Frontier Conflict

Deprived of their hunting ground’s and attracted to white man’s foods they attacked men and animals. Lots of lives were lost on both sides. In 1836, Dr. Alexander Thomson who squatted on land at Buckley Falls claimed to have distributed blankets to “Buckley’s tribe” finding that they numbered 279. Concerned about the attacks squatters called on authorities in Sydney to provide protection. As a result, in 1837 Captain Foster Fyans was sent as police magistrate to Geelong with three policemen to keep the peace. The following year 13 military men were sent to help. As a result of declining food sources (due to the introduction of sheep and cattle) and a severe influenza epidemic in 1839, the Wathaurong population began to decline rapidly. However, by 1840 the squatters were once more complaining about the aggression of the Aborigines and the deficiencies of the Protectorate. At this time the hostilities between the tribes had increased. In the Kulin Nation around 1842, with depleted numbers of Aboriginal men, houses couldn’t be rebuilt and squatters prevented Aboriginal communities to build in the prime river or lake frontages often shooting them as trespassers.

Very few of the reports of the Aboriginal people killing were acted upon. On one occasion in 1836 when John Whitehead was charged with the killing of Woolmudgin. Whitehead was sent to Sydney for trial, but the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Frederick Taylor the key witness had disappeared and at the time Aboriginal people were denied giving evidence in a court of law.

As genocidal outcomes were becoming more common, and there was a rapid decline of Aboriginal people, the government created the Aboriginal Protectorate in 1838. The primary directives of the Protectors was to protect the Aboriginal people in their districts and to ‘civilise’ them, in other words to minimize conflicts between European settlers and Aboriginal people, and to help Aboriginal people take up the European way of life.

Although protectors were made justices of the peace in order to take depositions in frontier conflicts and represent their Aboriginal clients in court, anomalies in the law prevented most Aboriginal suspects from getting a fair trial. It is hard to say to what extent the protectorate modified the impact of white settlement on indigenous societies. Aboriginal people were still dispossessed, poisoned, shot, raped, infected and ridiculed. Their language, culture and health were undermined, but at least the protectorate stations offered a place of refuge and a source of food and medicine for those who survived the loss of land and the spread of disease.[5]

Within only 10 years the organization crumbled, and was no longer seen to be effective or viable, in December 1849 the Protectorate was abolished.

Neil Black’s diary entry in 1839 described the prevailing understanding in Victoria of the need to massacre local Aboriginal people occupying their lands and his concern about this settler attitude.

The best way [to procure a run] is to go outside and take up a new run, provided the conscience of the party is sufficiently seared to enable him without remorse to slaughter natives right and left. It is universally and distinctly understood that the chances are very small indeed of a person taking up a new run being able to maintain possession of his place and property without having recourse to such means – sometimes by wholesale….[6]

James Baines wrote in his ‘History of Torquay’, there is an account of a murder in the 1860s of a shepherd by Wadawurrung people – and a description of a supposed reprisal attack on the local Wadawurrung clan. It appears that in the sixties of last century the local blacks were responsible for the murder of a shepherd aged 18, who was tending sheep for his employer, a Germantown predecessor of Andrew White, as occupier of Crown lands at Spring Creek under grazing licence (This is Mr Wilson’s version from Mr. Underwood, of Connewarre.) The youth was usually on friendly terms with the dusky nomads, but on this occasion, they coveted, in vain, a gun that he valued and refused to give up; whereupon, awaiting a favourable opportunity, they buried their spears in his back. A search party found his body under wattle boughs and brushwood on the flat above the site of the corduroy ford (later Gottlieb’s Bridge). An armed body of whites traced the blacks and pursued them past Airey’s Inlet where the remnant took to the sea and were wiped out,

In 1854 Dr. Thomson calculated that there were only 34 adults left and two children under five years.

John Armstrong, at Mount Duneed squatted on the traditional winter camp of the Wathaurong. When the stations were divided up, John Stewart purchased part of this land. A few acres of land along the banks of Armstrong Creek were used by the remaining ten Wathaurong people. By 1861 there were seven adults now known as the Barrabool tribe. They were moved from Stewarts Reserve to live on one acre of land on the Ghazeepore Road which was declared the Duneed Aboriginal Land Reserve. It had a wooden hut for shelter. 

Frank Armstrong remembered as a young boy, he would see the Barwon Tribe approaching Geelong every morning over an open plain, they would stop at the house and ask for food. He also recalled Willem Baa Niip teaching him to throw a boomerang.^[7] Frank described how “Billy” would walk “backwards and forwards as if to gauge the wind. Then when he thought everything was favourable, he would let go. Away it soared until it poised in the air for a second or two, and then returned with not a little force, dropping to earth a little behind us.”

In 1861 a reserve of only one acre was set aside for Wadawurrung balug tribe on Ghazeepore Road just south of Andersons Creek. On it lived the six males and one female that then comprised the tribe. Willem Baa Nip (King Billy), the last of the local Wathaurong (1836 – 1885) during his life time he defended his right to live on the land of his people.

J.M. Garratt, Honorary Correspondent of the Central Board appointed to watch over the interests of the Aborigines, reported in the Geelong Advertiser in 1862 that there was “plenty of wood and water”. He also reported to parliament that he had distributed supplies which were barely minimal.

The Wathaurong people could not sustain themselves with such small food resources so they would walk to Geelong each day to trade or beg because they were not allowed to stay in the town after sunset.

Through the hard times, Willem Baa Ni ip and Dan Dan Nook had resisted being moved to the Aboriginal Reserve at Coranderrk preferring to live out their lives on Wathaurung country. Frank Armstrong states that “Jerry (Dan Dan Nook) was King and after he died in 1870, Billy was proud of being styled King.”^[8] All alone Willem Baa Ni ip regularly stayed near Edwards Point on the shores of Swan Bay and at Skepper’s Well, Ocean Grove. It was near the home of fisherman, Thomas Blackwell who was the Aboriginal warden issuing rations.^[9]

Willem and Thomas were friends who had a falling out in 1877 after a ‘drinking’ session. Consequently, Thomas asked Willem to leave his property; land which Willem looked upon as his own territory. Blows were landed on each other until Thomas attacked Willem with a soldering iron. Willem Baa Ni ip went to the police charging Thomas with assault. Willem was laughed at in the Geelong Police Court when he gave evidence, and the case was dismissed even though Thomas admitted to giving Billy a good “prodding” in the side with a soldering iron.^[10] After this Willem Baa Ni ip moved to Portarlington.

Not all cases of Aboriginal killings were documented officially