Precis 23

Early Days on Eyre Peninsula 23

By J. D. Somerville

This installment headed "What Col. Light Thought of Port Lincoln" inexplicably commences with another topic which I report here unabridged:

We have considered the treatment meted out to the Aborigines by white visitors and others, and the question of murders by natives and the retaliation by whites will be considered later on.

The Aborigines were not omitted from the scheme of settlement. The Board of Commissioners in its first report to the British Government outlined its views on the subject. The staff sent out, had been instructed to guard against personal outrage and violences, to protect the natives in their proprietary rights to the soil wherever such right was found to exist, that where land was taken from them, permanent subsistence shall be supplied to them from some other source.

Reviewing its task, the board stated : "It is a melancholy fact, which admits of no disguise, and which cannot be too deeply deplored, that the native tribes of Australia, have hitherto been exposed to injustice and cruelty, in their intercourse with Europeans. Squatters, runaway convicts, deserters from vessels employed in the fisheries, have long infested the coast of New Holland, and have dealt with the aborigines as if they regarded them not as members of the human family, but as inferior animals created for their use.

Outrages cannot be repressed where no legal authority exists. And it is only in the neighborhood of the British settlement that the protection of the British law can be extended to the native tribe.

The colonising of South Australia by industrious and virtuous settlers, as far from being an invasion of the rights of the aborigines, is a necessary preliminary to the displacement of the lawless squatters, the abandoned sailors the runaway convicts, the pirates, the worse than savages that now infest the coast and island along that extensive portion of New Holland, and perpetrate against the defenceless natives crimes at which humanity revolts."

The Colonial Commissioner was instructed to carry out the desires of the Home Government, and he had to report to the Protector of the Aborigines, who had been appointed by the British Government. The Commissioners were so satisfied with the scheme they had formulated that the said "the colonisation of South Australia will be an advent of mercy to the native tribes."

Next post will cover the reminder of the installment "What Col. Light Thought of Port Lincoln".