December, 2003
 

The Journal of Australian Colonial History (University of New England, editor Dr Norma Townsend) published the following review by Dr Shirleene Robinson (UQ). The review appeared in Vol 4, No 1 April 2002, pp. 104-08. However, as I did not learn of the review until 24.12.03, when UQP provided me with a copy, I have included it with reviews of Goodbye Bussamarai that were published in 2003.
 

Dr Robinson reviewed Prof John Ramland’s Custodians of the Soil in the same article. Paragraphs that relate to both texts are reproduced here. For comments that relate to only Prof Ramland’s text, see the reference data above.

 

Review by Dr Robinson: Patrick Collins, Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1852, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 2002, Pbk, ISBN 0 7022 3293 9, 305pp, $34.00.
 

John Ramsland's Custodians of the Soil and Patrick Collins' Goodbye Bussamarai are two highly significant and very interesting texts dealing with race relations between Aboriginals and Europeans in Australia's past. Both studies successfully reveal the nuances of interaction between Aboriginals and Europeans in particular regional settings and are based on considerable primary research. In Custodians of the Soil, Ramsland charts the broader pattern of contact between Aboriginals and Europeans in the Manning Valley of New South Wales from that defining moment in 1770, when Cook sailed the Endeavour in the vicinity of the Manning River, until the present day. In Goodbye Bussamarai, Collins conducts a fascinating and in-depth examination of the powerful Aboriginal resistance leader Bussammarai and the southern Queensland Mandanadanji Aboriginal group to which he belonged. Collins begins his analysis in 1842, when free settlement commenced in the Moreton Bay District and concludes in 1852, when the Native Police executed Bussamarai.

 

These two texts have been released at a particularly fortuitous time. Recently, a number of Australian newspapers and periodicals have featured articles questioning the extent of frontier violence between Aboriginals and Europeans in colonial Australia. While I am reasonably certain that neither Ramsland or Collins authored their texts with any intention of joining this debate, their prodigiously documented texts set out in great detail the brutal nature of European settlement and the heavy toll that this settlement took on Indigenous Australians. While both texts provide graphic information of the broad impact that European settlement had on Aboriginal populations, they also show the subtleties of interaction in different regional settings.

 

Ramsland and Collins have authored these texts from different backgrounds. Ramsland is a prolific Professor of History at the University of Newcastle who has written extensively on many aspects of Australian history. Collins is a former teacher and psychologist who, in later years, has become increasingly interested in various facets of Australian colonial history. Despite these differences, the two authors have a common interest in uncovering the personalities and aspects of human behaviour that shaped frontier history and both write with a sensitivity that is unfortunately rare.

 

(A large section on Prof Ramsland’s text was omitted by P Collins here).

Readers interested in race relations between Aboriginals and Europeans in Australia during the colonial period will also welcome the recent publication of Goodbye Bussamarai by Patrick Collins. In this major historical text, Collins studies the life of an Aboriginal man, Bussamarai, who led the Mandandanji Aboriginal group from southern Queensland in their fight against European settlers between 1842 and 1852. While historians such as Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds have adeptly documented Aboriginal resistance in the north of Queensland, Aboriginal resistance in the southern part of the colony has not received as much attention. Collins is the first historian to produce a book-length study of an individual Aboriginal resistance fighter from southern Queensland, and this alone makes the text worth reading.

 

Goodbye Bussamarai is based on voluminous primary research and Collins uses seventeen chapters and an array of maps and appendices to convey this information. Although Collins has collated an enormous amount of information in the text, the book is a highly readable account of the life of an extraordinary figure whom he describes as 'a multilingual elder, family man and father, composer, military leader, guide and marathon runner' and the resistance battle waged by a particular Aboriginal group. Collins points out that Bussamarai was the only person - European or Aboriginal - who was present in the Maranoa district for the entire period from 1842 to 1852, when Europeans were first establishing their hold on the area.

 

While Bussamarai is present in most of Collins' account, Goodbye Bussamarai is much more than a traditional biography. In authoring the text, Collins primarily set out to discover what really happened to the Mandandanji Aboriginal people, who lived in the Maranoa district of south-eastern Queensland. The Mandandanji people make a fascinating subject. They were amongst the first Aboriginal people to interact with Europeans in the Moreton Bay District after the commencement of free settlement in 1842.

Interestingly, Collins found that the initial contact between European explorers and Aboriginals in the East Maranoa district was peaceful, with no recorded deaths. This contrasts heavily with the violence that erupted between both groups after the establishment of permanent stations in the area. Collins believes that an outright war between the Mandandanji Aboriginal people and European settlers was under way by 1848, with Bussamarai and the Mandandanji Aboriginal people killing at least eight European station hands in that year.

After 1848, relations between Europeans and the Mandandanji Aboriginal group became increasingly aggressive. The Native Police Force, with their notorious Commandant, Frederick Walker, became an increasingly violent presence in the region and the Mandandanji, with Bussamarai commanding, responded to their violence in kind. In one particularly telling chapter, Collins describes a fascinating incident that occurred in 1850, when Bussamarai performed a corroboree to frighten local settlers.

 

Collins also provides evidence of an attempt by the Fitzroy New South Wales Government to cover up a Native Police Massacre that occurred in the East Maranoa area in 1852. In a particularly poignant chapter, Collins describes how the mounting violence and escalating tensions between Aboriginals and Europeans led to the murder of Bussamarai by the Native Police in 1852.

 

Collins deserves particular commendation for using many previously uncited primary sources in Goodbye Bussamarai and for successfully managing to capture 'the other side of the frontier'. He does not merely portray the Mandandanji as passive victims of European aggression but captures their initiative and creative reactions to European intrusion.
 

Both Ramsland and Collins are to be applauded for authoring such adeptly researched and perceptive texts. It is not often that such high standard historical texts dealing with the Australian colonial frontier are released. Both texts are highly recommended for undergraduate and postgraduate collections and for anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of race relations on Australia's frontier.

Shirleene Robinson
 

Response by Patrick Collins:
I regret not learning of this review until December 2003. I completed the text during 1999, the same year in which the first edition of the JACH was published and I did not know this journal existed when the above review appeared. It is also obvious that UQP did not learn of the review until very recently. Considering that it was the first published review of Goodbye Bussamarai, which went on sale in March 2002, a marketing opportunity went begging. So be it. Having said that, it goes without saying that I was delighted to read Dr Robinson’s positive assessment of my book, which, as she concluded, was completed prior to the current “history wars” debate. In other words, she realised that my book was not influenced by Keith Windschuttle or others who have attempted to cast doubt on texts that document frontier violence in Australia. Also, given the emphasis that has been placed on primary records during this debate, I am particularly pleased that Dr Robinson drew attention to such references in Goodbye Bussamarai.

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October, 2003
 

Response by Patrick Collins to Prof. Bob Reece's review of Goodbye Bussamarai in Eureka Street (Jesuit Press), September 2003.
 

As the full text of the Eureka St review can be read on Eureka Street's web site (see above), most of my comments relate to changes made by Prof Reece to his review of Goodbye Bussamarai that appeared in the Australian Historical Association [AHA] Bulletin 96 (also above). However, I also address some issues that were not fully dealt with in my responses to the AHA review.

Re Keith Windschuttle: Prof Reece commenced the Eureka Street version with:

"Books on frontier conflict in Australia must now be written with an eye to the charges Keith Windschuttle has made about the deliberate 'fabrication',

or at least exaggeration, of Aboriginal deaths. There is no harm in this: unusual care must be taken in an area of such politicised sensibilities. At the same time, the paucity of hard evidence creates serious problems for historians genuinely convinced by a combination of circumstantial evidence and tutored instinct that large-scale killings of Aborigines took place. Patrick Collins' book is amongst other things a case study of these problems. It also tends to support the argument pursued by Henry Reynolds, Noel Loos and Raymond Evans that Queensland witnessed what was probably the most extensive and intensive racial violence in Australian history."

Goodbye Bussamarai is not a post-Windschuttle book, as UQP received my MS in 1999. During the editorial process in 2001, I was aware of Windschuttle's articles that appeared in Quadrantin late 2000, but nothing in those articles led to changes to the original MS. I had searched for years to locate every key document available and I drew most of my conclusions from the evidence in those documents. However, I did not avoid drawing at least tentative conclusions when there was a "paucity of hard evidence". Instead, I adopted an approach that was akin to a Coronial Inquest into suspicious deaths in East Maranoa. In Queensland, the Coroner's Regulation 1998 (34.1) includes:

"the coroner may admit any evidence that the coroner thinks fit, whether or not the  same is admissible in any other court, provided that no evidence shall be admitted by the coroner for the purposes of the inquest unless in the coroner's opinion the evidence is necessary for the purpose of establishing or assisting to establish any of the matters within the scope of such inquest.”

In practice the above allows the coroner to admit hearsay and circumstantial evidence along with "hard evidence". In relation to suspicious deaths, the coroner's over-riding objective is to establish the cause of death and the circumstances surrounding that death. Even without sufficient "hard evidence" to charge someone with murder, it is not unusual for a coroner to conclude that a specific person murdered another. Coroners are however very conscious of societal needs and wants, other than the conviction of a nominal killer. A coroner's verdict can provide partial closure for the family and friends of the person whose death was deemed to be suspicious. By analogy, I believe it is incumbent upon historians, and others such as myself, who delve into Australian frontier conflicts, to publish their conclusions even if some of the evidence would not be admissible during a Supreme Court murder trial. All Australians are entitled to hear any evidence re "suspicious" frontier deaths or re deaths when the causes and/or circumstances are not known. It is equally incumbent upon the writer to clarify which parts of his/her evidence are hearsay, circumstantial or "hard". It is then up to the reader to decide if he/she agrees with the author's conclusion(s). If there is disagreement, constructive feedback could influence the author to change his/her opinion or conclusion. This is potentially a long process but without it and associated honesty, I doubt that sufficient trust will ever develop to bring any sense of closure re frontier deaths. I also doubt that without such closure there will ever be genuine reconciliation between black and white Australians.

With regard to Henry Reynolds, Noel Loos and Raymond Evan's "argument ... that Queensland witnessed what was probably the most extensive and intensive racial violence in Australian history", I do tend to agree with this but I lack sufficient knowledge of the Australia-wide frontier scene to unequivocally support this conclusion.
 

Re W'm Telfer Jnr: I was more reserved than Prof Reece in dealing with Telfer's evidence from the Wallabadah Manuscript. I did refer to his Maranoa anecdotes as hearsay, and I did have doubts about some of the death tolls he cited for the district. In hindsight, I might not have been so reserved if I had read Prof Reece's opinion that Telfer's "narrative is impressive in its unadorned and dispassionate simplicity". This fits. Nowhere in Wallabadah do I recall Telfer weighting his evidence to suit a particular group. He was not an overly-competitive person with a particular barrow to push.  His only apparent motive for recording his anecdotes was to do just that: record them. This does not mean that I now accept as absolute truth, everything that he recorded. However, given his wide range of frontier contacts, and his credibility as a witness, I accept that his records reflect the reality of his era. In short, in the absence of any other records, there is no valid reason to reject Telfer's. If there was exaggeration, it was likely to have been by his source(s). But so what? I suspect that many often-quoted and accepted memoirs are wildly exaggerated, but they form part of our recorded history. 

 

Re “ruthless competition”:
Prof Reece stated, “It is difficult to balk at ‘warfare’ as the appropriate term for what was happening as the pastoral frontier moved rapidly from the Gwydir to the Balonne and the Maranoa in the late 1840’s. Despite the subtitle of his book, Collins settles somewhat cautiously in his introduction for ‘ruthless competition’.”
 

I must take the blame for some confusion here, for I regard “warfare” as a manifestation of “ruthless competition”. That is why I quoted Gerry Adams on this exact topic. To set the record straight, I totally agree: the East Maranoa frontier was characterized by warfare.
 

Re “An interesting conceit”: 
I was most disappointed with the following remark by Prof Reece: “An interesting conceit which Collins raises in his introduction is the congruence in experience of the Irish and the Aborigines and their consequent affinities in colonial Australia.”
 

Based on Webster’s Dictionary meaning, the term “conceit” was presumably used here in a literary sense to mean a “fanciful and rather trivial idea or notion”. If so, this is tantamount to stating that I did not provide evidence to support my claims re the Irish. In other words my claims are ‘fabrications’. If this is not what Prof Reece meant, I apologise to him unreservedly. But what else could his statement mean? The most disturbing aspect is, Prof Reece did not comment on my references, nor did he provide evidence to support his rejection of my claims. I will not pursue this further but I will provide a sample of the evidence that I cited. The following relates to endnote 27 from Chapter 6 and is available in most major Australian reference libraries.
 

On 19 June, 1847, when Allan MacPherson was preparing to take over Mount Abundance station in East Maranoa, the Sydney Morning Herald  published a two column letter titled Destitution in Ireland. It was written by a ship’s captain (Caffin) and illustrated the plight of millions of Irish during the famine, when one million died and another two million migrated, mostly to USA. The letter included.
 

"In the village of Schull [Co Cork] three fourths of the people ... are reduced to mere skeletons, the men in particular, all their physical power wasted away;  they have all become beggars.
 

" ... Dr Traill, the rector of Schull offered to drive me to see a portion of his parish. I found there was no need to go out of his village to see the horrors of starvation in its worst features.            "Fever has sprung up ... swellings of limbs and body, and diarrhoea, from want of nourishment, are everywhere to be found. Dr Traill's parish ... containing eighteen thousand souls, with not more than half a dozen gentlemen in the whole of it. In no house that I entered was there not ... the dead or dying ... we took them just as they came.

"The first ... was a cabin rather above the ordinary ones in appearance and comfort; in it were three young women, and one young man and three children, all crouched over a fire, and the pictures of misery. ...  the father the most wretched picture of starvation possible to conceive, a skeleton with life, his power of speech gone; the mother but a little better ... They had nothing to eat in the house and I could see no hope for any of them.
 

"In another cabin ... a mother and daughter were there: the daughter emaciated and lying against the wall; the mother naked, upon some straw on the ground, with a rug over her; ... she had wasted away to nothing ... she cannot have survived.
 

"Another that I entered ... was misery ... (the daughter said) "... Mother is dead!" ... the daughter, a skeleton herself ... the poor creature ... did not know what to do with the corpse, ... she was too exhausted to remove it herself...

"In another, the door of which was stopped with dung, ... a poor creature who was passing this miserable cabin and asked the old woman to allow her to rest herself for a few moments, she had laid down, but never rose up again. She died in an hour or so, from sheer exhaustion. The body had remained in this hobble of six feet square with the poor old woman for four days; ...
 

"I could ... take you through thirty or more cottages that we visited, but they were all alike - the dead and the dying in each. ...
"A board of health is now wanted ... pestilence will rage when the mass of bodies decompose. They have ceased to put them in coffins, or to have a funeral service performed, and they merely lay them a few inches under the soil ...
"All that I have stated ... I have seen ... I could tell you also of that which I could vouch for ... but which I did not see myself, such as bodies half eaten by rats; of two dogs ... being shot ... whilst tearing a body to pieces ... of a poor woman (when asked) what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son ... it was dead ... she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it.

"There have been two or three post mortem examinations of those who have died, and they find that the inner membrane of the stomach turns into a white mucous, as if nature had supported herself upon herself, until exhaustion of all the humours of the system had taken place."
 

 "... very faithfully yours, J. Crauford Caffin, (15 Feb, 1847)."

[Caffin was the Commander of Her Majesty's steam sloop, Scourge.]

My sources also show that during the famine there was no shortage of food in Ireland, and that a great deal of it was exported by landlords. Lord John Russell’s Whig government would not provide sufficient charity and the prevailing free trade policy prevented major donations of food from the USA. The outcome is illustrated above. It was a direct result of the same British frugality that failed to provide protection for the Aborigines. I regret having to say it Prof Reece, but on this topic you are wrong. If you disagree, please provide your evidence and I will include it below verbatim.

 To close on a positive note, I remain indebted to Prof Reece for taking the time to reviewGoodbye Bussamarai twice, and for submitting these reviews to such appropriate publications as the AHA Bulletin and Eureka Street.  I also value Prof Reece’s opinion that I am an optimistic psychologist rather than a sceptical historian (seriously), for I do believe that somewhere in the distant future, racial harmony will be achieved in this country, but I do not believe it will happen over night. For instance, the Republic of Ireland, in the year 2003, is a wealthy and prosperous country that bears little resemblance to the down and out appendage to Great Britain that it was, when controlled by ruthlessly competitive British politicians and landlords, pre-1921. Just how Australians will bring about racial harmony I cannot say with certainty, but some of the essential elements are clear; eg education, honesty and sound economic management. However, central to the process will inevitably be how we manage competition, or should I say, how we manage ruthless competitors. The flip side is, social harmony, including racial harmony, will never see the light of day until we empower existing losers and potential losers. Central to this empowerment must be, axiomatically, teaching these groups the skills associated with successful but ethical competitive behaviour, including how to identify and defeat those who prefer to cheat. Thankfully, the ground work for all of this is already in place but the process can be hastened, if those who interested in doing so know how to compete and are prepared to do so.

Patrick Collins 30.10.2003.

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9 July, 2003
 

Quadrant magazine (editor Padraic P. McGuinness) published the following review by Robert Murray in Vol XLVII, No 7-8, July-August 2003, pp.34-38, in an article titled “On the Long Road to Truth”.  Robert Murray is “an occasional contributor to Quadrant.

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The cover of this edition included the following line: “Robert Murray on post-Windschuttle frontier history”. The article included reviews of two other books, Frontier Conflict: the Australian Experience (Editors Bain Attwood and S.G.  Foster, National Museum of Australia, 2003, $39.95; and Mark McKenna’s Looking for Blackfella's Point: An Australian History of Place, University of New South Wales, 2, $39.95).
 

The following extracts are from a review of Goodbye Bussamarai (UQP, 2002), the second of the three reviews in Robert Murray’s article.
 

PATRICK COLLINS' Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland, 1842-1852 (University of Queensland Press, $34), another good book, is a localised study of conflict in one district in one period-the East Maranoa pastoral district of south-central Queensland­ from 1842 to 1852. This approach, rewardingly, allows the author to get close to the action and to the dynam­ics on both sides. At the end he hazards an estimate, cautiously and with qualifications, that the Aboriginal population was perhaps 600 when the settlers arrived. Aboriginals killed in conflict with whites probably numbered between 150 and 300, though some of these would have been from other districts, perhaps refugees or working on the cattle runs. A Windschuttle might find this excessive, but there is no shortage of sources and footnotes and Collins names plenty of names.
 

Again the Native Police are the culprits, though Collins points the finger at squatters who wanted them to act as "private hit squads" … 

The economic imperatives carried the decisive weight.
    
Once a pastoral run was rendered "safe" the value of the lease shot up, 
    
A breed of frontier-hardened stockmen, familiar with Aborigines, and mostly ex-convicts, operated these early runs and often helped the squatters establish them. 
    
High­minded sentiments flowed out of London about the need to protect all British subjects in the colony, irre­spective of race, but they tended to get lost or over­looked on the long route to the Balonne and neighbouring river valleys.
 

The census count in 1851 showed a white population of only eighty-five, of whom eleven were women. Some seventeen whites were counted killed in fifteen months of 1848-49 alone.
 

Collins, suggests that the Mandandanji people of the Balonne-Maranoa were genuinely resist­ing the squatters and protecting their way of life, under an apparently charismatic elder, Bussamarai.
 

These were still musket days, and Collins is not as clear as a Windschuttle would like about how damage on the scale he suggests could be inflicted with these limited weapons, on blacks able to flee or sink into dense scrub in their own much-loved country.

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A Windschuttle might also think it a but much to damn Fitz Roy and his London bosses so much for weakness, given the near impossibility of quickly rais­ing, equipping, training and motivating a police force.

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Although Collins shows the greater sympathy to the Aborigines, they are mostly shadowy, almost disembodied. Perhaps inevitably, the book is mainly about the whites, who left the written records.

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The author, a psychologist in his day job, offers some interesting points about the psychology on both sides.

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The many pages of references in all these books show the industry that has gone into them, which would rarely be possible without the academic resources that have supported the first and last. Some of the records were not even available until thirty sears ago, a few of them probably deliberately mis­laid. (Other possibly incriminating ones seem to have disappeared altogether.) All three have required painstaking work from frequently obscure records.

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None of this would have been practical without postwar prosperity and the money it has made avail­able for scholarship generally. Previous generations with access to these funds could hardly be blamed for Building careers on more readily accessible records. This partly explains why historians steered clear of his subject when easier work was to be had. It is a pity these fortunate later beneficiaries are so snooty about the failings of their predecessors and the dreaded "conservative commentators".

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Robert Murray.
 

Response by Patrick Collins.

I am absolutely delighted that Quadrant published Robert Murray’s review. I am far from being a fence-sitter but, as stated in the “Introduction” to Goodbye Bussamarai, I avoided involvement with historical and anthropological groups. This was not because I do not admire many historians and anthropologists, for I do, including Henry Reynolds, Raymond Evans and W.E.H. Stanner. My aim was to avoid being influenced by the norms of such groups. This was in keeping with the experiences of many psychologists with so-called “T-groups” and similar. A problem with group involvement is that we can unconsciously (to find acceptance) conform to group norms, both stated and covert, that we might otherwise reject. Accordingly, I gathered my data and drew my own conclusions, especially from primary sources. In other words, I tried to produce a book that reflected the records, rather than either a left or right wing interpretation of those records. I do however acknowledge the influence of  a Native Police researcher, Simon Whiley, who regularly emphasized the value of primary records. It is also appropriate that I mention that UQP accepted Goodbye Bussamarai for publication in May 2000, some months prior to the start of the so-called Windschuttle debate. However, UQP had held the manuscript since mid-1999. Keith Windschuttle has some strengths and weaknesses, but he did not influence the writing of Goodbye Bussamarai.
 

So far as Robert Murray’s review is concerned, it is very perceptive and contains nothing with which I take umbrage. In spite of my tendency to incorporate more factual content than “imagination”, he obviously took the time to internalize what I was saying. That he did not concur with all of my conclusions is his right and it adds to the quest for truth. I will however comment on some of his comments.
 

Murray refers to the deaths of seventeen whites above. The context suggests these were all from the Maranoa. However, only ten of these deaths were from the Maranoa. The others were from the more populated Lower Condamine in the outer Darling Downs.
 

It is true that muskets were slow to reload and had a short lethal range. However, the Native Police troopers and many of the white people also had pistols. How the troopers used these or their cutlasses can only be guessed at.
 

I have no qualms with academics being financially enabled by salaries and grants to research and write texts. This has always, in my lifetime, been the situation. Today’s lecturers however, do not automatically qualify for sabbatical leave as did lecturers of yesterday. I therefore do not accept that any historians who taught me during the early 1960’s had any excuse for not discovering the many primary records that were then available. I have never had a writing grant, nor have I received paid research leave. I did teach and counsel (mainly on contracts) at the BCAE and the QIT prior to my early retirement in 1988. However, I retired on the profits of my wife and my investments, not superannuation. With time on my hands I indulged myself in doing the things I could not do as a younger person: Goodbye Bussamarai is therefore the product of a very costly seven year love affair.
 

Finally, I must emphasize that many of my apparent conclusions are little more than restatements of comments made by the historical figures mentioned in my book. For instance, it was the Native Police Commandant, Frederick Walker, not me, who stated that several Aboriginal tribes combined to rid their lands of white settlers. It was Gideon Lang and Hovenden Hely, not me, who stated that “Old Billy” (Bussamarai) led the majority of attacks on the settlers. The multiple mass killings I refer to are from primary documents. And so on. If I did make unwarranted conclusions than so be it: others will soon set the record straight.
 

Patrick J Collins.

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February, 2003

The Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland (editor John Kerr), published the following review by Dr Ruth Kerr in Vol 18 No 5, pp.239-240, February 2003. Ruth Kerr is the author of "John Moffatt of Irvinebank"  in North Queensland. She has published seven other books on various aspects of Queensland history.

 

Book Review: 'Goodbye Bussamarai: the Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842 -1852'
by Patrick Collins

(St Lucia, University of Queensland, 2002) (xv + 302 pages, maps, biblio, endnotes, appendices, index, Price: $34)

The following are extracts from Dr Kerr’s review. The full review is available in the above edition of the JRHSQ: E-mail: rhsq@queenslandhistory.org.au

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“It is delightful when one encounters a serious book on a most significant subject critical to Australia's understanding of their culture, that is written from the best sources. Also of significance and value is that the author tests the motivation of the characters of this human story of the conflict of the Mandandanji with the initial white intruders, using these sources.”

“... the effort taken to read and assess the primary sources is the portent for a rich harvest of historiography of indigenous and colonial pastoral history on the rangelands of southern Queensland beyond the silver tails of the Darling Downs. “
 

“I hope influential Australians in indigenous politics and legal fields do respect the author for his selection and perseverance with the sources. Nevertheless, there are some shortcomings in the book. Pat's selection of some secondary sources and assessments of evidence disappoint as they are based on far lesser standards of evidence than Pat otherwise uses.”

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Dr Kerr also listed the following shortcomings:

• “Footnote 47 on page 8 is not a sufficiently valid source for the statement that Aborigines did not have chiefs - viz. the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales publication, Poignant Regalia: 19th Century Breastplates & Images (1993).
 

• Page xxiii - What proof is there that no squatter / lessee lived on a Maranoa station until Paddy McEnroe did on Ukabulla in 1851? None is given.
 

• Page xxiv - What proof is there that Walker sought to protect the Aborigines' access to land, while also being very brutal?
 

• The print on the maps is too small.”

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Dr Kerr’s summary comments included
“The result is a sense of historical honesty in reconciling people and sources to present a sobering picture as a model for future such analyses.”

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Response by Patrick Collins:

Dr Ruth Kerr is an extremely active Queensland historian: currently President of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies (FACS); a key member of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland (RHSQ) and the Australian Mining History Association (AMHA); consultant to the Queensland Government; and involved with the preservation of Queensland’s heritage buildings. Her many publications include her recent book, 'John Moffat of Irvinebank: a biography of a regional entrepreneur', Cairns Post, December 2000.
 

For more details see www.qld.historians.org.au/KerrR.html

A “Google”search using “Ruth Kerr” will provide other information about her.
 

It must be obvious that I am delighted with the above review: especially with the comment, “The result is a sense of historical honesty in reconciling people and sources to present a sobering picture as a model for future such analyses.” Considering the current debate generated by Keith Windschuttle, I hope that Goodbye Bussamarai is influential in this regard.

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I also appreciated Ruth’s list of perceived shortcomings, above and make the following responses to her comments.

Re no resident squatters in the Maranoa prior to Paddy McEnroe: I did not provide much evidence re this in the text but this is available on request.

Re Walker protecting Aboriginal access to land but also being very brutal: I provided detailed evidence of this in a private communication to Dr Kerr, who now accepts that it is in the text.

Re print size being too small: I totally agree and will gladly provide larger copies of any map upon request.

Were there Chiefs in Aboriginal Society? 
Dr Kerr objected to my citing a secondary source (Poignant Regalia) to support my statement (p.8) that, “Aboriginal groups did not have chiefs (or kings).” I must confess that I deferred to authority on this issue as I have no formal qualifications in anthropology and the above text was by Tania Cleary, formerly “The Aboriginal Collections Manager, Division of Anthropology, Australian Museum”.

 

The text, which was published soon after I began my research, doubled as a catalogue of Aboriginal breastplates. Accordingly, it directly addressed the issue of so-called chiefs and/or kings. Cleary stated (1993, p.19), “In Aboriginal society there were no kings, queens or chiefs – laws were made by a consensus reached by a council of tribal elders … … As in all societies there were often those of dominant character whose influence held sway, but in general elders shared equal status and were highly respected.”

I must continue to defer to authority. However, I did explore this issue in a number of texts without citing them: perhaps I should have. I will refer to a sample of these below, followed by references to Aboriginal “chiefs” in some early publications by writers who claimed to have a sound understanding of Aboriginal society. With one exception (Flanagan, 1888) I will quote only from texts listed in the “Bibliography” of Goodbye Bussamarai.

Prof A.P. Elkin (1964/1970, pp.76-77) stated re “The Local Group”, “This group is ideally an enlarged family, consisting of a man and his living descendants. … Such a group is a local patrilineal clan … “Each local group has its headman, usually the oldest man, provided that he be not too old to take full interest in its affairs. The headmen of the various groups of a tribe constitute a council-informal in nature-who talk over matters of common interest and make decisions, when several local groups are together…”

Richard Broome (1982, p.20) stated, “… Aboriginal society was one governed by those who had consistently proved themselves to be the most wise and dedicated to the continuance of the group and its traditions. There was no leader but a more egalitarian diffusion of power among perhaps a dozen men.” Earlier on the same page Broome stated, “… some women also came to have a say in camp affairs in their later years.”

Frederick G. G. Rose (1987, pp.129-168) wrote at length on “The Patrilineal Land-owning Local Group.” Rose stated (p.148), “… if the numbers of the local group increased too much it would become unwieldy, as the number of “elders” would become impracticable for them to come together and achieve a consensus on the “administration” of the local group’s territory. The local group, that is the “elders”, were not only decisive in the use of the land but also in such matters as marriage and initiation (in these cases in consultation with representatives of other local groups).

If I have not been overly selective in my choice of quotations, the only term from the above that could be interpreted to mean “chief “ or “king” is Elkin’s “head man” of a patrilineal clan. Some writers from the nineteenth century were no more definite. 

Finney Eldershaw, who included a chapter on the Aborigines in his text (1854, pp. 76-107) stated (p.95), “There are as far as I have been able to discover, no Chiefs, nor hereditary superiors, in any of the tribes; the only influence amongst them being exercised either by the old men-who not infrequently assume supernatural attributes; that is to say, an unusual power of inflicting evil; or by those whose superior activity of intellect, or probably physical power, entitles them by force of arms to this position.

Gideon Lang (1865, p.27) who wrote a great deal about Bussamarai under the name of “Eaglehawk”, referred to him as a “diplomatist and a general” but never as a “chief”. When discussing leadership he stated (p.7), “The system of [Aboriginal] government is administered, in each separate tribe, by a council of old and elderly men.” With reference to the Maranoa (p.9) he referred to “the old and chief men” but not to an individual “chief”. 

Roderick Flanagan, whose The Aborigines of Australia (1888) I did not include in the bibliography, stated (pp. 16-17), “The supposition that no system of chiefship prevails among the aborigines receives authority from many facts,” some of which he then listed.

Conclusion: The above small sample supports but does not prove my statement based on Poignant Regalia (1993, p.19) that “Aboriginal groups did not have chiefs (or kings).” However, I have no vested interest in maintaining this conclusion if it is wrong.

 

Accordingly I invite any interested (but informed) person to comment on this issue. To do so, please select “Email” from the menu at the top of this page and send your evidence to me. Alternatively, write to me C/- Queensland University Press, Box 6042, St Lucia, Qld 4067, Australia. Unless asked not to, I will add well informed comments to this web site.