Western District Clashes (1842–1847)

As squatters moved in to the Port Phillip District, rapidly occupying large tracts of grassland, clashes with the original inhabitants increased. The colonial authorities received many complaints of 'attacks' and 'depredations' committed by Aboriginal people, as well as reports of violence inflicted on them by the newcomers. Representing the views of some of the earliest settlers, Portland newspapers reported frequent violence against Europeans and lobbied for government action to be taken. For example, on 31 August 1842 an article entitled 'Outrages by the Blacks' was published in the Portland Mercury and Normanby Advertiser. The article listed numerous 'crimes' that the settlers claimed had been committed by local Aboriginal people. Over the previous eight weeks, the article stated, these crimes involved the 'destruction' of a total of 3,500 sheep as well as fatal injuries to shepherds (four men killed and two seriously injured). The article concluded with a dire warning. If the government failed to provide protection, 'a cry of vengeance will shortly ring throughout the length and breadth of the land, the disastrous sating of which will long be remembered with horror and awe'.

It is quite likely that many of these reports included in newspaper articles were untrue, or only partly true. They were often based on hearsay and false or exaggerated accounts. Nevertheless, stories such as these were important in shaping public opinion at the time, and the overall view they presented was that the settlers were under constant threat from local Aboriginal people. What was left out of these accounts was the Aboriginal view of events. The native inhabitants had lost their land and way of life because of the settlers. The huge number of sheep brought into the Port Phillip District rapidly exhausted the native food supplies of the grasslands and destroyed the fragile balance that had been carefully cultivated over thousands of years to support kangaroos and other animals. It should not have been surprising that Aboriginal people resisted these developments by taking sheep and attacking Europeans on the land. Historian Richard Broome has proposed that sheep were taken not only for food but also as a form of economic warfare.[1] Settlers, and the colonial economy they supported, relied on sheep and wool exports. What the settlers called 'crimes' were for the Aboriginal people a fight for their land and their own survival.

Conflict between Aboriginal people and Europeans was not limited to the Western District. Incidents were reported across the whole of Port Phillip. In Melbourne, the first public hangings took place in 1842. The two men who were hanged, Bob and Jack, were with a group of Aboriginal people from Tasmania who had accompanied Chief Protector George Augustus Robinson to the mainland as part of his extended family in 1839. When the government refused to provide rations for them, Robinson was also unable or unwilling to support them adequately. They began to rely on theft to sustain themselves.

On 6 October 1841, together with three other Aboriginal people from Tasmania, Bob and Jack killed two whalers at Westernport Bay. A group of seven local Aboriginal men was formed to pursue the murderers. Some of these men had been members of the first Native Police Corps under Christian de Villiers, and one had been a constable in the Chief Protector's police unit. It was only with their help that Bob and Jack were caught. The government offered to reward the trackers for their assistance. They mainly requested articles of clothing and blankets, but also guns. Superintendent Charles La Trobe agreed to give them what they wanted, except for the guns. Bob and Jack were tried and found guilty and were hanged at a site next to the current location of the Old Melbourne Gaol.

The capture of Bob and Jack proved to the Port Phillip administrators that local Aboriginal men were willing and able to help the colonists track down those who broke the white man's laws. Eventually, however, they would come to learn that there were constraints on this assistance. Aboriginal troopers were only likely to help Europeans take action against other Aboriginal people when they belonged to faraway clans. They were reluctant to act against people in their own clans or from clans that had a close relationship with their own.

Three months after the capture of Bob and Jack, the seven Aboriginal men involved in the tracking were among the first to join the Native Police Corps under Henry EP Dana. By August 1842 they were making their way into the Western District, and again they were asked to take action against Aboriginal people from clans unrelated to their own. In this and subsequent winter expeditions, the presence of the Native Police led to a gradual decrease in reported clashes between Western District settlers and Aboriginal people. While they did not end the conflict, and they themselves were sometimes criticised for an excess of violence, the Native Police did help to reduce frontier bloodshed to a level that the Europeans found acceptable.

The four pages that follow will survey:

• details of the reports that were being received about conflict in the Western District (and elsewhere) between 1840 and 1842
• the first expedition of the Native Police into the Western District in 1842
• the way the Native Police operated in the field during their expeditions into the Western District
• the problems they encountered, and the results of their presence in the area.