Central Land Council

CENTRAL AUSTRALIA: Police enforced terror

“Aboriginal people were British subjects and, in theory, equally protected by the law as all other subjects. This was the official rhetoric.”

In the book, In the Name of the Law, Amanda Nettelbeck and Robert Foster outline a mountain of evidence from Central Australia’s pastoral frontier in the late 1800s that proved otherwise.

People considering this book should be warned that it covers the sad topic of police-led massacres of Aboriginal people in the region which were done, as the book title suggests, in the name of the law.

This book should be disturbing for any person reading it, but it will be especially troubling for those people in Central Australia who have memories of family members talking of such murders.

Even someone relatively new to the region will recognise names mentioned in this book, of families and places, of stations and communities, and so this familiarity gives its contents greater resonance.

The following extract sums up policing in Central Australia in the latter half of the 19th Century.

It refers to the use of the native police force to patrol the region and the involvement of mounted constable Erwin Wurmbrand, who led several parties that may have included local station owners and staff, to track Aboriginal people who were accused of cattle killing or attacks on stations.

“In June 1885, Wurmbrand reported that while on patrol in April-May, a clash had occurred that resulted in the death of one Aboriginal man among a party of over 20.

“The Hermannsburg missionaries, however, heard from another member of the patrol party, a Glen Helen station stockman, that 17 Aboriginal people had been killed.

“Asked for an explanation by his superiors, Wurmbrand reiterated his original report, and there the matter rested.

“ William Benstead, one-time manager of Glen Helen station, had accompanied Wurmbrand on this patrol and wrote about it years later in his memoir.
“‘What happened that day,’ he continues, ‘it is a thing of the past, and of little use writing up now; but I am sure that seventeen out of this lot never killed or troubled anyone else.’

“The consequence of this raid, Benstead wrote: ‘It was a lesson they never forgot. It instilled fear into their tribe for 200 miles around, and was the means of putting an end to their murderous attempts.’”

The book goes on to quote Alice Springs historian Dick Kimber as suggesting official records put the killing of Aboriginal people in the Centre between 1860 and 1895 at about 44. By Mr Kimber’s own analysis of other evidence though, a figure closer to 650 people is estimated.

In the Name of the Law focuses on the deeds of Mounted Constable William Willshire who commanded the corps of native police in Central Australia that Wurmbrand belonged to in the 1880s.

Willshire who was notorious in the region for his violent handling of Aboriginal people in Central Australia, was tried in 1891 for the murder of two Aboriginal men, was acquitted of the charge, and wrote about his experiences in memoirs.

It brings into stark clarity the violent history Central Australia has been built on and tears down many of the romantic notions the legend of the Outback has dined out on for so many years.