Three militant, unrelated Europeans named Walker conflicted with Aborigines on the Maranoa frontier. They were Richard who lived in the district from c.1848 until 1857; Frederick whom they faced in 1849 and 1851; and Robert who was based there from 1858 to 1861. Richard was a former border police trooper and frontiersman. Frederick was commandant of the northern Native Police, and Robert was a Native Police lieutenant. Not surprisingly, there has been confusion about them.

 

The most misleading example of Walker confusion is in Jonathan Richards’ The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police, which he based on his Griffith University doctoral dissertation. Richards stated (p.179):

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Patrick Collins, who wrote about the early years of the Native Police, confuses Frederick’s brother Robert, who also served in the Native Police, with frontiersman Richard Walker. Others believed Frederick and Robert were unrelated. 1

 

If Richards’ conclusion is valid, it means: 10 chapters of my Goodbye Bussamarai: the Mandandanji Land War, 1842–52, are nonsensical; my research was substandard; and I have misled Indigenous Australians. 2  By extension, senior historians who reviewed it positively should not have done so. 3 Other than the publication details of Goodbye Bussamarai, he provides no evidence to verify his claims.

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This paper will show that Richards’ conclusion is inaccurate. His own text should have alerted him, for he accurately recorded that Robert Walker joined the Native Police in 1853, i.e. after the 1842–52 period about which I wrote. 4 Also, 58 endnotes substantiated what I stated about Richard Walker. If I was confused, then so were Gideon Lang and Hovenden Hely, who recorded their travels with Richard Walker for many months in 1850–51 and 1852 respectively. Although Richards provides no evidence to support his claim that Lieutenants Frederick and Robert Walker were brothers, he stated this fact four times and was critical of unnamed authors for not knowing of this unsubstantiated relationship. 5

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This issue and other examples of Walker confusion are addressed in this paper following chronological accounts of Richard’s, Frederick’s and Robert’s lives. Additional data on Frederick and Richard is in Goodbye Bussamarai.

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Richard Walker, born in County Down c.1812, was the first to arrive in Australia. This was on 14 July 1840 aboard the Maitland as a soldier convict, after being court-martialled in Manchester on 31 October 1839 and given seven years for drawing his sword on a sergeant. Richard’s description included: unmarried Protestant, can read and write, 5 feet 11.5 inches tall, eyebrows partially meet, scar on left side of forehead, brown hair, hazel eyes, ‘sallow’ complexion, left thumb missing, ring on left little finger, scar on left knee, tattoo of an anchor and cable surrounded by a wreath on upper right arm, three hearts surrounded by a wreath on lower right arm, and blue square above right knee. 6

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Gideon Lang, who later hired Richard as a guide and bodyguard (when searching for pastoral runs on the Lower Condamine and in the Maranoa) stated:

 

Dick Walker … was a man of great intelligence, and of education besides, having been an officer in the Bombay Marine, but had to resign on account of an ebullition of temper. He then enlisted in the 5th Dragoons, and was imprisoned for cutting down his sergeant in the streets of Bradford. 7
 

Richard’s intelligence is reflected in his letter writing, which historian Elsie Webster described as ‘surprisingly aristocratic’. 8 Although Richard was a fallen gentleman officer, his proficiency with horses, muskets, pistols, swords and cannon did not go unnoticed. The New South Wales (NSW) government recruited him as an unpaid Border Police trooper. The creation of this force was endorsed by a March 1839 Act. Its purpose was to ‘preserve order … as the squatters were moving out’. Contingents were attached to Commissioners of Crown Lands. 9 Good conduct earned ‘the highest rewards … in [the Governor’s] power to bestow, and at the earliest periods which He is … empowered to grant’. Kind treatment of ‘the natives’ was stressed. 10  A potential ticket of leave was highly motivating.

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Convicts had to serve four years under one master, or five under two, before they could be granted tickets. Richard joined the Border Police immediately after his arrival 13 and as the NSW frontier was expanding beyond the Liverpool Plains and New England, Richard was presumably sent to a nearby centre, possibly near the Castlereagh,  where he apparently shot an Aboriginal ‘murderer’. 14 By early 1844 he was stationed at Tamworth and had patrolled on the Macintyre. 15 He was granted his ticket on 26 June 1844 and had served very satisfactorily, 11 as later claimed by Gideon Lang. 12 When granted his ticket, it was conditional upon remaining in the district of Murrurundi. 16 He immediately re-enlisted as a paid trooper and continued to patrol on the New England frontier, 17  which extended to the Macintyre River on the future Queensland border.

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Richard became a corporal on 1 January 1845 and stayed in the force until 31 October 1845. 18 As his ticket remained in force until the expiration of his seven-year term, he presumably worked near Murrurundi until around 31 October 1846. Gideon Lang provided an idea of where Richard travelled:

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Dick Walker … had for years moved out as the frontier extended, so that he had great experience with wild blacks and during our companionship of four months [in 1850–51] … he related many a wild adventure. 19

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The moving frontier was ‘beyond the limits of location’ and, as the Border force was disbanded on 30 June 1846, 20 Lang’s comment suggests that Richard Walker then worked for frontier squatters, e.g. Thomas Hall who needed experienced staff to deal with resistant Aborigines. In the future Maranoa District in late 1847, stations were established near St George’s Bridge (Dangar’s Boomba and Fitzgerald’s Burgurrah), present day Muckadilla (MacPherson’s Mount Abundance), and adjacent to the site of Surat (Hall’s Yamboucal). 21 Major conflicts on these and other stations are discussed in Goodbye Bussamarai. William Telfer Jnr provides graphic, albeit possibly exaggerated accounts of how the Balonne River station hands took the law into their own hands. 22 From their perspective this was unavoidable. There were no police in the district until Commissioner Henry Durbin brought four when he established a temporary Lands Office on Hall’s Yamboucal in late March 1849. 23 But Durbin did not stop the practice. Lieutenant Frederick Walker recorded that Balonne ‘settlers’ used so-called ‘hut blacks … styled Native Police’ from 1849 until he arrived there in July 1851. 24 From Gideon Lang’s accounts, he and Richard Walker were two of the settlers who did so.

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Between late September 1850 and January 1851, Richard confronted the Mandandanji with Lang and two unpaid Aborigines, when they marked out multiple runs. This took them as far as the Upper Maranoa River, where they also searched for signs of the missing Ludwig Leichhardt. They then ventured up the Moonie from near St George’s Bridge. Lang recorded numerous encounters, some while assisting Commissioner Roderick Mitchell. 25 One account showed that the Mandandanji regarded Richard as a policeman. With warrants issued by Mitchell, Lang and his Aboriginal assistants caught up with ‘five [Aborigines] three of them murderers’, but: 

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They denied that they were the men, “t’other one blackfellow did it,” and expressed through the tame blacks, the utmost disgust at the way they had been pursued, and asked the Commissioner [Mitchell], “what for that one white fellow along o’ Walker ‘cabon coola’ [very angry] along o’ them?” That he [Lang] was not a policeman, that they had stolen none of his sheep, nor killed any cattle or white men or black boys belonging to him. 26

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Richard Walker was obviously one of those who Frederick Walker reported for using ‘hut blacks … styled Native Police’. Also, as there were no reports of Aboriginal or European deaths during Lang’s stay, this suggests that Richard had been around when Aborigines had ‘murdered’ Europeans in previous years. That Mitchell sanctioned Richard’s pseudo Native Police officer role was not surprising, for, as a Border policeman, he had served satisfactorily under Mitchell at Tamworth. 27 Mitchell did not arrive at Surat until early 1850, but as previously suggested, Commissioner Durbin had possibly drawn on Richard’s frontier police experience in 1849.

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Although the exact date of Richard Walker’s first involvement with Hall’s Yamboucal has not been verified, and although he was a superintendent there in 1856, he was a self-employed contractor at times. In addition to his role with Lang, he was selected to accompany Roderick Mitchell, during a planned search for Ludwig Leichhardt, 28 who was last seen by Europeans at Mount Abundance in April 1848. 29 After Mitchell drowned in August 1851, Hovenden Hely conducted the search in 1852. Hely passed via Surat where he signed a lucrative contract with Richard on 19 April. This stipulated that Richard was to remain with Hely’s party until they were back in Sydney. They passed through Surat on their return journey in late July. Richard could not therefore have returned to the Maranoa until around late October or after. 30

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South of Surat on the Balonne, while bound for Sydney, Hely recorded that Richard had once been a station hand on William Ogilvie’s Waghoo (also known as Warroo). The superintendent Mr Hazard and his brother who was a superintendent on Dangar’s Boombah, described Richard as a poor bushman, and as a lazy, insubordinate, useless hut-keeper. Hely lapped this up for he had assessed Richard similarly, 31 but he did not record when Richard had worked at Waghoo. It was presumably before Roderick Mitchell arrived at Surat, for Richard was held in high regard from then until after Hely’s arrival. This does, however, cast doubt on where and why Richard first worked in the Maranoa.

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Documentation of Richard’s life is scant after 1852 until late 1856. Correspondence from Commissioner Henry Boyle reported a lack of discipline at Wondai Gumbal Native Police barracks, from where troopers controlled by Lieutenant Nicoll patrolled the Maranoa. Boyle stated that Richard Walker, the ‘superintendent’ at Hall’s Yamboucal, was a source of his information. This and Nicoll’s defence implied that Richard had been in the district for an extended period, but only undated extracts from Boyle’s report were located. These were in an attachment to an April 1857 letter from Fitzpatrick of the Department of Lands in Sydney. 32 However, by this date Richard was dead.

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Richard Walker died on 29 January 1857 at Condamine township, where he was buried the following day by a Maranoa Irish squatter named ‘Paddy’ McEnroe, from Ukabulla on Yalebone Creek. 33 McEnroe had previously managed McPherson’s remnant Mount Abundance. 34 There appeared to be a strong bond between these Irish former convicts, for Richard had built a hut on Ukabulla to protect himself from Aborigines when mustering. Hely had camped in this during his search. 35 Richard and Paddy enjoyed a drink or two, for they both died during drunken pub sprees. 36 In Richard’s instance, Lieutenant Nicoll claimed that he had been ‘in a drunken freak’ and had tried to ‘vault over a cross beam … in a public house at Dalby fracturing his thigh from thigh from which he had died.’ 37 

hich he had died.’ 37

Frederick, born c.1820, was the second of the three Walkers to deal with Aborigines on the Maranoa frontier, but that was long after he and an unnamed brother (according to LE Skinner) migrated to Australia from England. 38 However, I was unable to verify his migration date, or details of this brother. A letter from Frederick’s mother mentioned several brothers but it was not clear if one was then living in NSW. 39 From Mary McManus: Frederick ‘Philibuster’ Walker was ‘a fine specimen of a man. He stood six feet or over, broad-chested and square shouldered. He was well educated, and possessed much practical knowledge on almost every subject’. 40

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The earliest relevant record located included: On 1 April 1844, Governor Gipps appointed Frederick Walker as a Full Constable with the Border Police on three shillings per day. He was commanded by Commissioner Bingham in the Murrumbidgee District. His rank placed him above a sergeant, nine European troopers and ‘one Aboriginal Native’. 41 This was during a period of great dissatisfaction with many of the convicted soldiers who worked as Border troopers. Accordingly, ‘the Border Police were dismissed on 30 June [1844] – except in areas where there had been recent conflict with Aborigines’. 42 Frederick patrolled near the Murrumbidgee until March 1845, in close proximity to some areas patrolled by the Port Phillip Native Police, and in direct contact with Aboriginal tribes from which he later recruited Native Police troopers. He would have also met with influential squatters such as Augustus Morris and William Charles Wentworth on nearby stations.

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These men became Walker’s mentors in later years. 43 On 1 April 1845, Frederick resigned as a full constable. For the remainder of the year and for some time after, he became a Clerk of Petty Sessions (CPS) based at Tumut, about 500 kilometres upstream from the Murrumbidgee–Murray junction. 44

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Throughout 1846, Frederick nominally continued as the Tumut CPS. However, if Edmund Morey’s memoirs were accurate, some of Frederick’s activities appeared inconsistent with being a CPS. Morey, who later took up land north of Mitchell in the Maranoa, claimed that he, Frederick with two armed Murrumbidgee Aborigines, and seven other Europeans, fought with 70 to 80 Aborigines on the Murray. Morey claimed that they caught many in the river. When these defenceless people came up to breathe, Walker and the others shot them.

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This was possibly the earliest documentation of Frederick’s frontier conflicts with Aborigines. The presence of his armed Aboriginal assistants indicated that he had laid the foundations of his future role as a Native Police commandant. 45 Officially, Frederick continued as the Tumut CPS until 30 April 1847, when he was appointed as the CPS at Wagga. 46 However, a week later, another person was appointed to this same position. 47 On 15 July Frederick became a Justice of the Peace, which allowed him to issue arrest warrants. As the Government Gazette entry referred to him as ‘Frederick Walker of Tumut’, he may never have acted as the Wagga CPS. 48 Doubt remains about Frederick’s movements for a year after 30 April 1847, but he was probably WC Wentworth’s superintendent in the Murrumbidgee area. 49

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On 8 June 1848 the NSW Government budgeted £1000 to fund ‘a small Corps of Native Police, to be employed beyond the Boundaries of Location’. 50 On 1 July Frederick Walker was appointed as a Native Police Commandant. 51 He recruited 14 Murrumbidgee Aboriginal troopers and two Aboriginal orderlies and on 15 February 1849 he set off for the Macintyre River frontier where many Europeans and probably many more Aborigines had been killed. 52                   

 

Frederick and his troopers reached Warialda on 1 May 1849, after travelling up the Darling and Barwon Rivers. From his reports he did not deviate from this route until he swung north from Warialda to the Macintyre, arriving there on 10 May. 53 For the remainder of 1849, Frederick was involved in conflicts with Aborigines on the Macintyre and the Lower Condamine on the outer Darling Downs, where he patrolled for a week in late June, and between late July and September. He later reported:

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On the first occasion the Fitzroy Downs blacks [Mandandanji from the Maranoa] … suffered so severely that they returned to their own country a distance of 80 miles. 54

 

As Frederick knew that the Mandandanji had ‘returned to their own country’, he and his troopers had possibly pursued them there. If so, this was the first time that he and Richard Walker were in the Maranoa simultaneously. However, time constraints suggest this was most unlikely. Also, his comment about bogus Native Police in 1849–51, indicated he first visited the Maranoa in July 1851. In December 1849 and early 1850, Frederick with some troopers visited his superiors in Sydney before spending most of 1850 recruiting 30 more Murrumbidgee troopers, returning to his Macintyre headquarters (Callandoon) on 10 September. After preparing his new recruits he proceeded via Brisbane to Wide Bay and the Burnett District until March 1851, and did not patrol in the Maranoa during 1850. 55

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Frederick continued to patrol in other districts until July 1851, when he made his first definite patrol of the Maranoa, where he concluded that Europeans were in more danger from Aboriginal attacks ‘than any of the Northern Districts’. 56 This, and possibly Roderick Mitchell’s imminent departure for Sydney to prepare his Leichhardt search, influenced his decision to make the Mandandanji conform to his version of British law. Roderick’s death in August possibly motivated Frederick to participate personally. When back on the Macintyre in August, he arranged for up to 33 Native Police troopers in several contingents to patrol the district between 1 September and 20 November 1851. Frederick led his contingent in late October. 57 July until November 1851 was the first period during which Frederick Walker and Richard Walker were definitely in the Maranoa simultaneously. As Frederick allowed selected settlers to assist his Native Police, it is likely that Richard also did so during this period.

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There is no record of Frederick Walker being in the Maranoa from late 1851 until nearly four years after he was sacked for drunkenness at the close of 1854. 58 By then, 10 Native Police divisions patrolled from north of Gladstone to the Clarence River. 59 Presumably, Frederick’s increased responsibilities and a lack of Aboriginal attacks in the Maranoa, kept him away from the district. As a civilian, throughout 1855 and until the Hornet Bank massacre of 27 October 1857, he was occupied in the Dawson River area. He was proficient at locating suitable station runs and protecting settlers, and apparently did so on a commercial basis, but no record was found of him doing this in the Maranoa before the massacre. After the massacre, he led a squatter-funded unofficial Native Police contingent, and could have entered the Maranoa in late 1857 and 1858, in pursuit of Jiman Aborigines from the Dawson, who were under siege over the massacre. 60

Stephen Spencer bought Allan MacPherson’s Mount Abundance in late 1857 and occupied the property on 11 June 1858. His daughter Mary McManus recorded that soon after their arrival:  

 

We were visited by two companies of native police at this time. One under the command of the Government officer, Mr Robert Walker, with eight troopers (I think) all black. Another under Mr. Frederick Walker … with a band of six black troopers. … He still patrolled this and other districts, chiefly in the Dawson. His home I believe was at Mr. Andrew Scott’s station, Hornet Bank. 61 

 

During early 1859, the Government disbanded Frederick’s ‘irregular force’. 62 McManus, however, recorded that in around July 1859: ‘My father now made an exploration of the upper Bungeworgorai Creek in the company of Mr. Frederick Walker, before mentioned’. 63 Presumably Frederick was not accompanied by unofficial troopers, though he possibly assisted multiple squatters who moved into the Maranoa and adjacent districts after Queensland became a separate colony in December 1859. Edmund Morey (mentioned above) comes to mind. 64 The acceleration of pastoral activity resulted from the new government’s policy of stocking large stations or losing them. 65

 In August 1861, Frederick accepted a governmental invitation to lead a search for Burke and Wills. He earned a deal of praise for this but he never returned to the Maranoa prior to his death. The Burke Shire web site states:

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On August 9, 1864, the Legislative Assembly of Queensland passed a motion thanking Walker for his services as an explorer in Northern Australia and in 1866, W. J. Cracknell, Superintendent of Electric Telegraph advised: '... Mr F. Walker with a well equipped party consisting of four Europeans and four Aboriginal Assistants left Rockhampton in the l9th ultimo (March) for Bowen, enroute for the Albert and Gulf shores to thoroughly explore and survey the country ... to discover the most eligible route. '

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Frederick became very ill towards the end of this telegraph line survey, apparently with typhus. He died on 13 September 1866. A solitary bush monument at Floraville on the Leichhardt River marks his now well cared for grave. 66

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Robert, the third of the militant Walkers, was from an influential Scottish family who engaged in commerce and the pastoral industry. Few of Robert’s personal details were found, but his 11 April 1853 application to join the Native Police puts his early colonial life in perspective. Sent to Governor Fitz Roy from the Fort Street Sydney office of W’m Walker & Co, it stated:

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Having heard that appointments are being made in the Native Police force in the northern district, I do myself the honor to apply to your Excellency to grant me one of those appointments. I have been for seven years in the employment of my relative Mr James Walker of Wallerowang to whom I beg to refer your Excellency for character and ability to perform the duties which would devolve upon me should your Excellency honor me with one of these appointments. I would also beg most respectfully to refer your Excellency to Mr Thomas Walker Fort Street, and also to Thomas Brown Esq JP Commissioner of Crown Lands Etc Hartley. 

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Margin notes recorded that Robert was to be appointed as a ‘Sub Lieutenant’ on ‘28 May 1853’. 67 NSW ‘Blue Books’ confirmed this date and rank. 68

 

James Walker’s Wallerowang, east of Bathurst, was the headquarters of his pastoral empire. This comprised 27 runs and a total of 2.1 million hectares before Robert first worked for him in 1846. 69 The runs extended to the north along the Castlereagh, west of the Warrumbungles, and for 60 miles north of Baradine, which developed from a Walker station above those mountains. 70

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Robert’s other Walker referees, William and Thomas, were powerful figures in colonial commerce. William was James’ brother. Thomas, their nephew, eventually took over William’s merchandising business and became an influential banker and philanthropist. 71 Commissioner Thomas Brown was a former manager of James’ Wallerowang. 72 Significantly, the pioneering Archer brothers, Scots who established Durundar, Waroongundie (Emu Creek), Coonambula, Eidsvold, and Gracemere in Queensland, were members of the extended Walker family. Their mother Julia was a daughter of David Walker, a half-brother of James and William Walker. The Archers’ trek north to Queensland started at James’s Wallerowang, where brothers David, William and Thomas Archer had worked before Robert Walker arrived there. Thomas Archer recorded most of this in his Recollections of a Rambling Life, but he did not mention Robert. 73 David Archer, a former superintendent at Wallerowang, formed a pastoral partnership with William Walker’s son Edward and borrowed heavily from William. Edward, however, did not work on the Archer properties. 74

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Bernard Crew’s study, The Walker and Archer Families in Australia, included details of David Archer and his brothers’ solitary travels around James Walker’s pastoral empire, sometimes accompanied by an Aboriginal guide. Bushrangers were a major problem, but conflicts with Aborigines appeared minimal or non-existent and were not reported. 75 If this had been so, it begs the question: how did Robert Walker gain, ‘the ability to perform the duties which would devolve upon me should your Excellency honor me with one of these [Native Police] appointments’? Perhaps the Archers were more skilful in dealing with Indigenous people, for around the time they left James Walker’s properties, Richard Walker, the Border trooper who was not related to James Walker’s family, conflicted with Aborigines on the Castlereagh.

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Robert Walker’s exact relationship with his Walker-Archer family has not been verified. However, his first Native Police posting was to Walla on the Lower Burnett River, downstream from the Archers’ Eidsvold and Coonambula. In 1854 he was relocated to Rannes on the Lower Dawson River and until September 1857, he patrolled as far east as Port Curtis and north to the Fitzroy River, where the Archers established Gracemere in 1855.