I am a direct descendant of a murderous English police officer and an enslaved Aboriginal woman. She was given to him in exchange for the massacre of many of our tribespeople. However, when I search for information on this massacre, nothing much comes up. All is not fair in love and war- so much history has been covered over, unheard, untold. I am seeking to uncover, record and tell my family’s story.
Around 1860, my Great-Great-Great Grandmother, Jidda, from the Migunberri Tribe was working, enslaved, for William Barker at Tamrookum Station. She was offered as a courtesy to a Queensland Mounted Native Police Lieutenant, Frederick Wheeler, as a thank you for Wheeler’s committal of a massacre at the request of other local pastoralists. That same year, her daughter Elizabeth was born- also into slavery. As a young person Elizabeth was taken away and walked up to Far North Queensland, around 1500 kilometres away, to work at Bluff Downs Station, near Charters Towers.
The Chief Protector of Aborigines took many Yugambeh children in South East Queensland away from their families. The children were sent to reserves, or to white families for religious conversion, training as domestic servants and free labour.
Slaughterhouse Creek Massacre of 1838, NSW by Godfrey Charles Mundy Source: Australian War Memorial (Commons Wikimedia)
Jidda's daughter, Elizabeth, my Great-Great-Grandmother, worked for many white families as domestic help and a carer, and even though she had an English name, Elizabeth Wheeler, she was often just referred to as “Half Caste” in the records. Her many descendants know her as Granny Clark and although she had married white husbands, she was still required to live separately with her many children, on the fringes of society.
Those massacres on our tribal homeland were around 160 years ago. Over the generations since, my direct ancestral line has dealt with oppression at most levels of survival. They’ve lived with the impact of massacres, the fear of child removal, living under the Act and permit system, stolen wages, broken families and the culture war.
There is a 'Great Australian Silence' to contend with, so having this knowledge is like being part of a secret society, where we know the truth, but rarely is that truth told or heard. We endure a state of forgetting, however, to “forget” is not an oversight, it is the systematic removal of Aboriginal people from the grand narrative of history.
I feel like the secret society is everywhere. The stories are still remembered, by direct descendants that live with them in their cellular memory. Yidinji Elder Gudju Gudju said of the Frontier Wars, “That trauma of that event is still with us... we still have those scars, not on the outside but on the inside, but I think every day we reflect on why.”
I want it to be easier for all Australians to know our cultural gifts and our shared history without having to dig too deep.
On the one hand, I feel like we have had everything taken from us; land, language, culture. On the other hand, I know these are the medicines that can heal us. From loss and grief also comes freedom. For me it’s about finding a sense of balance.
I want it to be easier for all Australians to know our cultural gifts and our shared history without having to dig too deep. We all have a responsibility to get the traditional knowledge back, otherwise it’s gone. There are people still alive with lived knowledge of the ancestral ways, resources and how to care for them. In order to support our families, we have to work to keep this knowledge.
Granny Clark worked as a Lay-in Nurse for a doctor, delivering black and white babies. She willingly participated in some of the legal ways of the new society, being one of the first Aboriginal Women to vote, even though that wasn't legal until long after her death. Granny made sure that she had a birth certificate registered, listing Tamrookum and the Logan River, which is like leaving specific latitude and longitude coordinates on a map.
Similarly, as an artist, I am leaving a code for future healing and legal reference, visual symbolism that can be read or interpreted in Truth Telling. As a seeker, I try to involve and encourage others. I try to understand the story of others, because I know and further understand my own story. Earlier this year, I organised my own gathering in Cairns titled 'heal'. I have majored in media studies and also learned Indigenous wellbeing practices so I may have some answers, but I also have a long way to go. We all do.
We were there on The Frontier when our land was taken and our tribes were decimated. Yet here we are generations later. Just like some of our old Scar Trees that are still standing, we are here with our own scars too, but still, we have never ceded our sovereignty and we were born for this.
