St George

Introduction

St George is a fairly large rural township located in southwest Queensland, about 550km west of Brisbane. As the administrative centre for the Balonne Shire Council, St George is the major service centre for a number of smaller regional townships, such as Dirranbandi, Thallon, Hebel, Bollon, Mungindi and Nindigully.

History of St George

European Contact

The first known Europeans to explore the St George district were the surveyor Sir Thomas Mitchell and his party who, in 1845, were on an expedition into northern inland Queensland in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria^[1].

After his expedition, Mitchell arrived back in Sydney in 1847 with reports of desirable pastoral land in the district^[2]. After these reports circulated, squatters soon flocked to the district to take up land, triggering the start of frontier conflict. This conflict was so fierce that between December 1847 and the end of 1848 Aboriginal groups had attacked every station in the district^[3].

Reprisal actions by squatters quickly followed the Aboriginal attacks. Three ‘collisions’ between Aborigines and squatters on the Balonne River are documented for the late 1840s, on Warroo Station, Burgurrah Station, and Talavara Station. On Burgurrah Station it was reported that a group of approximately 40 Aboriginal people were killed in the conflict^[4].

In 1848, Crown Lands Commissioner Christopher Rolleston complained that the police force at his disposal was useless as a protection force against Aboriginal attacks^[5], and, in June 1848, Governor Charles Augustus Fitzroy approved the setting aside of £1000 for the establishment of a small Corps of Native Police^[6].

A Native Police detachment, under the command of Frederick Walker, was sent to the district, arriving on 10 May 1849^[7]. A bloody campaign to suppress Aboriginal resistance commenced^[8]. On one occasion, the Native Police charged the Aboriginal camp at Yamboukal Station, which was within a mile of the Surat courthouse, and shot dead several people^[9].

By 1853, Walker’s second in command, George Fulford, was reporting that, in the Maranoa district, there had been no attacks from Aborigines as they had fled to the back country^[10]. The missionary William Ridley, recorded in 1855 that on the Balonne River 'after some fatal conflicts, in which some colonists and many aborigines have been slain, the blacks have been awed into submission'^[11].

Crown Lands Commissioner at Surat, Henry Boyle, reporting on the state of the Aborigines for the year 1855, commented that there were now a number of Aboriginal people employed at stations in the district and that they ‘make the best stockmen and shepherds to be found anywhere’, however, others 'still continue to exhibit those strong feelings of hostility to the white man which has characterised them in former years'^[12].

In 1858, Mary McManus of Mt Abundance Station noted that Aboriginal labour was an essential part of the St George district pastoral industry, saying ‘we always found them honest and obedient servants, and in those days it was impossible to get Europeans to work, excepting at very high wages. Therefore, had we not employed the blacks we could not have got on at all'^[13].

Following the violence of the frontier, Aboriginal people who were not accommodated on pastoral stations and engaged in employment, moved into camps on the edge of towns throughout the district. The lack of basic amenities in a number of these fringe camps significantly impacted on the health and welfare of the Aboriginal people living in them^[14].

In 1897, the Queensland Parliament passed the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld)^[15] which granted power to the ‘Protector of Aboriginals’^[16] to:
‘cause every ^[A]boriginal within any District … to be removed to, and kept within the limits of, any reserve situated within such District, in such a manner, and subject to such conditions, as may be prescribed.  The Minister may, cause any ^[A]boriginal to be removed from one reserve to another…’^[17]

On 30 July 1902, Harold Meston, son of Archibald Meston, the Protector for southern Queensland, visited the Aboriginal camp near St George in response to a complaint from the local Member of Parliament, George Story, that several of the Aboriginal people living there were sick. Meston described the St George camp as being located on the banks of the Balonne River about a mile south of the town. He also mentioned that there was a camp at Commissioner’s Point, 6 miles south of the town on the river, and one on Gulnarbar Station. Meston reported that there were 56 people living in the camp near St George and recommended that 12 of these be removed to a reserve on the coast^[18].

Historical documents^[19] indicate that a number of Aboriginal people were removed from the St. George area to various locations throughout the state:
* 20 people to Taroom
* 25 people to Barambah/Cherbourg
* 15 people to Deebing Creek
* 10 people to K’gari (formerly Fraser Island)
* 10 people removed elsewhere to work
* 3 young females to the Aboriginal Girls Home in Brisbane.
Other people managed to evade the removal program by avoiding officials or moving to New South Wales^[20].

After World War Two there was an influx of Aboriginal people into the district which saw the re establishment of a fringe camp at St George in the early 1950s. This fringe camp had all but disappeared after the removals earlier in the century. The camp was located across from the town in the paddock on the northern side of the river.  When construction began on the Jack Taylor Weir in the early 1950s the camp was moved by the council further along the river and out of sight of the road.  The new camp, now known as 'Hollywood', was located across the river from the main part of town. With funds slowly becoming available for housing projects in St George, people moved out of the camp. The demise of the Hollywood camp finally came when the council demolished the remaining huts in 1966. This was done in preparation for the proposed visit of Prince Charles to St George (which ultimately did not take place).

Hollywood was then replaced by Sandy Town, a smaller camp located on the other side of the river^[21].

Local Aboriginal people were employed on farms and stations during this time, performing a range of tasks, such as stick-picking, fencing, ring barking, droving, shearing, wheat bag sewing, clearing timber, wood cutting, weed chipping, cotton picking and general labouring. The availability of these jobs and the movement of Aboriginal people into the district were associated with the expansion of agriculture in the area, particularly within the cotton industry^[22].

End notes

1. T Mitchell, Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia (Longman Brown, Green & Longmans; 1846) 6.
2. Ibid.
3. P Collins Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1952 (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia; 2002) 17.
4. William Telfer Wallabadah Manuscript (New South Wales University Press; Sydney; 1980) 42, 70-71.
5. Queensland, Annual Report on the Aborigines for 1847 (from Christopher Rolleston to Colonial Secretary) (1848), John Oxley Library, A2.17, frames 639-643, letter number 48/1611.
6. M Copland, ‘The Native Police at Callandoon: A blueprint for forced assimilation? ’ in M Enders and B Dupont (eds), Policing The Lucky Country (Hawkins Press, Sydney; 2001) 84.
7. The Native Mounted Police Force were established in 1848 by the New South Wales Government, and were disbanded around 1900 after becoming notorious for their violence and lack of discipline.  Musketry and horse power made compact squads of Native Mounted Police highly effective.  They operated without proper scrutiny for many years, resulting in the death of many Aboriginal people as a result of their ‘dispersals’.  For detailed information see: Jonathon Richards, The Secret War, (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia;  2008); Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal-European Race Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861-1897, (National University Press, Australia; 1982); Ray Evans, Kay Saunders & Kathryn Cronin, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of exclusion, exploitation and extermination, (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia; 1975).
8. Frederick Walker to Colonial Secretary, 31 December 1851, John Oxley Library, A2/23. Patrick Collins suggests that the number of Aboriginal lives lost during these patrols in late 1851 could have been much higher than reported. See also Collins, above n 3.
9. Leslie Skinner Police of the Pastoral Frontier: Native Police 1849-59, (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia; 1975) 73-75.
10. New South Wales Colonial Secretary’s Office, Inwards Correspondence, Microfilm no.A2/23, report from Native Police Commandant Frederick Walker to Colonial Secretary, 31 December 1851.
11. William Ridley Journal of a Missionary Tour Among the Aborigines of the Western Interior of Queensland in the Year 1855 (1861) 439-440 in JD Lang Queensland, Australia, (Stanford, London; 1861).
12. New South Wales Colonial Secretary’s Office, Inwards Correspondence, Microfilm no.A2/35, report from Police Magistrate Henry Boyle to the Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands, 1 January 1856.
13. M McManus, Reminiscences of the Early Settlement of the Maranoa District (Publisher Unknown; 1969)18.
14. Queensland State Archives, Home Secretary’s Department, Series SRS 5263/1, General Correspondence, Item HOM/J72, 02/12375, report from Harold Meston to the Under Secretary re St George district Aboriginals, 7 August 1902.
15. Herein entitled the Act.
16. Section 6 of the Act.
17. Section 9 of the Act.
18. Above n 14.
19. According to the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Community and Personal Histories Removals Database.
20. M Copland, J Richards, A Walker, One Hour More Daylight (Catholic Social Justice Commission, Toowoomba; 2006) 118.
21. Luke Goodwin Preliminary Report of Aboriginal Associations with the St George Area (Unpublished: Queensland; 1996).
22. Ibid.