Cunnamulla

Introduction

Cunnamulla is part of the Paroo Shire and is located on the Warrego River in far west Queensland. The Paroo Shire also includes the townships of Eulo, Wyandra and Yowah.

The word ‘Cunnamulla’ means ‘long stretch of water’ or ‘big waterhole’ in the language of the Kunja (Koun-yah) people^[1]. Historical research indicates that the Kunja people originally occupied this region prior to first contact with Europeans^[2].

History of Cunnamulla

European contact

European settlement had advanced to the Cunnamulla area by the early 1860s. William Landsborough travelled down the Warrego river past the site where Cunnamulla is now located in 1862.  The purpose of his journey was to search for the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills. Landsborough’s favourable report of the district saw squatters rush to take up land^[3].

In 1862, Mr Dangar of Bullerawa Station, Westwood, wrote to the Colonial Secretary requesting Native Police protection on the Warrego and Barcoo Rivers^[4].

A detachment, under the command of Frederick Walker, had already been deployed in Callandoon near Goondiwindi in May 1849 and by the 1860s resistance by Aboriginal people in the area had been quelled^[5].

During the next decade, the frontier gradually expanded to the north and west and the Native Police force was moved to the Roma district^[6]. By the early 1860s there were numerous petitions by local squatters in the region for increased Native Police patrols^[7].

On 19 September 1865, Commissioner of Police, David Seymour, sent a letter to the Colonial Secretary^[8]. The letter noted the increase to the numbers of Native Police troopers and used this as a justification for requesting additional funding. Commissioner Seymour required the purchase of more horses to aid in patrols along the Warrego and Barcoo Rivers^[9]. A Native Police camp had also been approved for the Charleville district in 1865^[10] and a camp was established at Cunnamulla in 1868^[11]. Surveyor G C Watson recalled the results of these ‘collisions’ between squatters, Native Police and Aboriginal groups in the district:

'The blackfellow had his rights; as we had taken their country from them without any commensurate recompense, and our lawless whites had wreaked violence and outrage upon them in some cases with wholesale iniquity. Not infrequently, when mobs of blacks were driven by the dry weather to fall back upon their tribal waterholes for sustenance in fishing and game, the pastoral occupants of the country would communicate with the Police that the blacks were assembling for violence, when the native police, who delighted in taking life, would disperse them with unmitigated slaughter.^[12]'

In a September 1866 newspaper article entitled ‘An Episcopal Warning to the Destroyers of Aborigines’^[13] the Bishop of Sydney was reported to have announced that he was sending a missionary to the Aboriginal people of the Paroo River. The article went on to note that many Aboriginal people in the region were employed as shepherds and were indispensable to the success of the squatters. The Bishop lamented that one local colonist had been heard to say that ‘if we had known how useful these blackfellows could be we would not have killed so many of them’. The Bishop expressed his sorrow and indignation that men called Christians should have to make such a reflection^[14].

By the late 1890s, conditions for many Aboriginal people in far south-west Queensland had become unbearable^[15] as drought crippled the pastoral industry. In 1897, the Queensland Parliament passed the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld)^[16] which granted power to the ‘Protector of Aboriginals’ to^[17]:

“cause every aboriginal within any District … to be removed to, and kept within the limits of, any reserve situated within such District, in such a manner, and subject to such conditions, as may be prescribed. The Minister may, subject to the said conditions, cause any aboriginal to be removed from one reserve to another…”^[18]

Between 1897 and 1972, there were 260 documented removals from far southwest Queensland^[19]. The actual figure may be higher, as many forced removals were never accurately recorded, if recorded at all^[20]. For instance, numerous Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from the mainland and placed on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island). The places of origin or points of removal were not documented^[21].

Archibald Meston, ‘Protector of the Aborigines’ from 1897 to 1903,^[22] established a reserve at Whitula Station, northeast of Cunnamulla, from 1902 to 1904^[23]. Meston is noted for his contribution to the reserve system which developed under the Protection Act^[24]. He saw ‘the reserve as a cheaper way of administering rations to "Western Aboriginals" suffering the effects of the drought’^[25].

In the early 1940s there were 112 Aboriginal people living at the Cunnamulla fringe camps in huts constructed of kerosene tins and scrap iron over timber frames^[26]. In 1969, the ABC television program Four Corners exposed the level of poverty experienced by people living in the Cunnamulla fringe camps in a documentary titled ‘Out of Sight Out of Mind’^[27]. After this public revelation, the Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs began purchasing homes in the town and a number of Aboriginal people moved from the camps into town^[28]. By the early 1980s, Cunnamulla had an Aboriginal population of approximately 300 people^[29].

End notes

1. P Simpson, Bradley Saunders, Tim Wilson and Michael Bermingham, Cunnamulla: A Coordinated Approach to Intervention (2009), Department of Communities <http://www.aic.gov.au/events/aic%20upcoming%20events/2009/~/media/conferences/2009-indigenousyouth/presentations/cunnamulla.pdf > at 5 March 2013.
2. N B Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia (Berkeley, California, USA, 1974).
3. T Blake, Cunnamulla: A Brief History of the Paroo Shire (Paroo Shire Council, Australia; 1979).
4. Letter from Mr Dangar at Bullerawa to the Colonial Secretary, Westwood (28 July 1862) (COL/A32 62/2233).
5. M Copland, ‘The Native Police at Callandoon: A blueprint for forced assimilation?’ (Paper presented at History of Crime, Policing and Punishment Conference), Charles Sturt University, Canberra, 9-10 December 1999 in M Enders and B Dupont (eds), Policing The Lucky Country (Hawkins Press, Australia; 2001).
6. Letter from John O’Connell Bligh to the Colonial Secretary, Rockhampton, December 1861 (QSA Item ID 846754 62/31).
7. Letter from Edmund Morey to the Colonial Secretary, Mitchell Downs, September 1862 (QSA Item ID 846762 62/2239); Petition by various stockholders, Maranoa River, date unknown (QSA Item ID 846747 61/1690); Report from John O’Connell Bligh to the Colonial Secretary, Rockhampton, 3 March 1862 (QSA Item ID 846756 62/823); Letter from various stockholders to the Colonial Secretary, Maranoa District, 1 May 1862 (QSA Item ID 846758 62/1334).
8. Letter from David Seymour - Commissioner of Police to Unknown, Brisbane, 19 September 1865 (QSA Item ID 846801 65/2433).
9. Ibid.
10. Executive Council Minutes and Despatches, 1865, Executive Council approval to purchase Native Police horses (QSA Item no: EXE/E12/65/66). Executive Council Minutes and Despatches, 1865, Executive Council approval to construct a Native Police camp at Charleville (EXE/E12/65/75).
11. H McKeller, Matya-Mundu: A History of the Aboriginal People of South West Queensland (Cunnamulla: Cunnamulla Australian Native Welfare Association, Australia; 1984).
12. G C Watson, Building the Commonwealth A Record of Forty Years in the Civil Service of Queensland, in Warrego and South West Queensland Historical Society A collection of papers prepared by members (up to December 1972) on the history and other subjects relating to Cunnamulla and district, Volume 2 (Cunnamulla Historical Society, Australia; 1973).
13. Unknown Author, An Episcopal Warning to the Destroyers of Aborigines, Darling Downs Gazette, 15 September 1866.
14. Ibid.
15. Home Secretary’s Office, Correspondence Records and Printed Papers Relating To Aborigines 1899-1903, Report titled ‘The Western Aboriginals’ from Archibald Meston dated June 16 1897 (QSA Item no: COL/144, 01/15120).
16. Herein entitled the Protection Act.
17. Section 6 of the Protection Act.
18. Section 9 of the Protection Act.
19. Information sourced from Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Community and Personal Histories Removals Database.
20. Detailed information on this can be found in the article of R van Krieken, The `Stolen Generations' and Cultural Genocide: The Forced Removal of Australian Indigenous Children from their Families and its Implications for the Sociology of Childhood (1999) 6(3) Childhood, 297.
21. Information sourced from Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Community and Personal Histories Removals Database.
22. C Taylor, ‘Romantic Pioneering in the Tropics: Archibald Meston's Home Life in Cairns, 1882-1888’ (2003) 2(1) etropic: Electronic Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in the Tropics, <https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic> at 5 March 2013.
23. Queensland, Queensland Government Gazette, 20 September 1902, 701.
24. Taylor, above n 24.
25. M Copland, J Richards and A Walker, 2006, One Hour More Daylight: A Historical Overview of Aboriginal Dispossession in Southern and South West Queensland, Catholic Social Justice Commission, Toowoomba, p.123.
26. Health Department, General Correspondence, re: the Aboriginal camp at Cunnamulla (QSA Item no: A/4193); Unknown Author, Unknown Title, Toowoomba Chronicle (14 July 2001) 25.
27. Peter Reid, Out of Sight, Out of Mind (30 August 1969), Four Corners, ABC < http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2011/08/08/3288597.htm > at 20 February 2013.
28. McKeller, above n 14.
29. Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, Beyond the Act: Queensland Aborigines and Islanders: what do we want? (1979) 193.