02/01/2026
Please read …..
SURVIVING GENOCIDE IN AUSTRALIA'S CULT OF DISREMEMBERING
My family members and I are descended from Australia’s worst Police Officer from England, and an enslaved Aboriginal woman, who was given over as a courtesy to him, for the murder of many people in our tribe, and other tribes.
However, when I do a search for information on this, nothing much comes up about certain key aspects. South East Queensland is not included in the 1891 ‘Slave Map of Modern Australia’ (Image
pictured here) that was printed in the British Anti-Slavery Reporter, and there is no listing of these particular massacres on the wikipedia list (Wikipedia 2020).
All is not fair in love and war. There is just so much history that has been covered over, and not been heard or re-told. 'In its early years, the Native Police Force was overseen by New South Wales, even as the edges of settlement pushed up into the area that is now southern Queensland' (Hart 2017).
In 1859 Queen Victoria Signed Letters Patent to form the Colony of “Queensland” and genocide was inflicted under her instruction in 1860. 'She ordered: ’And it is to our further will and pleasure that you do to the utmost of your power promote religion and education among the native inhabitants of Our said Colony, or of the lands and island thereto adjoining, and that you especially take care to protect them in their persons and in the free enjoyment of their possessions, and that you do by all lawful means prevent and restrain all violence and injustice which may in any manner be practiced or attempted against them and that you take such measures as may appear to you to be necessary for their conversion to the Christian faith and for their advancement in civilization.’(Longhurst 1992)
The Chief Protector of Aborigines had many Yugambeh children taken away from their families, sent to reserves or white families for religious conversion, to be trained as a domestic servant and used for free labour. Not many of these experiences had positive outcomes. In order to survive, Yugambeh people would often travel across the New South Wales border to try to escape this interference and seek refuge. Even through the 1900’s Royal Family members made private visits to Tamrookum Station on their way to a shooting party held near Warwick (Cook 2017).
Around 1860, my Great-Great-Great Grandmother, Jidda from the Migunberri Tribe had already been working enslaved for William Barker at Tamrookum Station. She was offered as a courtesy to Queensland Mounted Native Police, Wheeler, as a thank you for a massacre, committed at the request of other local pastoralists. In the same year her daughter was also born into slavery, and at a young age, was later taken away and walked up to Far North Queensland, around 1500 kilometres away, to work at Bluff Downs Station near Charters Towers.
During her life Jidda's daughter worked for many white families as a domestic and carer, and even though she had an English name, Elizabeth Wheeler, she was often just referred to as “Half Caste” in the historical records. Her many descendants know her as Granny Clark and although she had married white husbands, she was still required to live separately with her many children, on the fringes of society, such as the Coppermine Creek river bank in Cloncurry. Those massacres on our tribal homeland were around 160 years ago. Since then my direct ancestral line has had to deal with oppression for most levels of survival. This includes the impact of massacres, the fear of child removal, living under the act and the permit system, stolen wages, broken families and the culture war, over successive generations.
Even in my father’s generation some family members were still living on the banks of Coppermine Creek. In contrast, Frederick Wheelers own grandmother was given a place to stay in her old age at Lexington Palace, by the Queen of England. There is a ’Great Australian Silence’ (Stanner 1968) to contend with, so having this knowledge is like being part of a secret society, where we know the truth, but rarely is that told or heard. We are forced to endure a state of forgetting, however, to “forget” is not an oversight, it is an active way of being in this nation, and systematic removal of Aboriginal people from the grand narrative of history. There are whole chunks of history missing. Change the script from saying that Aboriginal people should just “get over” stolen land, genocide and slavery so we can all acknowledge how deeply embedded this racism is in institutions that govern us.
The Yidinji Tribe in Cairns present Frontier Wars ceremonies on the eve of Anzac Dayevery year. In their massacre place names I noticed the Clohesy River, which is where I lived when I was born. I shudder to think what the remnants of massacre bad lands have on all of us who are born into this vibration without cleansing ceremonies. I feel like the secret society is everywhere. Stories are still remembered, by direct descendants that live with them in their cellular memory. I make an effort to give back to Cairns, and organised my own gathering titled ’heal’ early in 2020. Yidinji Elder Gudju Gudju had this to say about the Frontier Wars Academia Letters, February 2021 'That trauma of that event is still with us ... we still have those scars, not on the outside but on the inside, but I think every day we reflect on why.' (Fraser 2020)
Granny Clark worked as a Lay-in Nurse for a doctor, delivering Black and White babies. She willingly participated in some of the legal ways of the new society, being one of the First Aboriginal Women to vote, even though that wasn’t allowed until long after her death. Grannymade sure that she had a birth certificate registered, listing Tamrookum and the Logan River, which is like leaving specific latitude and longitude coordinates on a map.
Similarly, as an artist, I am leaving a code for future healing and legal reference, visual symbolism that can be read or interpreted in Truth Telling. As I have explored the potential of my own creative healing and decolonisation techniques to address the associated questions brought up, I have made an effort to involve and encourage others. So, as a seeker, I can try to understand the story of others, because I know and further understand my own story. As a nation, we all need to make reparations for the wrong doings.
We may not have the support of governments, but we should do what we can with what have, and hope they catch up. On the one hand, I feel like we have had everything taken from us, land, language, culture, and still have very little access to any of that, but I also know these are the kinds of medicine that can heal us. On the other hand, from this experience of loss and grief also comes a level of freedom, out on the fringes. For me it’s about finding a sense of balance. The lifestyle I grew up in was dysfunctional as a consequence of colonial violence, but it was also unconventional, so I have always had a lot of questions about this country ...
- by Jenny Fraser
READ MORE: (Academia) https://bit.ly/36iR29L
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IMAGE: 'Dispersing' in the Rainforest, in 'Black Police'
A Story of Modern Australia by AJ Vogan 1889
[The term 'Dispersing' during the British invasion meaning was 'killing the Blacks'.
