George TAPLIN

TAPLIN, GEORGE (b. Kingston-upon-Thames Surrey, England, 24 Aug 1831; d. Point McLeay, SA, 24 June 1879). Missionary to Aborigines.

A committed Congregationalist, Taplin wanted to be a missionary from the age of fifteen. Still in his teens, he arrived in Adelaide from England in 1849 on the Anna Maria. After working as a labourer and a lawyer's clerk, he was recruited for the ministry by T Q Stow (q.v.) in 1851. He studied under Stow living with him and gardening for his board and lodging. At Payneham, on 25 Feb 1853, he married Martha Burnell, a servant of Stow's who shared his missionary vocation. In Oct 1853, George and Martha Taplin set out on their own to Currency Creek, and later to Port Elliot where, in 1854, they opened a school in the Congregational chapel. The Central Board of Education took it over, but kept Taplin on as teacher until 1859.

From his arrival in Australia, Taplin had had a sense of the unjust treatment of Aborigines and a desire that the church do something more for them. In 1859, when the newly-formed Aborigines' Friends' Association advertised for a 'missionary agent', he applied and was accepted. Appointed to work in the lower Murray River district, he chose a traditional Aboriginal camping site on the shores of Lake Alexandrina which the Aborigines called Raukkan, and the Europeans called Point McLeay. The Aboriginal 'tribes' of the region formed a loose confederacy which they called the Narrinyeri (Ngarrindjeri). Having suffered massacre and disease, and much loss of land, the Narrinyeri were struggling to survive, although when Taplin arrived the Narrinyeri language was still intact. Taplin immediately began moving around the lakes in company with the Aboriginal people, making their acquaintance and learning something of their language and customs. A small cottage was constructed for him and he moved into it with Martha and their three children in October.

Taplin's early writings reveal a particularly strong disapproval of virtually everything associated with Aboriginal culture, against which he campaigned unceasingly, especially in the first years of his ministry. He believed that it was his duty, not only to preach the gospel but also to train Aboriginal people to survive in the white society which had overtaken them. His policies brought him into direct confrontation with the Aboriginal elders, charged with the maintenance of their culture. Despite this, Taplin's Point McLeay mission was welcomed by the Narrinyeri people right from the outset. Indeed, his greatest burden was the hatred of those who resented his protection of the Aborigines, and who could no longer profit from their exploitation. One such person was John Baker, a local land owner and MLC, who used his influence to set up a Select Committee to inquire into Aboriginal affairs as a thinly veiled attempt to discredit Taplin and the Point McLeay Mission. Taplin, however, with his confident Biblical answers, emerged from the inquiry in a reasonably favourable light.

Taplin shared with virtually all missionaries of the time the vision of the transformation of the local society and culture into a self-supporting, Christian, European village. He and Martha worked vigorously at this task. Soon, the village began to take shape, with school, storehouses, and orderly rows of small cottages into which Christian Aboriginal families could move. On the outskirts remained the 'wurleys' of the 'uncivilised'. With very little assistance the Taplins trained the Narrinyeri in all the skills necessary to the functioning of a small village—farming, butchering, baking, cooking, washing, fencing, shearing and so on. Taplin devoted much time to the teaching of the children, and to medical care, for which he developed a natural Hair. Indeed, after his death, the Narrinyeri objected that his successor lacked medical skill.

Taplin was ordained by the Congregational Church in 1868 so that he could administer the sacraments and perform marriages. In 1869 the church was completed. By 1874, forty-one Aboriginal people had been baptised, all of them young people except for James Unaipon (q.v. Unaipoin, David), who had been converted under the brief itinerant ministry of the Rev James Reid. Unaipon (Ngunaitponi) became the first of the 'Taplin men', Aboriginal evangelists who travelled widely to evangelise their people. Taplin translated hymns, prayers and some Bible selections into the Narrinyeri language, the first portions of scripture in an Aboriginal language actually to be published, although he regarded the use of these materials as a temporary and demeaning necessity.

Taplin was an enigmatic person. While his negative views of Aboriginal customs brought him into conflict with the Narrinyeri elders, they also well knew that he championed them in other ways, speaking out against the white settlers' sexual abuse of women, their brutality dishonesty and exploitation of Aboriginal people's powerlessness. Even his attitude to Narrinyeri culture was ambiguous. While he acted in ways directed at destroying it, this was because he believed that it was already in a damaged state, too far disintegrated from its past integrity ever to be reclaimable. On the other hand he showed great interest in Narrinyeri culture, not only becoming a fluent speaker of the language, but spending much time systematically recording Narrinyeri stories and customs. He published The Narrinyeri in 1874 and The Folklore, Manners, Customs, and Languages of the South Australian Aborigines in 1879. Exhausted from overwork, Taplin died young in 1879, and was buried at the Point McLeay cemetery. The last Narrinyeri people to remember him recalled his sternness, but also his skill in the Narrinyeri language, regretting that the Narrinyeri hymns were not still sung. Long after his death, in 1926 the Narrinyeri people asked the Bible Society to reprint Taplin's Bible portions. On the centenary of their first publication, in 1974, the people requested that this concrete symbol of their past be published yet again.

J Harris, One Blood (Sutherland, 1990); G Jenkin, Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri (Adelaide, 1979); R Linn, A Diverse Land: A History of the Lower Murray, Lakes and Coorong (Adelaide, 1988); G Taplin, The Narrinyeri (Adelaide, 1874)

JOHN HARRIS