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Dear rhross,

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You wrote :

«  Provide sourced links to Government policy supporting and encouraging killing aborigines by settlers and a denial of rights to Aboriginal peoples »

That's an odd commandment, rhoss. Why do you think it was « Government policy » ?

Perhaps the order came from « Mad King George » :

http://www.history.com/news/letters-may-prove-george-iii-was-mad

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Dear Loudmouth,

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I found this on the internet :

ACT, Victoria and Tasmania have negligible areas of pastoral lease

Percentage of State land under pastoral lease in 2001 :

Queensland 62%
New South Wales 37%
South Australia 43%
Western Australia 38%
Northern Territory 47%
Australia total 44%
New Zealand 8,1%

Two examples of pastoral companies in Australia are Stanbroke Pastoral Company Pty Ltd and the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo).

Stanbroke Pastoral Company Pty Ltd

Stanbroke Pastoral Company Pty Ltd is Australia’s largest beef producer with over 12.5 million hectares and a cattle herd in excess of 550 000. Stanbroke manages some 27 properties in tropical regions of Northern Australia and employs some 400 permanent staff. Most of the 12.5 million hectares is leasehold, with only 30 000 hectares of freehold land. Approximately 98 per cent of the land is managed in its natural state. The remaining 2 per cent is improved pasture and cropped land, and is used for the production of beef cattle.

Australian Agricultural Company

The AACo is the second largest beef cattle company in Australia with around 350 staff running over 400 000 cattle. The 18 AACo cattle stations — which cover approximately 6.5 million hectares or 1 per cent of the Australian land mass — are spread from the Northern Territory through to Far North and Central Queensland. The land is primarily leasehold apart from 152 000 hectares of freehold. Much of the land is in its natural state with a small proportion being improved pasture and cropped land for the production of beef cattle.

None of this land, of course, is used for "tilling the soil" and therefore "not owned" by British colonial standards !

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Dear Loudmouth,

As to the prevalence of shackled women let's look at where the women who ended up on Kangaroo Island came from;

“Clans of the North West nation had experienced violent conflict with European settlers since 1810 when sealing parties abducted women. In 1820 a group of sealers sprang from hiding in a cave at The Doughboys near Cape Grim and ambushed a group of Pennemukeer women collecting muttonbirds and shellfish, capturing and binding them and carrying them off to Kangaroo Island. Pennemukeer men responded with a reprisal attack, clubbing three sealers to death. “

“According to historian Nicholas Clements, the primary cause of conflict was sex: very few white women were in the colony generally, and the shortage was particularly acute in the North West, where only Curr's wife and one other woman lived. The Governor was warned by one worker in 1827 that Curr's shepherds "had designs of violating the (native) women" and examples were later given to Robinson of female Aboriginals being kept by stock keepers and shepherds, some of them "chained up like a wild beast" and abused. Another woman was said to have been kept by a stock keeper for about a month, "after which she was taken out and shot." “

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Grim_massacre

I recall reading the journal of the Captain of the Beagle who lunched with a lone settler on his survey voyage of Australia. In it he related rather in a matter of fact way of the Aboriginal woman the man had chained in his hut. He gave some regard to her deplorable state but the fact that she was being held against her will did not seem to bother him.

Quite remarkable.

Banjo,

Yes, precisely, pastoral leasehold land is not owned by the lessees, it's leased. It belongs to the government, it's Crown Land, released for lease which can be revoked for non-compliance with strict conditions imposed on the lease.

A lease is a right to use, to rent if you like, on specific conditions, and for a set term. It is not ownership. Pastoral leases, like so many other forms of lease, do not constitute ownership.

So what's your point ?

Joe

Thank you, Steele, that's appalling and very revealing. But Kangaroo Island was not officially settled until 1836, by which time a bunch of rogue sealers and whalers had occupied parts of Kangaroo Island for more than thirty years. After official settlement in 1836, they were ordered to allow Aboriginal women to return to their countries or stay on Kangaroo Island if they wished. They were, after all, British subjects from 1836.

See: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/hindsight/kangaroo-island-unearthed/3133586

and

Rebe Taylor's "Unearthed, the Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island."

Later, some Aboriginal women on Kangaroo Island were given leases of land, particularly around Hog Bay (Penneshaw). Some descendants still occupy those leases. My late wife's gr-gr-grandmother, Nell Wilkins (also known as Mary Monarto) was one of those lessees. When her husband died in 1860 and she could not maintain the lease, she and her large family were allocated an annual sum by the SA Legislative Assembly in compensation. That was still being paid in 1870.

Of course, most of the Aboriginal women taken to Kangaroo Island in those early years before settlement/invasion were from the nearby SA coasts, particularly the Ngarrindjeri country from Cape Jervis down the Coorong, and from around Port Lincoln.

Joe

@Banjo,

The odd comment is your response. You have suggested it was Government policy. I have said it was not. That behoves you to produce evidence proving your claim it was Government policy.

The Mad King George reference is childish. Even in his time, Parliament made the rules. In 1788 George was identifiably seriously mentally ill so no, nothing would have come from him.

The records prior to the departure of the First Fleet were to befriend, learn from and help Aborigines.

And just as today we spend millions annually trying to help those living in the Third World, the less developed world, into the modern world, the First World, so did the British Government and later Australian Governments strive to bring stone-age Aborigines into the then modern world.

No-one disputes that there were instances of injustice and violence toward some Aboriginal groups, or that some Aboriginal groups were murderously violent towards each other and the settlers and so, yes, there was some violence. But it was never common and never policy.