier,” p. 71, reports that this is modern oral tradition and folklore in Saint-Gilles.
43. Anderson, Pelletier, 2nd edition, “Addendum,” extract from Louis de Kerjean, “Chroniques,” Revue de Bretagne et de Vendée, 1876, pp. 324–25.
44. S. Anderson, “Three Living Australians and the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1885,” in Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race 1750–1840, eds. B. Douglas and C. Ballard, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 2008, epress.anu.edu.au, accessed August 6, 2012, pp. 240–43.
45. Merland, Dix-sept, pp. 178, 186–91, 217–18.
46. Anderson, Pelletier, p. 46; Dortins, “Lives of Stories,” pp. 33–34.
47. Anderson, Pelletier, p. 50; Morrill, Seventeen Years, p. 56. He noted that “human flesh cannot be considered a part of their food, although they sometimes eat it.” Merland, Dix-sept, pp. 307–308.
48. Merland, Dix-sept, in Pelletier, pp. 167, 193, 199, 231–35, 273.
49. Howard, The Fabulist, pp. vii, 95, 251–52.
7. REFUGE: WILLIAM KENT ESCAPES HIS PAST
1. B. Taylor, Cruelly Murdered: Constance Kent and the Killing at Road Hill House, London, Souvenir, 1979, pp. 54–56.
2. C. Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), London, Folio Society, 1982, p. 51.
3. These details were suggested in a letter, known as “The Sydney Document,” sent anonymously by Constance Kent from Australia to the publisher Geoffrey Bles in 1929, and which, though now lost, is reproduced as appendix II, in Taylor, Cruelly Murdered, pp. 373–74. For a discussion of the syphilis accusation, see, K. Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, or The Murder at Road Hill House, London, Bloomsbury, 2009, pp. 296–98.
4. Summerscale, Suspicions, pp. 13–29; Taylor, Cruelly Murdered, pp. 82–137.
5. N. Kyle, A Greater Guilt: Constance Emilie Kent and the Road Murder, Brisbane, Boolarong Press, 2009, pp. 150–53. I am grateful to Noeline Kyle for generously sharing her extraordinary knowledge of the case with me and for providing me with a manuscript copy of Constance Kent’s “Sydney Document.”
6. Kyle, Greater Guilt, pp. 225–29. She points out that most of the earlier analysts also believed that William was in some way involved, p. 225; Summerscale, Suspicions, pp. 299–302.
7. Kyle, Greater Guilt, p. 229; Taylor, Cruelly Murdered, pp. 296–322.
8. Constance Kent, “The Sydney Document” (1929), p. 5. This is a typescript MS copy lent to me by Noeline Kyle. It was obtained from a researcher, Stewart Evans, who transcribed the original for Taylor, before it was later lost.
9. See A. Desmond, Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest, Reading, Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley, 1997, passim; I. McCalman, Darwin’s Armada, pp. 293–339.
10. W. Saville-Kent to Sir William Flower, Brisbane, January 27, 1891, “Sir William Flower, Semi-Official Papers,” NLA M2843, D932.
11. A. J. Harrison, Savant of the Australian Seas: William Saville-Kent, 1842–1908, Hobart, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 2nd edition, n.d. [1997?], chs. 1–3.
12. W. Saville Kent, A Manual of the Infusoria: Including a Description of All Known Flagellate, Ciliate and Tentaculiferous Protozoa, 3 vols., London, D. Bogue, 1880–81; Desmond, Huxley, p. 533; Harrison, Savant, ch. 3b.
13. Harrison, Savant, ch. 3b; Kyle, Greater Guilt, pp. 29–31.
14. See the detailed research and analysis by Kyle, Greater Guilt, chs. 8–9, pp. 129–64.
15. See the
excellent analysis of Saville-Kent in Tasmania, in Harrison, Savant, ch. 4; W. Saville-Kent, The Great Barrier Reef of Australia: Its Products and Potentialities (1893), facsimile edition, Melbourne, Currey, O’Neill, 1972, pp. 258–59.
16. Kyle, Greater Guilt, p. 150.
17. Taylor, Cruelly Murdered, pp. 143–46.
18. R. Brown, “Glimpses into the 19th Century Broadside Ballad Trade No 15: Constance Kent and the Road Murder,” www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/bbals_15.htm, accessed May 20, 2013; see Noeline Kyle’s discussion: Greater Guilt, pp. 153–57.
19. W. Saville-Kent, “Preliminary Observations on a Natural History Collection Made on the Surveying Cruise of HMS Myrmidon,” Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, vol. 6 (1889), p. 219.
20. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, p. viii.
21. Ibid., pp. 121–23; Saville-Kent, “Preliminary Observations,” pp. 225–31.
22. Harrison, Savant, ch. 5.
23. R. Ganter, The Pearl Shellers of Torres Strait: Resource Use and Decline, 1860s–1960s, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1994, esp. ch. 5, pp. 151–72; J.P.S. Bach, The Pearling Industry of Australia, Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia, 1955, pp. 42–60.
24. Harrison, Savant, ch. 6, p. 1 and also fn. 15. There is a photograph of the house in W. Saville-Kent, The Naturalist in Australia, London, Chapman and Hall, 1897, p. 39.
25. Saville-Kent, “Preliminary Observations,” p. 220; see also “Works of Paul Foelsche (1813–1914),” artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artist/foelsche-paul, accessed May 20, 2013.
26. Saville-Kent, Naturalist in Australia, pp. 39–51.
27. Harrison, Savant, ch. 6, p. 4, fn. 15; Kyle, Greater Guilt, pp. 157–59. Constance, under the name of Ruth Emilie Kaye, actually lived to receive a letter of congratulation from the Queen on her hundredth birthday.
28. Harrison, Savant, ch. 6, p. 3; Bach, Pearling Industry, pp. 54–55.
29. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 214–19.
30. Ganter, Pearl Shellers, pp. 168–71.
31. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 343–78.
32. Ibid., pp. 279–334.
33. Ibid., pp. 53, 334; Saville-Kent to Flower, January 27, 1891, “Sir William Flower Papers,” D 932.
34. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 98–100.
35. Ibid., pp. 13–14, 19, 21, 37, 156, 159.
36. Ibid., pp. 139–40, 180.
37. Ibid., pp. 139–40.
38. A. Hingston Quiggin, Haddon: The Head Hunter, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1942, p. 80.
39. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 32–33, 144–45.
40. Ibid., p. viii.
41. Ibid., p. 40.
42. Ibid., p. 124. For an excellent analysis of the multiracial and cultural makeup of Thursday Island at this time, see H. Reynolds, North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia’s North, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2003, pp. 85–103.
43. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 48, 59. On Frank Jardine, see J. Single, The Torres Strait: People and History, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1989, pp. 44–47, 55–56; C. Lack, “Jardine, Francis Lascelles (1841–1919),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australia National University, abd.anu.edu.au/biography/jardine-francis-lascelles-3924, accessed July 16, 2012.
44. Argus, August 23, 1896, p. 6; Harrison, Savant, ch. 6, p. 6; C. and M. Morton-Evans, The Remarkable Life of Ellis Rowan, Sydney, Simon and Schuster, 2008, pp. 11, 16. None of these authors hint at an affair; my suspicions are based on William’s subsequent behavior, see below; V. Rae-Ellis, Louisa Anne Meredith: A Tigress in Exile, Hobart, Blubber Head Press, 1979, p. 210; J. B. Walker, Prelude to Federation, Hobart, Blubber Head Press, 1976, p. 115.
45. Love, Reefscape, 2001, pp. 97–104; Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 25–26, 46, 49–50.
46. Saville-Kent, Great Barrier Reef, pp. 26–27.
47. West Australian, September 1, 1893, p. 7; “Extracts from Opinions of the Press,” afterpiece in Saville-Kent, Naturalist in Australia.
48. Extracts from The Times and Saturday Review, Saville-Kent, Naturalist in Australia, p. 303. Courier, November 20, 1893, p. 6; Argus, July 29, 1893, p. 14.
49. “Extracts,” Saville-Kent, Naturalist in Australia, ff. p. 302; West Australian, September 1, 1893.
50. Saville-Kent, Naturalist in Australia, p. 288.
51. Harrison, Savant, ch. 8 argues persuasively that William may indeed have preempted the Japanese in his quest.
8. PARADISE: TED BANFIELD’S ISLAND RETREAT
1. E. J. Banfield, The Confessions of a Beachcomber (1908), Rowville, Five Mile Press, 2006.
2. Banfield, “Dunk Island: Its General Characteristics,” Queensland Geographical Journal, vol. 23 (1907–08), pp. 52–54.
3. Banfield, Confessions, pp. 21–22.
4. M. Noonan, A Different Drummer: The Story of E. J. Banfield, Beachcomber of Dunk Island, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1986, pp. 103–104.
5. Banfield, Confessions, p. 23.
6. E. J. Banfield, My Tropic Isle, London and Leipsic, T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.
7. Ibid., pp. 16–27; H. D. Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854), New York, Dover, 1995.
8. Banfield, My Tropic Isle, p. 23.
9. Ibid., p. 51.
10. Banfield, Confessions, pp. 27–28; My Tropic Isle, p. 47.
11. Banfield, My Tropic Isle, pp. 29–30.
12. Banfield, Confessions, p. 299.
13. J. W. Banfield, “Reminiscences of an Incident at Dunolly Gold Rush and of Coming to Australia in 1852,” Papers of Jabez Banfield, National Library of Australia, MS 1723, pp. 2–6.
14. Noonan, Different Drummer, pp. 28–30; R. F. Teichgraeber, Sublime Thoughts/Penny Wisdom: Situating Emerson and Thoreau in the American Market, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 1995, pp. 45–74.
15. For details of Ted’s Townsville newspaper career, see J. Manion, Paper Power in North Queensland: A History of Journalism in Townsville and Charters Towers, Townsville, North Queensland Newspaper Company Ltd., 1982, pp. 177–79.
16. In return for the funds for his trip to England, Ted wrote a series of lively articles promoting the pleasures, safety, and convenience of Philp’s British–India Steam Navigation Line, which used the swifter but riskier Torres Strait–Barrier Reef route. These were subsequently gathered into a much-feted local pamphlet, E. J. Banfield, The Torres Strait Route: From Queensland to England, Townsville, Thankful Willmett, 1885; E. J. to J. W. Banfield, November 5, 1890, Papers of Jabez Banfield, MS 1860, folder 4, Banfield Corr. 1–10.
17. See his retrospective letter to Harry Banfield, ibid., November 1, 1897.
18. Ted to Harry Banfield, ibid., Nov. 1, 1897; Noonan, Different Drummer, pp. 102–103.
19. Edmund Banfield’s Diary 1898, Edmund Banfield’s Collection, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Box 16031, pp. 16, 25, 33–36, 39, 41–42, 46–48, 52, 70; Diary 1899, pp. 5, 22, 26–27, 30–32, 71.
20. Ibid., p. 77; Noonan, Different Drummer, pp. 119–20.
21. See Diaries, 1898–1901, passim.
22. Noonan, Different Drummer, pp. 120–21.
23. See below, Chapter Eight, passim; Banfield’s correspondents included F. Manson Bailey, author of The Queensland Flora, and the zoologist C. W. de Viss of the Queensland Museum; Banfield “Dunk Island: Its General Characteristics,” pp. 59–60.
24. Banfield, Confessions, pp. 260–75.
25. C. Barrett, Koonwarra: A Naturalist’s Adventures in Australia, London, Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1939, p. 172.
26. Ibid., p. 173; Banfield, My Tropic Isle, “Swifts and Eagles,” pp. 200–04.
27. Banfield, Confessions, p. 233.
28. Banfield, Tropic Days (1917), e-books, The University of Adelaide, 2010, “Blacks as Fishermen,” pp. 107–20.
29. Banfield, Confessions, p. 260.
30. Banfield, My Tropic Isle, “Dead Finish,” p. 281.
31. Ibid., pp.
28–29.
32. Banfield, “Dunk Island: Its General Characteristics,” pp. 60–61.
33. Noonan, Different Drummer, pp. 148–50.
34. Banfield, Confessions, p. 130.
35. Ibid., p. 130.
36. Ibid., pp. 124–25.
37. Ibid., p. 146.
38. See, E. J. Banfield to Eliza, September 1915 to September 1918, “Letters, 1905–23,” Papers of Jabez Banfield, MS 7105.
39. E. J. Banfield, Last Leaves from Dunk Island, South Yarra, Angus and Robertson, 1925, “The Tempest,” pp. 1–2.
40. Ibid., p. 5.
41. Ibid., p. 11–13; Noonan, Different Drummer, p. 203.
42. Banfield, Last Leaves, p. 19.
43. The year before the publication of the Confessions, he also published the Queensland Government–funded, 103-page, illustrated Within the Barrier: Tourists’ Guide to the North Queensland Coast (Brisbane, 1907).
44. Banfield, Last Leaves, pp. 182–88.
45. See A. H. Chisholm, Birds and Green Places: A Book of Australian Nature Gossip, London, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1929, esp. pp. 67–83; Noonan, Different Drummer, p. 228.
9. OBSESSION: THE QUEST TO PROVE THE ORIGINS OF THE REEF
1. A. G. Mayor, “Alexander Agassiz, 1835–1910,” Popular Science Monthly, vol. 77 (November 1910), p. 434. Alfred Mayer later changed his surname to Mayor. Both spellings appear in his published works. I have used the later form throughout the text.
2. C. Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82, ed. N. Barlow, New York and London, Norton, 1958, p. 82.
3. Mayor, “Agassiz,” p. 420.
4. D. Dobbs, Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alex Agassiz and the Meaning of Coral, New York, Pantheon Books, 2005, pp. 69–87.
5. Dobbs, Reef Madness, pp. 105–107.
6. December 22 and 24, 1873, Theodore Lyman Journals, Lyman Family Papers, 1785–1956, Massachusetts Historical Society, mfm, 1988, reel 23.
7. Dobbs, Reef Madness, p. 118; July 12, 1874, Theodore Lyman Journals, reel 23.
8. Mayor, “Agassiz,” p. 425.
9. J. Murray, “Alexander Agassiz: His Life and Scientific Work,” Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, vol. 54, no. 3 (March, 1911), pp. 139–58.
The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change Page 34