Daniel MATTHEWS

MATTHEWS, DANIEL (b. Truro, Cornwall, England, 28 Feb 1837; d. Mannum, SA, 17 Feb 1902). Missionary to Aborigines.

Daniel Matthews was the fifth child of John Matthews, master mariner, and his wife, Honor née Williams. John Matthews had been involved with the slave trade, but was converted following a vision in mid-Atlantic, becoming a strict Wesleyan. Daniel Matthews completed his education at the Wesleyan College, Taunton. In 1851, John Matthews came to Australia to the Bendigo goldfields, where he was successful enough to bring out his wife and youngest sons, Daniel and William, in 1853.

After profiting moderately on the goldfields, the Matthews family moved to South Melbourne where Daniel became a temperance worker, and later a teacher at Geelong. In 1864, Daniel and his brother William moved to Echuca, opening a ships' chandlers store to service the growing number of steamers on the Murray River. In 1865, they purchased three large blocks of land with several km of river frontage on the NSW side of the river about twenty km east of the town.

When Daniel Matthews first encountered the dispossessed and cruelly exploited Aboriginal people of the Murray River, he exclaimed, 'My God, can this be right?' He rapidly became a close friend of the local Aboriginal people, swimming, fishing and going on hunting expeditions with them, and witnessing the last great corroboree of the northern Vic tribes. They called him Maranooka—friend. Angered by their dispossession and suffering, Daniel Matthews championed the Aboriginal people, writing to newspapers and petitioning the Victorian government. He publicly denied the accepted dogma that the Aboriginal people were an inferior race, doomed to extinction. 'Who "inevitably doomed" them: not the Creator', he wrote.

Discovering that a sandy promontory on their property was a traditional Aboriginal gathering place, the Matthews brothers set it aside for them, using its traditional name, Maloga. Daniel Matthews immediately began developing plans for a refuge for Aboriginal people at Maloga. In 1872, in Melbourne, Daniel married Janet Johnston, daughter of the Rev Kerr Johnston of Melbourne's Mission to Seamen. Janet shared his enthusiasm to develop Maloga. Gradually many others financially supported the project. Matthews wrote: 'It is not the government only, but every individual member of society, that is morally responsible for the neglected and humiliated condition of the Aborigines.'

Maloga mission commenced in June 1874 when the Matthews moved into the newly-constructed school house. Although wary at first, Aboriginal people began to move to Maloga, appreciating the safety of the mission. They accepted a degree of loss of freedom in return for the survival of their children. The Matthews funded their mission from their own limited resources and private donations and, from 1875, some grants from both the Vic and NSW governments.

Matthews travelled widely in Qld, NSW, Vic and SA, preaching and seeking financial support from churches and concerned individuals. His old Cobb and Co. coach which carried him and his 'Maloga Quartette' of musicians became well known everywhere. He publicised the plight of Aboriginal people, constantly lobbying, addressing meetings and writing to the press. In 1880 he was instrumental in setting up the NSW Aborigines Protection Association.

During Matthews' frequent absences, it was his wife Janet who ran the mission. Through her gentle influence, as much as through Daniel's forceful preaching, many Aboriginal people became Christians. Slowly the typical mission village developed with church, schoolhouse, mission house and Aboriginal huts. The Maloga school gained official recognition in 1881, and so, with a government salary available, Matthews was able to appoint Thomas James (q.v.), a well-educated Mauritian Indian, as permanent teacher. Matthews also received a salary from the Protection Association from 1885. The mission prospered in these years. 'Mr and Mrs Maloga' were delighted with their success at creating public recognition of Aboriginal needs. By 1887 there were 153 residents. Further land was acquired adjoining Maloga, to be named Cumeroogunga.

A forceful man, Daniel Matthews made many enemies. He faced hostility from local squatters who resented his interference with their source of cheap labour and cheap sex. His criticism of the treatment of Aboriginal people led him into confrontation with the Vic Board for the Protection of Aborigines. He was often at odds with the younger generation of Aboriginal men who grew up on the mission and who resented his insistence upon an ordered day, regular physical work and abstinence from alcohol. On the other hand, Matthews vehemently opposed government moves to discriminate against the younger Aboriginal people on the basis of mixed ancestry.

In 1885, the voluntary Protection Association was superseded by a government instrumentality, the NSW Aborigines Protection Board. The first Protector was the mayor of Sydney, George Thornton, who was opposed to missions on the basis of his low view of the intellectual and spiritual capacities of Aboriginal people. Thornton first separated the religious and secular functions of Maloga, reducing Matthews to 'religious teacher', then created an alternative, government, institution at Cumeroogunga. When the buildings were forcibly removed from Maloga to the new site, Aboriginal people were placed in a dilemma: most were finally obliged, willingly or unwillingly, to shift to the government station. The manager of Cumeroogunga, George Bellinger, even commandeered the name 'Maloga'.

The Matthews struggled along with a private mission at Beulah House on the other side of the river for a few more years, but they were subjected to a grossly unfair smear campaign and lost most of their support. In 1899 Daniel and Janet Matthews gave in to what seemed inevitable and left the district to found another mission at Mannum, SA, which they called Manunka. Daniel Matthews did not live to see much of it, dying at Mannum early in 1902. Janet carried on the mission until she retired in 1911, dying in Adelaide in 1939.

Daniel Matthews was a man of great physical and moral strength. His many supporters and friends described him as 'a vivid, active, enterprising man', but his equally many detractors considered him 'a crank with blackfellows on the brain'. He made many admirers but also many bitter enemies by unrelentingly castigating all who harmed or neglected Aboriginal people. His reputation in the churches was also ambiguous. When he seemed to be the only Christian voice raised in condemnation of a society which built its wealth on the dispossession of the original people of Australia, he enjoyed a period of considerable popularity. The hierarchy of the established churches, however, viewed him generally with suspicion because he functioned as a de facto minister despite being unordained and unaligned.

Maloga Mission was a place of survival which provided a necessary sanctuary for distressed Aboriginal people at a time when they desperately needed it. Despite Daniel's authoritarian style of mission government, many Aboriginal people became strong Christians. After the demise of Maloga, this Christian tradition continued at Cumeroogunga under the spiritual leadership of Thomas James. There grew in the Cumeroogunga people a substantial strength of character. From this came great Aboriginal leaders such as William Cooper and influential Christian families such as the Atkinsons and Nicholls. Daniel's gravestone in the Mannum cemetery bears the word Maranooka—friend.

ADB 5; Nancy Cato, Mister Maloga: Daniel Matthews and his Mission, Murray River, 1864-1902(Brisbane, 1976); John Harris, One Blood (Sutherland, 1990); Riverine Herald

JOHN HARRIS