This is how whitefella Australia was “made”
Lawn Hill is serene today, but back in the 1880s it was the site of atrocities against the Waanyi, the molesting of their children, the raping of their women, the shooting of their men, and the taking of their body parts as trophies.
Lawn Hill is serene today, but back in the 1880s it was the site of atrocities against the Waanyi, the molesting of their children, the raping of their women, the shooting of their men, and the taking of their body parts as trophies.
Lawn Hill station, lies smack bang in Waanyi country, the tribal territory of an indigenous gulf people who occupied around 25,000 square kilometres of land between northwestern Queensland and the eastern Northern Territory.
The owner of Lawn Hill, Frank Hann, and his station manager, Jack Watson, are both recorded as having cut off the heads of Aborigines and presented them as souvenirs or bounty. 40 pairs of ears were nailed on Lawn Hill’s walls they were the ears of Waanyi people.
That infamy would have been regarded just as a tale handed down by the Waanyi to the current generation, if not for the diary entries of a young white woman, and the discovery of the diary of Emily Caroline Creaghe, lying unpublished on a shelf, the story may never have been told
Then a 22-year-old newlywed, Creaghe had only been living in Australia for seven years after emigrating from England when she wrote her diary. Creaghe is lcredited as the first white female to explore remote Australia, not only braving the frontiers of an otherwise all-male
domain, but recording it all in searing detail. Her recollections of relations between white and Aboriginal Australians touch on degradation, abuse and the probable murder of colonial era #FirstNations People.
Creaghe’s handwritten diary might still be just another unpublished manuscript on the shelves of the Mitchell Library in Sydney had Adelaide historian Peter Monteath not happened upon it. First published in 2004,
The Diary of Emily Caroline Creaghe is now throwing light on the violence perpetrated against indigenous people by two men — Jack Watson and Frank Hann — once hailed as heroes and pioneers of early Australia.
On March 20, she wrote:
On March 20, she wrote:
“The rainy season seems to have set in, in real good earnest; it has been raining heavily nearly all day. Mr Shadforth & Ernest Shadforth came home, but had to leave the dray at Gregory Downs as the roads were too heavy & the rivers too high.
They brought a new black gin with them; she cannot speak a word of English. Mr Shadforth put a rope around the gin’s neck & dragged her along on foot, he was riding. This seems to be the usual method.
And on the following day, Creaghe entered:
And on the following day, Creaghe entered:
“No rain this morning, but dull & cloudy. Rained all the afternoon in showers. The new gin, whom they call Bella, is chained up to a tree a few yards from the house, she is not to be loosed until they think she is tamed. Madame Topsey, an old gin got a threshing.”
In May 1895, after a group of Aboriginals attacked teamsters James Mulligan and George Ligar, Watson reportedly led a revenge mission on which 60 black men were shot dead.
Stanley Doomadgee, Ganaglidda and Garawa man, told many stories of Frank Hann’s brutality.
Stanley Doomadgee, Ganaglidda and Garawa man, told many stories of Frank Hann’s brutality.
