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The Aboriginal History of Western Australia is the history of the indigenous inhabitants of the western third of the Australian continent, from their own perspective.

On the Writing of Aboriginal History

See History of Western Australia

The documentation of Aboriginal history is problematic. As history is generally the interpretation and analysis of written documentation, the fact that Aboriginal people lived in pre-literate cultures prior to 1827 in Western Australia, means that they are often called a "pre-historic" people. Even since western contact, hearing Aboriginal voices in history has been difficult. There have been very few Aboriginal people who have ever become historians, and the systematic collection of documentation related to Aboriginal people in Western Australia is a task that has commenced only in the last half century, through the work of such historians as Neville Green. Prior to that the study of Aboriginal history was a part of the anthropology of culture contact, and for a long time it was assumed that the best policies for Aboriginal people were, in the words of Daisy Bates, "to smooth the pillow of a dieing race".

Aboriginal history in Western Australia has been enriched in recent years in part by the fact that people like Lois Tilbrook have started collecting Native Welfare information and records on key Western Australian Aboriginal Families (indeed, thanks to the comprehensiveness of the records of the paternalistic Department of Native Affairs, significantly more is known about Aboriginal families than about most European Western Australian families). Anna Haebich has written of the Moore River Native Settlement and the "Stolen Generations", for which extensive documentation exists.

Over the last half century, too the maturation of Western Australian Aboriginal archaeology, through the work of such scientists as Sylvia Hallam and Charles Dorch, has also come of age, and has enabled us to understand a great deal of the "pre-historical" history of Aboriginal people, the period called here, from Autonomy to Contact. Added to this is the realization that Aboriginal people themselves, through the preservation in an oral tradition of stories of their own past, do have a history. For example, Aboriginal coastal dwellers in both the south and the north of Western Australia, not only preserve stories about extinct Australian megafauna, but also preserved quite accurate stories about the rising sea levels and the loss of lands offshore as a result of the sea level rise of the Flandrian transgression, at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age.

Oral history accounts, of both legendary and cultural information, and personal biographical accounts, have immensely enriched the writing and study of Western Australian Aboriginal history. Sally Morgan's "My Place" was one of the first Aboriginal biographies in Western Australia, and a large number of Aboriginal people have started telling the stories of the lives of themselves and their families. The recent internationally acclaimed "Rabbit Proof Fence" is just the last of a large number of autobiographies that have been written in the last twenty years.

The importance of Aboriginal history of Western Australia

Most people who have ever lived in Western Australia have been Aboriginal. Despite the numerical predominance of European Australians over the last century, there have been many more Aboriginal people living in this land than any European. Unlike Europeans, whose settlements and cultural monuments have been immediately visible, the Aboriginal presence has been easy to ignore. Most Western Australians, however, are unaware of the impact of Aboriginal people on the Western Australian environment, as it has been assumed, erroneously, that the landscape in 1829 was a "natural" one, produced completely by natural non-human forces, whereas we are learning that the Western Australian landscape is in fact a cultural product, created by Aboriginal people living in the land for over 50,000 years. At first contact, for instance, every one of 27 rivers, extending from the Moore River to the North to the Fitzgerald River to the south east, was a fresh-water stream of potable drinking water. Today, every one is considered too saline for human consumption. Indeed, it has been stated that the continued "health" of the Australian landscape has been the greatest cultural achievement of the Aboriginal people.

The writing of Aboriginal history of Australia, has recently been condemned by the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, as promoting a "Black Arm Band" view of Australian history. This view has been supported by such writers as Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windshuttle. They claim that Australia was settled peacefully by well intentioned European settlers, and that the collapse of Aboriginal cultures was due to their inferiority when confronted with modern western European technology. This view perpetuates the ethnocentric and Eurocentrism view that claims that Aboriginal people were a "stone age" people, analogous to the Upper Paleolithic hunters and gatherers of Ice Age Europe. But this view of history, of "blaming the victim", is mistaken for two reasons.

Firstly it forgets that Aboriginal people at the time of first settlement had a history as long and as complex as that of Europe itself, and that Aboriginal people are fully modern humans, just as modern as are European Australians themselves. It is true that before contact Aboriginal people made tools and weapons of stone, but material technology is just one part of a culture, and in their stories, songs, ceremonies, languages and law, Aboriginal culture is comparable, though very different, to that of European Australians, and bears very little if any resemblance to that of earlier European "stone age" people.

The second weakness is that such critics of Aboriginal history of such writers as Henry Reynolds and others all too often forget is that conventional history is written usually from the point of view of the "winners". In this way, non-elite voices are usually drowned out as a result of the shortage of documents and commentary that relate to their concerns. As students of "Labour History" or "Women's History" are fully aware, the study of these "hidden histories" often expose aspects of the past that the dominant culture may have difficulty accepting about itself. But as the work of the Reconciliation Commission in Australia has shown, the survival, indeed the thriving, of Aboriginal culture in Australia in general and in Western Australia in particular, will eventually come to be recognised as a great feat of human endurance, an event of huge historical significance, and of cultural importance to our children and grandchildren.

The Periodisation of Western Australian Aboriginal History

Generally the Aboriginal history of Western Australia can be broadly defined into five periods.

Period 1: The Period from Autonomy to Contact - extending before 56,000 BCE until 1629

Period 2: The Period from Contact to Resistance - 1629 - 1829

Period 3: The Period from Resistance to Survival - 1829 - 1881

Period 4: The Period from Survival to Assimilation - 1881 - 1943

Period 4: The Period from Assimilation to Self Determination - 1943 to the present

Period 1: The Period from Autonomy to Contact - extending before 56,000 BCE until 1629

This history has a long period to which dates cannot be put with any accuracy, It can be divided in two, by the events of the fifteenth century in which, first the Ming Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho, and then the Portuguese explorers came to link the oceans of the world together. This period ended in about 1600 when the Dutch ousted the Portuguese and dates for the first contacts between Aboriginal people and Europeans began to increase with frequency. However there is a first period to this contact which has rarely been considered. In the Kimberley, Aboriginal people were associated through long contact with Indonesian fishermen from Macassar, working seasonally with their praus. New skills were learned on both sides. When this contact began we do not know, It may even extend back thousands of years to the time of the introduction into Australia of the dingo. This contact certainly made the Kimberley and Arnhem Land region a centre for cultural innovation for the whole of Australia, not just Western Australia, as the distribution of baler and trochus shells throughout the continent indicates. It is not surprising that some have suggested that the Pama Nyungan language family that covers most of the continent may have begum here, spreading to carry those cultural traits like the "Dreaming" that we consider so typically "Aboriginal", right across the land. There is also a possibility that Portuguese may have settled not far from Derby, and that the English Pirate, William Dampier, was searching for this Portuguese settlement when he visited Western Australia.

Period 2: The Period from Contact to Resistence - 1629 - 1829

It is hard to know what indigenous developments characterized Aboriginal life in the two centuries from 1629 to 1829. Certainly the increasing presence of Europeans around the Western Australian coastline had an effect. First contact, by and large seems to have been characterized by open trust and curiosity, with a willingness to defend themselves against any unwarranted intrusion. It is interesting to speculate on what would have happened if relationships of trust and sharing had continued. Unfortunately the imperialist expansionism of European civilization led to Western Australia being settled by people who were ecologically and ethnically ignorant of Aboriginal culture, and were incapable of treating the people they found as true equals. No doubt the settlements on the east coast of Australia in 1788 divided this period in half, making eventual English occupation of the west coast almost inevitable.

• 1594 The Spanish government pass a "Law of the Indies" which recognise indigenous land rights everywhere.

• 1629 Wreck of the Batavia, with 200 men and women on board. After a mutiny and a massacre, captain Pelsart, after sailing to Batavia (Jakarta) in an open boat, returns and executes the ringleaders and maroons two men on the mainland. It is not known whethwe these people or later Dutch shipwrecks are responsible for blood-groups from Leiden being found amongst Amandu Aboriginal people who lived opposite the Abrolhos.

• 1656 Wreck of the Vergulde Draeck or Gilt Dragon, 118 dead, 69 marooned on the beach and never heard of again.

• 1688 William Dampier in the Cygnet, a stolen ship, arrives on the northern coast, possibly looking for a Portuguese settlement he may have heard of in the Indies. He describes the Aboriginal people he met as "the most miserable people in the world". This statement was later used as justification for treating Aboriginal people poorly. Dampier spent time observing the Bardi people at the northern end of Cape Levique.

• December 1696 Vlamingh, with three ships, the Nyptang, Geelvink and Wesel, anchors off Wadjemup, which he named Rottnest, from the quokkas he observed. He then landed at Cottesloe and marches across to the Derbal Yaragan, which he named as the Swan River, for its numberless black swans.

• January 1697 further explorations by Vlamingh go as far as Heirisson Island. He left the area of the Swan River for the area today known as Port Hedland, in February.

• 1699 Return of Dampier in the Roebuck, exploring from Broome to the Pilbara. During this time the Portuguese in Timor raid the Kimberley for Aboriginal slaves.

• 1712 The Zuytdorp wrecked near Geraldton. Survivors are known to have landed, and the story of their welcome and preservation by local Aborigines was known as far south as Perth 122 years later. A rock carving of what appears to be a Dutch ship has been found at Walga Rock, some 300 kilometers from the coast, up the Murchison River.

• 1727 Zeewyk wrecked.

• 1763 In Canada, the Proclaimations of the Crown, recognised indigenous land rights, not granted Aboriginal people of Australia until the Mabo case.

• 1787 The USA passes the "Northwest Ordinance" establishing Land Rights for indigenous Americans.

• April 1787 Arthur Phillip, appointed Governor of New South Wales given instructions to "endeavour by every means possible to open intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness to them. And if our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations that you cause such offenders to be punished according to the degree of that offense". It has been estimated that by 1900 between 20-30,000 Aboriginal people were killed in various ways since that date, 10,000 being killed north of the Tropic of Capricorn. This is more than twice the number of Australians north of Capricorn killed in all overseas Wars between the Boer War and Vietnam. Less than 50 Europeans have been brought to trial for these killings.

• 1788 Smallpox and measles arrive on the east coast of Australia and spread like wildfire across the continent. Vials of live smallpox were included in the inventory of the first fleet. It is estimated that 1/3rd to half the population of Aboriginal people died within a decade.

• 1791 George Vancouver entered Albany harbour. He acknowledged the prior ownership of the land by Aboriginal Mineng people, but then took possession of the land for the British crown. His act was premature as annexation of the west was not allowed for another thirty five years.

• 1801 Matthew Flinders visits Western Australia. In King George Sound, although Aboriginal people indicated they did not want Europeans visiting their campsite, amicable relations prevailed and trading occurred. The Aborigines called the Europeans "Djanga", or spirits returned from the dead land of Kurrenup (Karrinyup?), the land beneath the Goomber Wardarn (Sea) in the direction of the setting sun. Flinders so appreciated their friendly behaviour that he gave a special parade of the soldiers under his comand. A Kirrenup kening (Noongar "corroboree") was adopted by the local people and performed by aboriginal groups along the south coast for over a century . The Swan River was explored by the French Captain Baudin in the Geographe, and his midshipman Heirisson, gives his name to the area known to the Wadjuk Noongar as Matagadup ("place of leg deep").

• 1818 The first of Philip Parker King's voyages to Western Australia. Mineng Nyungar from Albany assisted the sailors in food gathering. King also explored the Cambridge Gulf area of the Kimberley.

• 1822 King's last voyage. He was welcomed by the Mineng Noongar.

• 1826 Mokkare, one of the Mineng Aboriginal people who later emerged as a key person for the success of early white-Aboriginal relations in Albany, was recorded in d'Urbville's visit of that year. Colbung, ancestor of Aboriginal activist Ken Colbung is also recorded.

• December 25, 1826 Major Edmund Lockyer, in the brig Amity, takes possession of King George Sound for the crown, at the orders of Governor Darling. On Michaelmas Island he was signalled by an Aboriginal man, who had been abducted and marooned by sealers. These eight sealers led by a certain Bailey, had also killed another man and abducted their women. Randall, another sealer from Tasmania, had also been abducting Aboriginal women, and was arrested by Lokyer. Aboriginal people here expressed their anger at Europeans cutting down trees, but Lokyer chose not to intervene. The Aboriginal site, Kin-gil-yilling is renamed Albany, after the Duke of Albany.

• 1827 James Stirling, in the Success, anchored off the mouth of the Swan River. Exploring the river he was attacked by Aboriginal people at Claisebrook. Nine years later the Aboriginal people of the area explained that the first party of whites they had seen was the marauding party of Randall. At Jane Brook, another party of Aboriginal men was found (women and children were seen hiding), who mimicked English calls of "How do you do!" and traded spears and womeras for clothing and swans shot by Stirling. Stirling explored as far as Guildford where he commented on the fine alluvial soils. He then sailed south to Albany. Lockyer was eager to return to Sydney with the Success, with Randall, the captive and to get him to stand trial for his crimes of murder and abduction. Stirling reluctantly agreed to allow Lockyer, but refused to allow the sealers and their women on board. They were released from custody, and later left Albany.

• 1828 Mokkare became friends, sharing the house and food, with the assistant surgeon, Isaac Scott-Nind, in Albany. When Scott-Nind's health deteriorated, Mokkare became companion, guide and advisor to successive commandants, Lieutenant Sleeman, Captain Wakefield and Captain Barker, living with Barker when seasonal fishing brought him to King George Sound. He became an especially good friend of Dr Collie. Mokkare and his brother Nakina, assisted troops recapture runaway convicts, and were given steel tomahawks as a reward.

Period 3: The Period from Resistance to Survival - 1829 - 1881

Without doubt the settlement of Western Australia by Europeans, under James Stirling, was the greatest disaster ever to fall upon the Aboriginal people of Western Australia. From the start, the basic principles of natural justice and equality before the law, reputedly the basis of British Common Law, were set aside. By the early 1840s, what few constraints had been exercised by the first wave of settlers, in particular, had been dispensed with, and a new generation of coloby born young men were engaged in supporting the widespread massacre of Aborigines and the imprisonment of any who dared question any white authority. A settlement pattern that could only proceed by the expropriation of the land and the exploitation of cheap labour and the extermination of any resistance by Aborigines, became the pattern.

• June 18th 1829 Declaration announcing the settlement within the Territory of Western Australia, recognising the “Aboriginal * inhabitants as British subjects and stated that any person behaving towards them in a ‘fraudulent, cruel or felonious Manner’ would be liable to prosecution and trial”

• October 1829 Aboriginal people stole sheep, poultry and goats, and plundered a house of provisions in the Swan district. Settlers, like Robert Menli Lyon, deterred from taking up grants in outlying areas as a result of fear of Aboriginal attack. He moved to and rented, William Dixon’s land, which he later purchased. P.39 He mentioned that some of the soldiers, coming from Van Demon’s Land came “principally from those classes in the lower orders of society who would count it a fine sport to shoot a native as a Kangaroo”.

• 1st November 1830 Captain Frederick Irwin dispatched a corporal and four privates to the Upper Swan, where they were joined by armed settlers, coming on a group of Aborigines who attempted to stop their passage. The Aboriginal leader, attempting to throw a spear, was shot dead by one of the settlers. Several others were captured and brought to Perth, and subsequently released. Irwin regretted the loss of life, but hoped the Aboriginal people would be taught a lesson.

• 1831 George Fletcher Moore wrote the Aborigines were not so despicable a race as was first supposed… they are not very numerous and we are on good terms with them”. Aborigines often shared food, and returned lost settlers to their homes. George Fletcher Moore was one of the settlers who allowed Aboriginal people to continue hunting on his lands. Others drove them off.

• 3rd October 1831 Stirling appointed Edward Barrett Lennard Commanding Officer of the Yeomanry of the Middle Swan, a citizens militia to pursue and capture Aboriginal offenders. Henry Bull was appointed Commander of the Upper Swan. The orders were that on being called out Yoemanry were “to cause the offending tribe to be instantly pursued, and if practicable captured and brought in at all hazard, and take such further decisive steps for bringing them to Punishment as the Circumstances of the Case may admit.” From then on shepherds were armed.

• May 1832 William Gaze, a settler on the Canning was killed. A witness identified Yagan, son of Midgegooroo as the killer, He was declared outlaw, and twenty pounds offered for his capture,

• 26th June 1832 A meeting at Guildford to discuss the “Aboriginal Question” Robert M. Lyon reminded settlers that they had seized Aboriginal lands and called for someone to act as mediator between the Aborigines and settlers. Amongst 4 resolutions passed called for whatever conciliatory or coercive measures it saw fit, and said if instead action was not taken the settlement may need to be abandoned.

• 1st August 1832 Stirling establishes the Corps of Mounted Police, under the command of Captain Ellis, with a Mr Northcott as Assistant Superintendent, and orders were sent to Cape Town for horses.

• September 1832 Yagan was captured and sent to Carnac Island. He escaped 6 weeks later by taking the boat belonging to his captors. No attempt to recapture him was made, the six weeks being considered adequate penalty.

• 1833 Based on evidence learned from Yagan at Carnac Island R.M. Lyon described the territory of Yellagonga as Mooro, bounded by the Sea, Ellen Brook, the Swan River and Banister River (Gingin Brook or Moore River) to the north. The Daren people, headed by Weeip, were east of Ellen Brook and north of the Upper Swan, and east to the Darling Scarp. The Wurerup people, were in Upper Swan. The Beeliar, were the inhabitants west of the Canning River down to Rockingham, and were led by Midgegooroo. The Beeloo were south of the Swan and East of the Canning as far as the Scarp.

• 1833-34 Virtual war between Aborigines and settlers, based upon Aboriginal “pay-back” killings for natives that had been killed.

• 1833 Early in the year, in an attempt to prevent starving Aborigines stealing food from settlers, the Government established rationing stations giving flour and biscuit at Lake Monger and in the Upper Swan. Private settlers were forbidden to feed natives, except in return for work done. .

• 29th April 1933, whilst breaking into a store in Fremantle with two other Aborigines, Domjum, Yagan’s brother, was shot dead.

• 30th April 1833 Yagan, Midgegooroo and Munday, in reprisal, killed two white brothers named Velnick, who had been behaving badly to Aborigines, on the road between Bull Creek and Canning River. Yagan had been seen by Mr Phillips of Maddington Farm, repeatedly spearing one of the two men.

• 1st May 1833 Captain Irwin declared the three to be outlaws. Thirty pounds was offered for Yagan dead or alive, twenty pounds for Munday and Midgegooroo. They were hunted for the next three months. The three were unaware they were being hunted.

• 16th May 1833, Captain Ellis was informed that Midgegooroo’s people were in the Helena Valley, and likely to cross at Drummond’s Ford, near Guildford, that night. Four soldiers of the 63rd Regiment stationed themselves at the spot, but Midgegooroo failed to appear.

• 17th May 1833, the soldiers with Mr Hardey of Peninsula Farm Maylands, and Hancock, a local bushman, found abadonned Aboriginal campsites in the Helena River, and captured Midgegooroo and his five year old son, after a short struggle, while he was looking after women and children whilst the men were away hunting, He was imprisoned in Perth jail.

• 21st May 1833, Midgegooroo was tried before Captain Irwin and the Executive Council, found guilty, and taken outside the jail immediately killed by firing squad, before a gathering of colonists. Those present expressed their satisfaction by loud exultations at his execution. Midgegooroo’s tribe expressed dissatisfaction when it was learned that he had been executed, and two parties of six soldiers each were sent to patrol the Swan and Canning Rivers to protect settlers from angry Aborigines. At the same time, Constable Hunt, together with four soldiers and three colonists were sent to the Upper Swan to capture Yagan and Munday, said to be hiding amongst Weeip’s people. Shortly afterwards Yagan approached George Fletcher Moore at Millendon, and in pidgin English insisted that it was wrong for Aborigines to steal from Europeans, and also wrong for whites to kill Aborigines caught stealing. When an Aborigine was killed by a white man, Yagan insisted that it was permissible for an Aboriginal to kill the European, as payback in accordance with their custom. Moore insisted that if a white man was caught steeling he would be shot too, as the Aboriginal had been. If killing and theft stopped, Moore explained their would be peace between the races. In Nyungar Yagan explained that the Europeans had come to disrupt the Aboriginal people in their lives, and are fired upon by Europeans in their own country. He declared the would take European lives in revenge for any death of Midgegooroo. The next day Mr Shaw informed Yagan that Midgegooroo had been executed. Settlers in Upper Swan seemed to be defying the order to capture him, and Lieutennant Ball gave orders to his servants that Yagan was not to be shot. Friendly overtures were extended to Weeip, despite the refuge he was giving to Yagan and Munday.

• June 1833, the Agricultural Society Meeting discussed the growing problem with Aborigines and suggested pacific measures rather than extermination be followed. A fortnight later, a party of the 63rd Regiment, under the command of Captain Ellis set out to hunt Yagan, and was promised help by Weeip in finding him, but was unsuccessful. Weeip was taken to Perth by Mr Bull and others from the Upper Swan to meet with the Lieutenant Governor.

• July 11th 1833, a young man of 18 years, William Keats, and his brother, two of Bull’s servants, on a cattle drive, saw a group of Aborigines, including Yagan, approaching Bull’s house for flour. The Aborigines were generally friendly. After two failed attempts over an extended period, William shot Yagan in the head, and was immediately speared to death by aborigines accompanying Yagan. James Keats then shot Heegan, one of the other Aboriginals who was about to throw his spear, and aimed at Weeip, also about to throw his spear, but missed. Keat’s brother James, then escaped by swimming the River, and saw a group, including Weeip, spearing William repeatedly. William Cruse, after hearing of the affair, accompanied by six others returned to the spot, found the gun had been used also as a club, and then following the sound of crying, found the wounded Heegan and the dead Yahan. Heegan was then shot through the head, to “put him out of his misery”. The Editor of the Perth Gazette condemned William Keats for his treachery in killing Yagan and warned settlers there would be another round of reprisals from Aborigines. Two weeks later, the Lieutenant Governor issued a proclamation that Munday was no longer an outlaw as sufficient retribution had been made for the death of the Velvick brothers. James Keats claimed the reward, and Heegan’s family infomed others that James Keats would be killed in retribution for the death of Heegan. Lieutenant Bull encouraged Keats to leave the colony on board the Cornwallis.

• January 1834, for the February meeting of the Agricultural Society of Guidford, R. M. Lyon gave notice of a motion to set aside lands for the sole use of Aborigines in every district. He said it was incumbent on settlers who had disposed the Aborigines of their lands to do so, and that the Legislative Council effectively secure Aboriginal rights and privileges as promised, including unrestricted fishing and hunting rights on all unclaimed lands. No vote was taken and the matter was deferred until Stirling returned to the colony. Lyon was expelled from the society by members when Stirling had returned.

• February 1834, Aboriginal “theft” had increased again, and Lieutenant Governor Irwin appointed Captain Peter Pegus as an additional Superintendent of Native Tribes, with a staff of four soldiers, with duties to distribute rations and pursue Aboriginal “offenders”.

• April 1834 Calyute leads a raid by thirty Binjareb on Shenton's Mill in South Perth. Shenton was locked inside and the flour was taken. Calyute, Gunmal and Yedong were subsequently captured. Gunmal and Yedong were tied, flogged with 24 lashes at the St Georges Terrace whipping post. Calyute was transferred to Fremantle Round House, and there given another 60 lashes and released in May.

• May 1834 Mr Locke Burgess surprised a group of Aboriginal people steeling grain from their farm at Brook Mount. A warrant was sought for the arrest of Yeedamira, the leader of the group, who was arrested, but was shot dead on trying to escape from the Barracks. In retaliation Weeip and Godaljud led a group to the Barracks where in payback they killed Private Dennis Larkin, one of the soldiers there. A jury found Weeip, Bilyomeri, Goldaljud, Beguin, Gotark, Gregad, and Narrall, all "guilty of wilful murder", insisting, contrary to British justice, that the whole group was guilty for a crime perpetrated by one. This was unpopular amongst Upper Swan settlers, who admired Weeip and they petitioned the government claiming that Goodalyat had been the Aboriginal who had speered Larkin.

• June 1834 Bilyomeri, Weeip's son, captured by Captain Ellis and imprisonned in Fremantle. Captain Ellis, Captain Pegus and Mr Norcott were instructed to maintain constant patrols between the Swan and Canning and to conduct instant floggings of any Aboriginal caught committing an offence.

• July 1834 Calyute and twenty one other Binjareb were involved in the payback death of Thomas Nesbitt, a servant of Thomas Peel. Nesbitt had been friendly with the Aborigines and his death sparked major concern. Mr Parker, the Constable at Guildford, was told that a vessel had been seen wrecked six months earlier on the beach thirty days walking to the north and coins were found scattered on the beach.

• September 1834 Stirling, returning from Albany, pardons Weeip and his son, after Weeip, at the instigation of George Fletcher Moore, had travelled north looking unsuccessfully for the shipwreck and any survivors.

• 25-28th October 1834 the so-called "Battle of Pinjarra" in which between 15-40 Aboriginal men women and children were killed, and an unknown number wounded, and one European was wounded and another later lost his life, probably from a coma from concussion from falling from his horse. See Battle of Pinjarra

• 1836 Francis Armstrong official Interpreter of the Native Tribes, stated that it was Aboriginal tradition that the Aboriginal population of the coast migrated from the plateau and that the Aboriginal people living on the coast are descendent from a few early families, at a time when Garden island was still joined to the coast (p.7) Garden Island and Rottnest were still joined to the mainland until 7,000 years ago.

Period 3: The Period from Survival to Assimilation - 1881 - 1943

The sixty years from 1881 to the 1940s can be neatly divided into two by the passage of the 1905 Aboriginal Act, which created institutionalised racism and created what amounted to Aboriginal "concentration camps" in which the Aboriginal people were to be confined until the race became extinct. It began with the Fairburn Report which first drew attention to the "Aboriginal Problem". This institutionalised racism, like the racism of the Nazi period in Germany, the racism of the southern states of the USA, and the racism of South Africa, reached its peak in the 1930s. The "final solution to the Aboriginal problem" was to take all children from Aboriginal parents, who were considered as "biologically capable of having children, but not socially capable of raising them". This "solution" continued beyond this period until well into the 1970s. The major task confronting Aboriginal people throughout this period was how their cultures could survive.

• 1881 C.D.F. Foss appointed magistrate and with a company of police troops and 3 Aboriginal trackers, he travelled across the Gascoyne investigating complaints and imposing sentences that were later shown to be illegal and excessive. Pastoralists had made Aboriginal people de-facto slaves on their own land, in contravention of British law. By marking a cross on a "contract", Aboriginal people were forced to work as a shepherd, shearer, shed hand, domestic servant or concubine. Once "assigned" the men and women were considered the "property" of the station, and could be arrested and sent back by the police if they "absconded". Consistent absconders had their feet burned or were branded by their master's initial. The Fairburn Report, which reported on these abuses was howled down by angry pastoralists in Parliament. Aboriginal labour in the state was recorded as 1,640 men and 706 women, nearly 7% of the total white population of the time, estimated at 30,013 people.

• June 1881 The first judicial court held on Brockman's station. Four Aboriginal men were tried and sentenced to be transported to Rottnest Island. Aboriginal resistence in the north grew in intensity. Gascoyne, Lyons and the Upper Minilya tribes were said to be the worst in the state. Charles Gayle asked that the government to shut its eyes for 6 months and he would put an end to the depredations by exterminating the troublemakers.

• 1882 Flogging of Aboriginal prisoners on Rottnest was legalised, although it had already been abolished for whites. John Forrest spoke in favour of the punishment. Only the cat-of-nine-tails was prohibited, but its use continued, being used at the Moore River settlement at least until 1940. It was admitted in the Legislative Council that the great majority of convictions of Aboriginal people to Rottnest, had been illegal. Governor Ord intervened and a large number of Aboriginal people were released from custody. Alexander Crawfords, running a sheep station in the Murchison, and writing to his fiance, Lillie Matthews in Victoria, wrote of the continuous way in which whites "in arms" were engaged in "nigger hunts". Lillie was horified at the brutality he so casually described. The Gold Rushes brought still more unattached men to Western Australia, many contracting both legal and defacto marriages with Aboriginal women. Typical was Anderson, a Fin, who married Lucy Bobbinet, and having three children before she was abandoned by her husband in 1899.

• 1883 The Atourney General, Hensman, introduces a bill to parliament to extend the powers of Magistrates in the north, and to legalise all questionable sentences to Rottnest Island that had occurred. The Colonial Secretary, Malcolm Fraser, said at the second reading speech, the bill was intended to "affirm the convictions made by Mr Foss at the Gascoyne". A Commission of Inquiry into the treatment of Aboriginal prisoners on Rottnest confirmed that the identifying disks on prisoners were sometimes exchanged, resulting in the alteration of sentences, and the release of prisoners often in alien territory from which they were then forbidden to leave. Over 179 Rottnest island prisoners, mostly from the north, were in conditions so overcrowded that more than 60 died from a bout of influenza. The second great measles epidemic entered the state via Albany, spreading to Bunbury, York, Fremantle, Perth, Geraldton and Carnarvon. Ten died at New Norcia as a result, and with a combined influenza outbreak, it combined to kill 64 prisoners at Rottnest. In this year Victoria River station, in the Kimberley, was stocked for the first time.

• 1884 Alexander Forrest publishes his report on the Kimberley expedition, estimating that some 10 million acres are available for grazing sheep and cattle. Just before Forrest had left Darwin, the Commissioner of Crown Lands had been presented with 26 applications to take up the most promising lands in the Kimberley. Adam Johns and Phil Saunders, following Forrest's route, discovered Gold at Halls Creek. David Carly wrote to England saying "the whole system of Horrors as is done to the Natives" would continue until the "Home Government send someone here who has got a mind that will not be ruled by a few Settlers whose Heart is set on getting Gold by any means". In Bridgetown, a third Aboriginal reserve of 100 acres was established.

• 1885 The Duracks settle Lissadell station in the Kimberleys. E.T. Hardiman, the government geologist, confirms the find of Halls Creek gold. Fifteen men at the field clash with local Aborigines, but resistance to miners declined as the numbers increased. An amendment to the Dog Act states that Aboriginal people in the state are only allowed one dog and then only if it is licensed. Most Aboriginal people in the state could not afford the license, and so police could shoot any Aboriginal hunting dog any time they wished.

• January 1885 Henry Parry, the Anglican Archibishop lodged for new "mission reserves" to be established for the Vasse, Murchison, Ashburton and Gascoyne. He welcomes the Rev. J.B. Gribble and sends him to work amongst the Aborigines in the Gascoyne. Gribble arrives in Perth and is introduced to the Governor, Sir Napier Broome. He is given letters of introduction to Maitland Brown and Alexander Forrest. On arriving in Carnarvon Gribble was welcomed by Foss the Magistrate, however, at the time he witnessed six Aboriginal men and one Aboriginal woman, chained by the neck to a tree, awaiting the magistrates visit, still some weeks away. Thirty seven men were chained inside a tin shed in the summer heat. Moving to the Kimberley, Gribble discovered that police raiding parties, along the Fitzroy were organised to keep the pearling industry supplied with "blackbirded" Aborigines to work on the luggers, in contravention of the earlier Pearl Shell Fisheries Act. Many pastoralists and jackeroos had taken Aboriginal concubines, but any girl who tried to run away was rounded up and escorted by police back to her "master". Finding no support amongst locals to end these practices Gribble travelled back to Perth to publicise what he had found. The uproar was huge. Rather than alienate those pastoralists who were contributing to the building of St Georges Cathedral, Bishop Parry decided to sacrifice Gribble to the indignation of the pastoralists.

• December 1885 a meeting of pastoralists in Carnarvon appoint Brockman, Maitland Brown and others to condemn Gribble's missionary work. Nothing changed. There was still no attempt to properly establish guilt of Aboriginal people "sentenced" to Rottnest from the north. For instance in December 28 men were found a quarter of a mile away from speared cattle and were found guilty of an offence without any evidence being presented, and were sentenced to 2 years on Rottnest

• January 1886 A petition is circulated to have Gribble removed. Gribble travelled then to Victoria, trying to drum up support against the WA pastoralists of the Gascoyne, and entertained people to packed halls with the stories of the atrocities he had witnessed. So grim were the reports that women and children were refused admittance. In his talks he exposed the widespread practice of "child labour" and condemned the "assignment system" as slavery. He protested the abuses of the court system in Carnarvon, where it was admitted that convictions against Aboriginals were secured with a single uncorroborated word of any settler, with the person being transported to Rottnest, often to die. Gribble reported that he had been shot at in the bush and nearly lynched when sailing to Perth. When he was met by "Christian communicants" in Fremantle, he was told that Aboriginal people should be treated "only as horses or dogs". Winthrop Hackett, then Editor of the Western Australian called Gribble "a lying, canting humbug", and Gribble sued him for libel. At the height of the controversy, Governor Broome classified as confidential a series of reports from the Government Resident of Roebourne, Lieutenant Colonel E. F. Angelo, documenting the slavery and murder perpetrated by local pearlers, settlers, and the local magistrate, who was offering to kidnap Aborigines for the pearlers at a cost of five pounds a head, or to shoot them for 2s 6p each. "The fears of the whites" he wrote, was "more a cause of disorder than the aggression of the blacks". About 6-700 Aborigines were then used in diving off the pearling luggers. Had these reports been made available Gribble would have won his case against Hackett, but he lost, and in disgrace, Gribble left the state, and publishes "Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land" a fierce castigation of his opponents that created a furore so that the welfare of the Aboriginals was obscured by much blackening of reputations until the 1905 Aboriginal Act.

• 1886 Following the furor over the Fairburn Report and the work of the Rev. John Gribble, parliament introduced the Aborigines Protection Act 1886 (WA) which introduced employment contracts between employers and Aboriginal workers over the age of 14. There was no provision in the 1886 WA Act for contracts to include wages. However, employees were to be provided with "substantial, good and sufficient rations", clothing and blankets. The 1886 WA Act provided a Resident Magistrate with the power to indenture 'half-caste' and Aboriginal children, from a suitable age, until they turned 21. An Aboriginal Protection Board, was also established to prevent the abuses reported earlier, but rather than protect Aborigines, it mainly succeeded in putting them under tighter government control. It was intended to enforce contracts, employment of prisoners and apprenticeships, but there was not sufficient power to enforce clauses in the north, and they were openly flouted. The Act defined as "Aboriginal" "every Aboriginal native of Australia, every Aboriginal half-caste, or child of a half-caste". Governor Broome insisted that the act contain within it a clause permitting traditional owners to continue hunting on their tribal lands. The effect of the Act was to give increasing power to the Board over Aboriginal people, rather than setting up a system to punish whites for wrong-doing in relation to Aboriginal people. An Aboriginal Department was set up, under the office of the Chief Protector of Aborigines. Nearly half of the Legislative Council voted to amend the act for contract labour as low as 10 but it was defeated. Mackenzie Grant, the member for the north claimed that child labour of 6 or 7 was a necessary commonplace, as "in this way they gradually become domesticated". The Atourney General Septimus Burt, in debate on the 2nd reading speach, claimed that contracts were being issued, not for current work, but to hold Aboriginal people as slaves on stations for potential future work, and so prevent them from being free to leave.

Period 4: The Period from Assimilation to Self Determination - 1943 to the present

This period began with the first modern resistance to covert white exploitation; the Great Stockman's Strike of 1946. It, like the other periods, can be divided into two by the events of 1967, in which Aboriginal people were at last recognised as Australian, and by the passage of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, which for the first time since 1829 recognised Aboriginal people as equal under the law. The passing of the Mabo and Wik High Court Decisions, which recognised Aboriginal people as in possession of the land at the date of white settlement, is an appendix to these changes. This period is still not complete, as the Western Australian Labor government is still resisting the Native Title claim of the Noongar people.

References

1. Stannage, T. (Ed) (1981) "A New History of Western Australia" (UWA Press)
2. Green, Neville (1979) "Nyungar - the People: Aboriginal Customs in the Southwest of Australia" (Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education)
3. Green, Neville (1984), "Broken Spears" (Perth, 1984)
4. Bridge, P.J. (Ed) (1993) "Aboriginal Perth: Bibbulmun Biographies and Legends" (Hesperian Press)
5. Tilbrook, Lois (1983) "Nyungar Tradition: Glimpses ofg Aborigines of South-Western Australia, 1829-1914"
6. Haebich, Anna (1992), "For Their Own Good - Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940" (International Specialised Books)
7. Haebich, Anna (2000), "Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000" (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
8. Maushart, Susan (1993)"Sort of a Place Like Home: Remembering the Moore River Native Settlement" (Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
9. Hallam S. and L. Tilbrook (compilers)(1990), "Aborigines of the Southwest Region 1829-1840" (Perth, 1990)
10. Dortch, Charles (1997) "Prehistory Down Under: archaeological investigations of submerged Aboriginal sites at Lake Jasper, Western Australia" (Antiquity Volume: 71 Number: 271 Page: 116–123)
11. Blainey, Geoffrey (1976) "Triumph of the Nomad" (Macquarie Books)
12. Windshuttle, Keith, (2002) "The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847", Macleay Press,
13. Reynolds, Henry (1981), "The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia"
14. See Daisy Bates
15. Bourke, Michael J. "On the Swan: A history of the Swan district of Western Australia" (p.30)
16. Ibid P.68
17. Ibid P.51
18. Ibid p.70
19. Ibid p71
20. Parliamentary Hansard, Western Australia 1883

• History of Western Australia
• History of Indigenous Australians