From the Edge

by Mark Mckenna

  35 Charles Nairn, Diary, 28 May 1863.

  36 Sholl quoted in Gara, ‘The Flying Foam Massacre’, p. 89; Parker’s comments in court, Perth Gazette and WA Times, 14 August 1868, p. 2.

  37 Wright & Stella, pp. 34, 38; Lieutenant Colonel Edward Fox Angelo, Government Resident at Roebourne (1883–86), wrote to Governor Broome, 10 April 1886, regarding the local pearling industry: ‘I find here in full force a disguised and unquestionable system of slavery carried on under the protection of the British flag which it is impossible for me to battle single handed’.

  38 Rev. JB Gribble, Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land or Blacks and Whites in North-West Australia, UWA Press, 1987, p. 47; in the appendix, see the essay by Sue-Jane Hunt, ‘The Gribble Affair: A Study in Colonial Politics’.

  39 AR Richardson to the editor, The West Australian, 7 November 1892, p. 3; on debate over Gribble’s allegations, see The West Australian, 20 September 1886, p. 3; Western Mail, 25 September, 1886, p. 24.

  40 ibid., Richardson.

  41 Charles Harper to the editor, The West Australian, 9 November, 1892, p. 3.

  42 AR Richardson to the editor, The West Australian, 7 November 1892, p. 3.

  43 ibid.

  44 The West Australian, 19 May 1898, p. 4.

  45 John Slade Durlacher, Landlords of the Iron Shore, Hesperian Press, 2013, pp. 74–5.

  46 ‘Mother of the North West’, The West Australian, 17 May 1928, p. 17.

  47 The West Australian, 5 August 1933, p. 5.

  48 WA Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act 1944.

  49 The West Australian, 23 November 1946, p. 5.

  50 Gara, The Aborigines of the Dampier Archipelago, pp. 18–20.

  51 Richard Thatcher, ‘The Pearl Station on the North West Coast’, The Herald (Fremantle), 30 October 1869, p. 3; in the 1993 documentary film Exile and the Kingdom it was claimed that the Yaburara were ‘no more’; Withnell on tattooed figures in Mike Donaldson, Burrup Rock Art, p. 498.

  52 Charles Court, ‘Minister for Industrial Development and the North-West’, in Symposium on Northern Development: Pilbara Prospects in the 1970s, Institute of Engineers, Perth, UWA, 1968, pp. 1–7.

  53 RH Underwood (formerly MLA for the Pilbara), ‘Populating the North’, The West Australian, 5 August 1939, p. 19 and GW Miles, ‘Australia’s Unexplored Nor’ West’, The West Australian, 22 October 1922, p. 1.

  54 Geologist HP Woodward, 1888, quoted in The Pilbara: A Regional Profile Department of Industrial Development, Pilbara Regional Office, Karratha, 1983, p. 9.

  55 ‘Iron Export Embargo’, The West Australian, 25 March 1938, p. 25.

  56 Court quoted in Know the Song, Know the Country:The Ngaardangarli Story of Culture and History in Ngarluma & Yindjibarndi Country, Juluwarlu Aboriginal Corporation, Roebourne, 2004, p. 16.

  57 HE Graham, Minister for Development and Decentralisation, in Symposium on Northern Development: Pilbara Prospects in the 1970s, p. 7; ‘almost empty’, GW Miles, The West Australian, 22 October 1922, p. 1.

  58 Vinnicombe, p. 1.

  59 Warwick Dix, Registrar of Aboriginal Sites at WA Museum, quoted in Hammersley News, 8 February 1973, p. 7.

  60 WDL Ride & A Norman (eds), Depuch Island: Report on the Aboriginal Engravings and Flora and Fauna of Depuch Island, Western Australia, Western Australian Museum, Special Publication No. 2, Government Printer, Perth, 1964, pp. 19, 23.

  61 Gara, The Aborigines of the Dampier Archipelago, p. 38.

  62 Edgar Lewis, ‘Foreword’ to Ride & Norman (eds).

  63 ‘Natural wealth’, ibid.; K Mulvaney & W Hicks, ‘Murujuga Madness: World Heritage Values Disregarded’, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Best Practices in World Heritage, Archaeology Menorca, Spain, 2012, pp. 187–201.

  64 Hammersley News, 8 February 1973, p. 7; on Bedarnik and Virili, see Nicolas Rothwell, ‘Lines in the Sand’, The Weekend Australian, 25–26 January 2003; on Hallam and others, see Andrew Burrell, ‘On the Rocks’, Financial Review Magazine, 29 February 2008.

  65 Pilbara News, 7 July 2004; The West Australian, July 7 2004.

  66 Alice Smith in Know the Song, Know the Country, p. 16.

  67 Two of the best sources on local Indigenous history include Know the Song, Know the Country and the historical overview in the Shire of Roebourne’s Local Government Heritage Inventory, Vol. 1, September 2013; also see the 1993 documentary film Exile and the Kingdom and Noel Olive’s Enough Is Enough: A History of the Pilbara Mob, which contains several recollections and testaments from local Aboriginal people regarding the European invasion.

  68 ibid., Exile and the Kingdom.

  69 Fred Williams’ Pilbara: Images from the North West, Rio Tinto, Hamersley Iron and UWA, 1998 (exhibition catalogue Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, UWA, 6 November 1998), p. 16; Williams produced two paintings of Mount Nameless, one ‘Morning’, the other, ‘Afternoon’.

  70 Quote sourced from display at Karijini Visitors’ Centre, November 2015.

  71 http://www.namelessfestival.com.au/behind-the-scenes/history-of-the-festival.aspx

  72 Exile and the Kingdom.

  73 On the new Indigenous mining entrepreneurs, see Russell Skelton, ‘Dreamtime, Boomtime’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March 2013, pp. 22–3.

  74 Hicks quoted in Andrew Burrell, ‘On the Rocks’, Financial Review Magazine, 29 February 2008.

  75 ibid.; also see Ken Mulvaney, Murujuga Marni: Rock Art of the Macropod Hunters and Mollusc Harvesters, UWAP, 2015, pp. xi, 17–18.

  76 The West Australian, 4 May 2007, p. 5.

  77 WA Premier Alan Carpenter in The West Australian, 31 August 2006.

  78 Ken Mulvaney quoted in Andrew Burrell, ‘Pressure on Woodside over Threat to Ancient Art’, Financial Review, 8 September 2006.

  79 On vandalism of sites, see Pilbara News, 13 September 2006; The West Australian, 3 October 2007; The West Australian, 13 January 2009; the latter two feature WA Greens MP Robin Chappie, a long-time champion of Murujuga’s rock art and the campaign for World Heritage listing.

  80 Robert Bedarnik, ‘Dampier Report’, in AURA, Newsletter of the Australian Rock Art Research Association, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2004, pp. 14–15.

  81 Hicks quoted in Gerry Georgatos, ‘Pilbara’s Yaburara People Remember One of Australia’s Largest Massacres’, The Stringer: Independent News, 1 March 2014, http://thestringer.com.au/pilbaras-yaburara-people-remember-one-of-australias-largest-massacres-6749#.VrgOV84eXdk

  82 ibid., Georgatos; also see Pilbara Echo, 22 February 2013, http://www.pilbaraecho.com.au/2013/02/22/the-flying-foam-massacre-remembered/

  83 Ken Mulvaney, Murujuga Marni, p. 349.

  84 Barnett pleading he wasn’t told of the area’s significance, in Burrell, ‘Pressure on Woodside over Threat to Ancient Art’; Barnett on the ‘greatest cultural heritage site’, in Griffin Longley, ‘Gas v Art: Civilisations Collide in WA’s North-West’, Weekend Extra, The West Australian, 30 September 2006; also see Carmen Lawrence, ‘The Limits of Dominion: Custodians on the Edge’, in Looking West, Griffith Review, 47, 2015, pp. 32–46; and in the same issue, Ken Mulvaney, ‘Ancient Treasures: Past and Present on the Dampier Archipelago’, pp. 233–50; Anna Haebich, ‘From the Edge of the Edge’, pp. 11–17; and Rebecca Giggs, ‘Open Ground: Trespassing on the Mining Boom’, pp. 18–31; also see Nicolas Rothwell, ‘Soundings’, in Journey to the Interior, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2010, pp. 216–25.

  Chapter 4 On Grassy Hill: Gangaar (Cooktown), North Queensland

  1 Raymond Evans, A History of Queensland, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 19; for the crab analogy, see ‘Badtjala Song’, translated by Gemma Cronin, in Lisa Chandler (ed.), East Coast Encounter: Re-imagining 1770, One Day Hill, Collingwood, Victoria, 2014, p. 10.

  2 From Eric Deeral’s text, panel, James Cook Museum, Cooktown, 2016; Cook, 17 June 1770, in Ray Parkin (ed.), H.M. Bark Endeavour, Miegunyah, Melbourne 2006 (1997), pp. 329–30.

  3 George Dalrymple, October 1873, in The Best Life I Ever Had: Droving around Cooktown, Coo
ktown Shire Council, 2003, pp. 1–2.

  4 ‘Cooktown: A Historical Spot’, The Queenslander, 26 June 1897, p. 28.

  5 Whalers, The Western Champion, 11 March 1922, p. 16; steamers, Cairns Post, 23 November 1938, p. 13.

  6 Cook, 30 June 1770, in Parkin (ed.), p. 344.

  7 Nancy Francis, ‘Captain Cook and Cooktown’, Cairns Post, 3 October 1933, p. 3 and ‘Cooktown, a Historical Spot’, The Queenslander, 26 June 1897, p. 28.

  8 I am indebted to Alberta Hornsby for traditional Guugu Yimithirr names; Alberta to me, Cooktown, April 2016; also see http://www.fatsilc.org.au/languages/language-of-the-month/lotm-1996-to-2000/1997-jul---alberta-hornsby-

  9 ‘Life in Cape York Peninsula’, The Age, 18 December 1954, p. 13.

  10 Phillip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-Tropical and Western Coasts of Australia Vol. 1, Friends of the State Library of South Australia (first published 1827), Adelaide, 2012, pp. 223–4.

  11 Parkin (ed.), p. 317.

  12 Francis, p. 3; the log resides today in the James Cook Museum in Cooktown.

  13 ibid.

  14 Frank Reid, ‘Historic Relics’, The Sunday Mail, 27 December 1931.

  15 The New York Times, 13 January 1969, p. 1.

  16 SE Stephens & Sir Raphael Cilento, Introduction to Cooktown and Its Museum, National Trust of Queensland, The James Cook Historical Museum and Joseph Banks Garden, 1976, p. 1.

  17 Deeral’s reflection, Alberta Hornsby to me, Cooktown, April 2016; Noel Pearson, Up from the Mission: Selected Writings, Black Inc., Melbourne 2009, p. 12.

  18 George Dalrymple, in SE Stephens, ‘The Endeavour River and Cooktown’, Queensland Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1970, p. 23, https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:246239/Qld_heritage_v2_no2_1970_p23_p30.pdf

  19 First edition of the Cooktown Independent, Friday 6 June 1884; also see Suzanne Falkiner & Alan Oldfield, Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, p. 33.

  20 ibid., Falkiner & Oldfield; ‘next capital’, Geoff Weingarth, in Gretchen Miller (producer), ‘Cook in Cooktown’, RN ‘Earshot’, 15 September 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/captain-cook-and-endeavour-in-cooktown/6723770; ‘Canton of the South’, Stephens & Cilento, p. 9.

  21 ‘Sketches at Cooktown’, The Illustrated Sydney News, 30 May 1874, p. 18.

  22 ibid.; also see Cooktown Independent, Friday 6 June 1884.

  23 The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 May 1936, p. 13.

  24 Quoted in Belinda McKay, ‘Constructing a Life on the Northern Frontier: E. A. C. Olive of Cooktown’, Queensland Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2000, online version p. 3; also see her general discussion of the frontier, pp. 1–3, http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/handle/10072/3231/E?sequence=l

  25 Brisbane Courier, 12 May 1876, p. 2.

  26 The Cooktown Courier, 5 December 1874.

  27 James V Mulligan, Guide to the Palmer River and Normandy Goldfields, North Queensland, George Slater, Brisbane, 1875, p. 8.

  28 ‘race war’, Brisbane Courier, 26 November 1880, p. 2.

  29 Quoted in Falkiner & Oldfield, p. 31.

  30 ‘The Northern Blacks and Our Native Police Force’, The Queensland Figaro, 22 November 1884, p. 15; also see Robert Ormston, The Rise and Fall of a Frontier Mining Town, PhD, University of Queensland, May 1996, p. 111, http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:189317; & ‘pay dearly’, Goulburn Herald, 7 March 1874, p. 2.

  31 The Cooktown Courier, 3 October 1874, syndicated in Northern Argus, 20 October 1874, p. 3.

  32 Raymond Evans, ‘Across the Queensland Frontier’, in Bain Attwood & Stephen Foster (eds), Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, National Museum of Australia, 2003, p. 66.

  33 The Cooktown Courier, 28 February 1877, in Raymond Evans, ‘Plenty Shoot ‘Em’: The Destruction of Aboriginal Societies along the Queensland Frontier’, in A Dirk Moses (ed.), Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, Berghan, 2004, p. 157.

  34 On Chinese, see John Shay (ed.), Cooktown through the Years, Cooktown and District Historical Society, 2009, pp. 48–52.

  35 Cooktown Herald, 8 December 1875, p. 2; ‘murderously hostile’, Goulburn Herald, 7 March 1874, p. 2.

  36 ‘The Northern Blacks and Our Native Police Force’, The Queensland Figaro, 22 November 1884, p. 15.

  37 Brisbane Courier, 26 November 1880, p. 2.

  38 ibid.

  39 The Cooktown Courier, editorial, 28 February 1877.

  40 Quoted in Falkiner & Oldfield, p. 34.

  41 William J Sowden, The Northern Territory as It Is: A Narrative of the South Australian Parliamentary Party’s Trip and Full Description of the Northern Territory; Its Settlements and Industries, WK Thomas & Co., Adelaide, 1882; https://archive.org/stream/northernterritor00sowd/northernterritor00sowd_djvu.txt

  42 CH Tongue, memoir, December 1884 – February 1885, transcribed by S Tongue in May 2010, John Oxley Library, Brisbane.

  43 ibid.

  44 John and Leslie Haviland, ‘How Much Food Will There Be in Heaven? Lutherans and Aborigines around Cooktown to 1900’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1980, p. 126, http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/article07.pdf

  45 ‘The Cooktown Blacks’, The Queenslander, 16 February 1889, p. 302.

  46 One of the best examples of this humanitarian concern can be found in The Queenslander, 20 November 1880, p. 656.

  47 Noel Pearson, Up from the Mission, p. 12.

  48 Noel Pearson, ‘A Rightful Place: Race, Recognition and a More Complete Commonwealth’, Quarterly Essay, 55, 2014, p. 28.

  49 Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861–1897, ANU Press, Canberra, 1982, pp. 82–4.

  50 ‘Blacks Troublesome, Cape York to Jardine River’, The Telegraph [Brisbane], 3 April 1905, p. 7; on the extent of the conflict in the Cooktown area, also see I Hughes, ‘A State of Open Warfare: Frontier Conflict in the Cooktown Area’, Chapter Three in Lectures in North Queensland History, Second Series, James Cook University, 1975, pp. 31–46, http://www.textqueensland.com.au/item/chapter/6b11274f2d6059029f9f29b66d6d9e34

  51 MJ Morwood & DR Hobbs (eds), ‘Quinkan Prehistory: The Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in Southeast Cape York Peninsula’, Australia, Tempus, Vol. 3, 1995, p. 65.

  52 Kim McKenzie & Carol Cooper, ‘Eyewitness? Drawings by Oscar of Cooktown, in Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia, edited by Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook and Andrew Reeves, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 157–63.

  53 WGF Poland, Loose Leaves: Reminiscences of a Pioneer North Queensland Missionary, Lutheran Publishing, Adelaide, 1988, p. 38.

  54 Text from Panel, James Cook Museum, Cooktown, 2016.

  55 Noel Pearson, 1994 Hancock Lecture, p. 117, http://www.humanities.org.au/Portals/0/documents/Events/Lectures/Hancock/txt/Hancock1994.pdf

  56 Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 16 September 1890, p. 6.

  57 The Cooktown Courier, 3 October 1874, syndicated in Northern Argus, 20 October 1874, p. 3; The Maitland Mercury, 21 November 1874, p. 4; and ‘Constructing National Histories: Perpetrator Narration and the Desire for Victimhood’, in Bain Attwood and Stephen Foster (eds), Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2003, pp. 185–200.

  58 ibid., The Cooktown Courier; and Cooktown Herald Palmer River Advertiser, 1 July 1874, p. 2.

  59 Droughts and lives in jeopardy, ‘The Northern Blacks and Our Native Police Force’, The Queensland Figaro, 22 November 1884, p. 15; floods, Goulburn Herald, 7 March 1874, p. 2; ‘pathless forest’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon energy’, The Cooktown Courier, editorial, 23 May 1874.

  60 Goulburn Herald, 7 March 1874; also see I Hughes, ‘A State of Open Warfare: Frontier Conflict in the Cooktown Area’, p. 38, where he quotes The Cooktown Courier arguing that ‘a hardworking man’ cannot be to ‘blame’ for ‘an indiscriminate act of slaughter’ again
st the Aborigines.

  61 The Cooktown Courier, 5 June 1874.

  62 ibid.

  63 On annexation, see Denver Beanland, The Queensland Caesar, Brisbane, 2013, p. 167.

  64 Cooktown Independent, 6 June 1884.

  65 Cooktown Independent, syndicated in The Queenslander, 16 February 1889, p. 302.

  66 Cooktown Herald, 3 February 1877.

  67 McKay, p. 2.

  68 ‘The Blacks at Cooktown’, Northern Star (Lismore), 17 March 1877, p. 3.

  69 Falkiner & Oldfield, pp. 80–3.

  70 The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 1881, p. 5.

  71 Willie Gordon with Judy Bennett, Guurrbi: My Family & Other Stories, Guurrbi Tours, Cooktown, 2012, p. 30.

  72 A brief summary of the Watson story can be found in Ivana McAlpine, Mary Watson, Imdesign, Sydney, 2004; the best account is Falkiner & Oldfield, Lizard Island.

  73 ibid., McAlpine, ‘Death’.

  74 The Queensland Figaro, 22 November 1884, p. 15.

  75 Watson’s diary, reproduced in The Argus, 8 August 1953, p. 8; alternatively, see McIver.

  76 The Queensland Figaro, 22 November 1884, p. 15; Barrier Miner, 5 June 1935, p. 5; Darling Downs Gazette, 10 February 1882, p. 5.

  77 Phillip Parker King, 2 August 1820, in Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-Tropical and Western Coasts of Australia Vol. 1, p. 375.

  78 Stephens & Cilento, p. 12.

  79 Barrier Miner, 5 June 1935, p. 5.

  80 Examples of the Watson story: ‘An Australian Heroine’, The Dawn, 1 June 1893, p. 8; ‘Lizard Island Tragedy: The 28th Anniversary of the Death of Mrs. Watson and Infant’, Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 23 October 1909, p. 5; ‘Heroine of Lizard Island: Epic Story of Mary Watson Fought off Cannibals only to Die a Tortuous Death from Thirst on a Lonely Coral Isle’, Truth (Brisbane), 10 April 1927, p. 15; The Worker (Brisbane), 23 September 1931, p. 5; The Telegraph (Brisbane), 23 January 1932, p. 11; and The Argus, 15 October 1955, p. 6.