Out of the Silence

by Robert Foster

  Lieutenant Hugonin’s detachment arrived in Port Lincoln on 17 April 1842. The following day he and the Government Resident planned their expedition. Reverend Schurmann was invited to join the party as an interpreter.24 Wary after his experience with Driver’s expedition, Schurmann agreed to go in the hope of preventing the loss of ‘innocent blood’.25 The expedition established their initial base at Pallanna, 15 miles west of Port Lincoln. A party of 17 men departed Pallanna on 25 April, travelling northward along the peninsula’s coast in the direction of Coffin Bay. Later that day they saw a group of Aboriginal people on the shore who, the tracker assured them, were not connected to the guilty parties. Yet despite being called upon not to fire, one of the soldiers shot a man standing in the water spearing fish, a man who had acted as a guide for Schurmann on previous occasions.26 In his report, Lieutenant Hugonin defended his soldier’s action, saying that a spear had been raised ready to throw.27 As they left the camp, and the dying man in the company of his relatives, lamentations and shouts could be heard; the tracker said they were scolding Schurmann for bringing the soldiers to them and that ‘bye and bye they would spear him’.28 Upset with what had transpired, Schurmann left the party and returned to town.

  A week after Hugonin’s party returned to their base, news was received that about a hundred Aborigines were gathering on the coast not far from Port Lincoln. On 7 May, Lieutenant Hugonin and his men, together with some volunteers from amongst the settler community, set off with a plan to encircle the Aboriginal encampment and take prisoners. As they neared they found that most people had fled, with the exception of some old men, women and children. As he sent his men to surround the remainder of the encampment, Hugonin reported, he ‘heard two shots fired on the shore’:

  Running up I found that two of my men had come upon a party of Natives, who had endeavoured to take their flintlocks from them. They shot two, several shots were fired at the rest. I am inclined to think two more were wounded.29

  Schurmann was appalled by the actions of Hugonin’s men, which so far had taken the form of random reprisals rather than a structured effort to capture the guilty. ‘So heinous are the whites!’, he wrote in his journal. ‘Mr Driver said the butchery will continue until they hand over the guilty ones. But it hasn’t been proved that the guilty ones are among them’.30 Information gathered from his Aboriginal friends led Schurmann to believe that those responsible for the attacks on Brown’s and Biddle’s stations were a division of the Parnkalla, known as the ‘Battara Yurarri, or gum tree people’, who inhabited the interior country. The camps that the 96th regiment were attacking were bands of Nauo, a coastal tribe that had no part in the attacks.31

  After their camp had been raided by Driver’s party on 2 April, the Battara had kept their distance from Port Lincoln. But after Hugonin’s raids, they recommenced their aggressions. On 19 May, shortly after midnight, an Aboriginal party of about 200 men attacked Charles Driver’s station, Pillaworta, which had been used as the base for Lieutenant Hugonin’s operations. Lieutenant Hugonin, Driver, and the remainder of the detachment had only departed the station a few hours before, leaving it under the guard of several soldiers of the 96th Regiment. The soldiers fired nine rounds at their assailants and saw ‘two natives fall’, but in danger of being surrounded, they were forced to retreat while the attackers plundered the huts. Given the systematic nature of the attacks in March, and Driver’s leading role in the retaliatory actions that followed, it is difficult not to think that his station was deliberately targeted. Lieutenant Hugonin promised to ‘lose no time in the pursuit of these fellows who appear to be bolder than ever in their outrages’.32

  This time Hugonin and Driver assembled a larger party of foot soldiers, Mounted Police, and volunteer mounted settlers. On 21 May, a day after leaving Pillaworta, they captured an Aboriginal boy whom they induced to guide them to an Aboriginal camp on the sea-coast. They raided the camp, and as 40 or 50 people fled, they captured one person and shot dead another who had thrown a spear at Sergeant McEllister.33 On the party’s return to Pillaworta, Schurmann was summoned to interpret for the prisoner. He was Ngarka, Schurmann reported, ‘a native of the Eastern Coast tribe’, who were not implicated in the recent attacks. At Pillaworta Schurmann was confronted by a gruesome spectacle. It was the head of Ngulga, whom the soldiers had shot. His head had been stuck on a pole, with a clay pipe forced between the teeth. Schurmann protested to the lieutenant about this behaviour, but ‘could not prevail upon him to put a stop to it’. Neither Ngarka nor Ngulga, he wrote, was implicated in the murders. In outlining these events in a letter to the Protector, Schurmann observed that ‘the destruction and removal of the innocent, or at least less guilty natives, while those who have taken lives escape with impunity, besides some other circumstances are gradually convincing me that my presence will not much longer be wanted in this part of the province.’34

  In his own report of events that had transpired since Pillaworta had been so brazenly attacked, Charles Driver was depressed about the state of the district. ‘For some time to come’, he wrote, ‘no friendly intercourse will result between the Europeans and Aborigines at Port Lincoln’. Aboriginal aggressions had been ‘allowed too long without a sufficient check’, and their mastery of the hinterland

  affords them so many advantages that the settlers must for the present at least, confine their operations to the immediate vicinity of the Town, unless a protective force is placed in the settlement to a much larger extent to what I imagine the local government has in its power to afford.

  The recent events, he continued, had ‘completely paralysed the industry of both the town and surrounding country’. All the flocks had been brought into town, resulting in a scarcity of feed; outlying stations had either faltered or been abandoned, the labour bestowed upon them ‘thrown away’.35

  Despite the lives they had taken, the activities of the 96th Regiment at Port Lincoln under the command of Lieutenant Hugonin could hardly be described as successful. In three expeditions over the course of three months, they had managed to capture only one man, Ngarka, on suspicion of being involved in the attacks in March, despite all suggestions that he had no involvement. During their raids they had shot and killed or wounded a number of Aboriginal people, but none of the camps they raided belonged to the tribe believed to have committed the murders. The only time the soldiers encountered the Battara people was when the Battara attacked Lieutenant Hugonin’s own encampment at Pillaworta, forcing the soldiers to flee. The activities of the military in the Port Lincoln district – in hindsight at least – were regarded with some amusement. James Hawker, who was in the district in October 1842, commented on the absurdity of ‘soldiers on foot, in heavy marching orders’, trying to catch ‘natives who knew every inch of the country and who could evade any attempt to make them prisoners!’ With their old Brown Bess muskets, which would not carry a long distance, and their inability to cross swampy country, their presence was a ‘miserable fiasco’.36

  To be fair, Lieutenant Hugonin understood this point almost from the moment he arrived. In his first report, detailing the expedition to Coffin Bay, Hugonin praised the work of Schurmann and the settlers who accompanied the party, observing that without their knowledge of the country and the local language, he did not know ‘what I could possibly do’:

  The nature of the country is such that foot soldiers with a heavy flintlock and belts have little chance of coming up with the natives. Their decoutrements also make the attempt to surprise at night almost a certain failure, and should I be unsuccessful in the now proposed push into the heart of their country I must regret to state that in my opinion that a military force, except employed as a guard at the outstations of the settlers, is at present totally useless in this settlement.37

  The military may have been more effective had all the soldiers been mounted, as Grey had suggested when issuing Hugonin his orders. The reason they were not might simply be because there were not enough horses in the district: early in
1840 there were just twelve, and those were probably jealously guarded by the settlers themselves.38 By the middle of June 1842 Governor Grey came to the conclusion that the military were not appropriate for the task of restoring order to the district. Lieutenant Hugonin was recalled, together with most of the company that had been despatched in April, though two officers and six men remained at Port Lincoln as sentries. Henceforth the protection of the settlement would be left in the hands of the Mounted Police.

  ‘They merely laugh at our guns’

  In July 1842 Charles Dutton, a prominent pastoralist who held the station most distant from Port Lincoln, became disheartened with the anxiety of Aboriginal attacks and decided to return to Adelaide. He was not the only settler to give up at Port Lincoln for this reason. In the same month, another prominent pastoralist, Mr White, applied for exemption from port taxes so that he could leave with his property.39 While White left by the usual sea route, Dutton, keen to preserve his valuable stock, chose to travel the much longer and little travelled overland route around the head of Spencer’s Gulf. He anticipated that the journey, undertaken with his four employees, would take about a month. In after years, prominent settler Nathaniel Hailes described how he accompanied Dutton’s party on the first leg of their journey. As they passed Biddle’s now-deserted station, they could not help but be aware of the industry now ‘wantonly destroyed in its infancy’. It was a scene of desolation which, as it transpired, evoked ‘gloomy forebodings’ on Dutton’s undertaking.40

  When after three months Dutton’s party still had not arrived, a series of search parties was organised.41 A party led by brothers James and Charles Hawker set out on 14 September from the Hawkers’ Bungaree station in the mid-north. On 9 October they arrived at Dutton’s deserted station, having found no trace of Dutton’s party, but having ‘ascertained through some of the natives that he and his party were killed by a murderous tribe’.42 On their way into the district they passed ‘the deserted and destroyed stations of the murdered Brown and Biddle, and here a more melancholy sight could not be imagined’:

  The flowers in one of the gardens were in full bloom, displaying the beauties of peaceful nature, growing up around the shattered furniture, recklessly destroyed and cast about here and there.43

  By this time, anxiety among the settlers in Port Lincoln was rising again with fresh reports of the ‘hostile intentions of the natives’. Charles Driver wrote to the Governor with these reports, enclosing another Memorial from the settlers for the 96th Regiment to be augmented, and for provision of ‘a few stands’ of firearms for settlers’ use. He enclosed a statement from Schurmann, who had been informed by his friend Yultalta that the Aborigines of the district had not been intimidated and that in the summer they would return to seek revenge.44 Yultalta and Schurmann were named as specific targets for the help they were giving to the government. The Coffin Bay and Port Lincoln Aborigines, Driver wrote, ‘had coalesced for the express object of murdering all the whites in the settlement – that they merely laugh at our guns and say their spears are much better expressing the utmost confidence that before many moons are passed they will not leave a white person alive in Port Lincoln’.

  Grey responded to the settlers’ pleas by despatching the Police Commissioner ‘with instructions to secure if possible the natives who were concerned in the late murders’. Mindful now of the ineffectiveness of the military for this task, he cautioned that he could not ‘comply literally with the prayer of the memorial … although the government may unfortunately on some occasions find it indispensable to call on the military to aid the civic power in reprising the aggressions of the natives, it is nevertheless upon the latter force that reliance for internal security should literally be placed’.45 Port Lincoln was by now a shattered community. When Police Commissioner Thomas O’Halloran arrived in the town a few weeks later he described the town as ‘a deserted place’: ‘more than half the houses have been abandoned, and the remainder are barricaded to protect the occupants against the attacks of the natives’.46

  In October 1842 Edward Underwood sent a letter to the Register from Port Lincoln describing the state of the district. ‘Consternation’, he wrote, ‘was the order of the day. What with the loss of Dutton and party, and an expected invasion of the natives, the settlers seem truly to be pitied’. He reported the rumours that ‘our declared enemies’ were ‘now coalescing’ to ‘make one grand attack on the white settlers of Port Lincoln’. ‘Revenge’, he wrote, was the object; and before ‘three months, and perhaps much sooner, blood would be running again in Port Lincoln’. He concluded by observing that it ‘is well known that by promiscuously destroying the natives when the soldiers were sent out against them,’ friends had become declared foes.47

  The capture of Ngarbi

  In early November, before Major O’Halloran arrived with his men, Charles Driver organised a fresh expedition to go in search of those believed responsible for the recent murders. His party comprised six police constables, Charles Hawker, still in the district after his unsuccessful search for Dutton, Clamour Schurmann, and his Aboriginal guide Yultalta.48 On the third day out they encountered a large Aboriginal camp which included, Yultalta said, several of the murderers. When they rode into the camp Yultalta indicated by surreptitious signs four of the guilty. Two fled but two others, Merltalla and Naltia, were captured.49

  Merltalla and Naltia were tried in the Supreme Court in March 1843 and both were sentenced to hang, although Merltalla’s sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.50 The Government Resident selected the location of the murders on James Rolles Biddle’s station as the site of Naltia’s execution. Schurmann was asked to assemble as many Aborigines as possible, ‘especially those of Naltia’s immediate tribe,’ to witness the event. The sentence was carried out on 6 April 1843.51

  Perhaps because of the large police presence, the district was quiet over the summer. However, on 10 May 1843 about 40 or 50 Aboriginal men appeared at McEllister’s station. They called out to him that they were Biddle’s murderers. Ngarbi, the young man implicated in the murders on Biddle’s station, was said to be among them, and they claimed they would kill McEllister if he didn’t leave. McEllister retreated into his house and fired, sure that he had shot at least one man, but the attackers retreated with the coincidental arrival of two soldiers. Ngarbi was captured the following morning.52 So ended a year-long campaign to bring to justice those believed to have been the leading players in the killings of five settlers in the previous year. Ngarbi was the prize; he was allegedly involved in the initial attack on Brown’s station, was reportedly among the party that attacked McEllister’s station just a few months before, and most seriously from the settlers’ point of view, he had killed a woman who had shown him kindness.

  Ngarbi, alias Little Jemmy, was tried in the Supreme Court in July 1843 and found guilty of murdering Elizabeth Stubbs.53 After his arrest Schurmann spoke with him and Ngarbi freely confessed his guilt, claiming that his people had obliged him to commit the murder.54 Shortly after the sentence was handed down, Schurmann wrote to the Protector of Aborigines urging mercy on the grounds that Ngarbi was merely carrying out the directions of his elders:

  Whatever a majority of the older natives decide upon must be carried out if practical by the younger men. The whole of the tribe agreed to attack Mr Biddle’s station. It was with them a tribal (national) decision and he could not have prevented the attack had he been so disposed.55

  The appeal had no influence and, despite his desire to be executed at Port Lincoln, Ngarbi was hanged in Adelaide Gaol on 1 August 1843. His last words were: ‘By and by I will be a white man’.56

  By the close of 1843 the numerous police and military expeditions that had operated in the Port Lincoln district appear to have served their purpose and for the next few years there were relatively few reports of violence. An exception was the killing of Charles Darke, who had left Port Lincoln to explore the interior and been fatally speared in October of 1844.57 But for the
most part, according to the reports of Government Resident Charles Driver, Aboriginal ‘crime’ around the township of Port Lincoln was now of a kind to annoy rather than seriously intimidate the settlers. These cases Charles Driver dealt with through a style of discretionary justice sanctioned by Grey’s early instructions of 1841.58 In September 1845, for instance, an Aboriginal prisoner Yailgalta, who had been charged with robbery, was sentenced to eighteen lashes, and the sentence was carried out by two other Aboriginal men who had been enlisted to the task. Driver reported that since his punishment, Yailgalta had remained in the settlement and proved to be ‘an active willing and useful character’. In February 1846, an Aboriginal boy of ‘eight or nine years of age’ was brought in to the township, having been shot in the back and shoulders with buckshot. He had been stealing wheat from the threshing floor at the station of the township’s doctor, George Lawson, who pursued him with a fowling piece. Driver reported that he himself had picked the small shot from the boy’s back and shoulders, and considered the case closed. On the same day that he had shot the young boy with buckshot, a drunk Dr Lawson had also assaulted a Native Constable in his own camp. Charles Driver fined him 20/. It is little wonder that he ‘had some difficulty in making the natives comprehend the nature of a punishment so dissimilar to what would have been inflicted on them’.59

  Although Governor Grey had considered such a discretionary system of justice appropriate when he first issued the Government Resident’s instructions in 1841, his successor Governor Robe now discouraged it. He observed that the flogging of Aboriginal prisoners was ‘entirely unwarranted by law’, and that in shooting at the Aboriginal boy Lawson ‘had taken the Law into his own hands’.60 The letter of the law should be followed more closely in future. The Government Resident conceded, but noted that the system of effecting corporal punishments for Aboriginal transgressions was one that had been beneficial in deterring ‘Europeans from taking the law into their own hands, which they have the greatest facilities for doing without the risk of detection’.61