THE BLOODY FRONTIER

http://www.australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/index.php/conflicts/chronology/qld

I have been looking at the above website which details the list of massacres of Indigenous Australians in my home state of Queensland. Many are focused from 1860 onward in the northern region of the state which is where I was born and raised. It's a sobering and heart- breaking read.
 If you don't know much about Australian history, Indigenous Australians were locked in conflict with Europeans soon after settlement in 1788. It is estimated that the pre-1788 population of the Indigenous people across Australia was between 500,000 to 750,000. At the start of the twentieth century, the population had been markedly reduced to about 93,000 due to European diseases, massacres and conflict.
Why I took particular interest in this website, is that it mentions the cattle station of Grosvenor Downs as an area of conflict in 1868. No details are mentioned.
I knew that Grosvenor Downs belonged to my great grandfather, John Clark and prior to that his half-sister, Isabella Clark and her husband, Alexander McDonald. John Clark later gave the station to his daughter as a wedding present.
I was hoping that my family weren't involved in such a heinous crime. Further research indicated that in 1868 a Frank Bridgman owned the cattle station. It was sadly a massacre of local Indigenous people; sixty in total.  No reason is given why this massacre occurred. I can only surmise that a European or cattle were speared causing the settlers to retaliate.  
Sadly, it was not an isolated incident. The list of conflicts between Indigenous people and Europeans in Queensland goes right up to 1929.
 It is history that was conveniently overlooked. I don't think that should be the case anymore.

HOW TO MAKE AN ENTRY

Thomas James Bell.

Here's another story about my wild great uncle, T.J. Bell. T.J. was staying at the Queens Hotel in the early part of the twentieth century. The Queens Hotel was located in Townsville, Queensland. It was the grandest hotel in the north, the place to stay for dignitaries and graziers who were the power elite of the time. It was the snob centre of town.

Queen's Hotel, Townsville. Foyer entry is to left of photo. Photograph from Townsville City Libraries.

So it all probably started with T.J. getting into an extended drinking bout with his cronies then a bet. It progressively went downhill from there.  The dare was to bring a four in hand carriage into the front foyer of the Queen’s Hotel. A four in hand is a carriage drawn by four horses positioned with two at the front and two behind.

Well, you have to admire T.J.’s pluck because he nearly did it. He did manage to get the two front horses into the foyer before being stopped by irate hotel staff.  I’m not sure if he won the bet or got permanently banned from the hotel.   

CATTLE DUFFING

Just to set things right, we call it cattle duffing in the outback not cattle rustling.  Cattle duffing is regarded as Australia’s second oldest industry.  I’ll let you figure out which is the oldest.

Cattle duffing is still as relevant today as it was in the wild colonial days. In fact, it is on the rise in rural Australia despite the fact that it is harder to steal cattle now then one hundred years ago.  The Australian state of Queensland has a police unit specifically devoted to stock theft which is aptly titled, The Stock Squad.

Apparently, ice-addicts in rural towns are duffing livestock from farms in their desperate desire to fund their addiction. I read one recent story about a grazier who left his cattle station for a week to attend a wedding and returned to find that nearly one million dollars of his live stock had been stolen. At one thousand dollars a head, cattle duffing is seen as a lucrative criminal activity.

My father once told me that Uncle Jack and he were once boundary riding around our station when they caught the next door neighbours helping themselves to our cattle. Uncle Jack and dad blew their stacks and actually pulled rifles on them. Uncle Jack threatened to shoot them if he ever caught them again.  I dare say he would have.

In the outback, cattle duffers will meet with swift justice, if the law is looking the other way or the law is a hundred miles away. Cattle duffing is taken very seriously in the outback..  

PAY BACK

I recently found this rather gruesome story about a relative I didn’t know anything about. The relative in question was a George Williamson Clark who was a half-brother of my great grandfather, John Henry Clark. My great grandfather’s family were largely unknown to me until now.

The following story about George Clark is fairly indicative of the brutality that occurred on the outback frontier in the nineteenth century. It was a time of European expansion into Aboriginal land with total disregard for Aboriginal traditions and lives.  Of course, Aborigines fought back but the odds were stacked against them. Over the years, massacres of Aborigines occurred frequently, right up until the 1930’s.

In 1892, George was working at a remote outstation at Cresswell Downs in the Northern Territory, a place that is still an isolated part of Australia.  

A visitor by the name of Charles Fox was in the kitchen of the outstation with a Charles Deloitte and two other men. He noticed that George Clark wasn’t there and decided to look for him at the branding yard nearby. The first thing he noticed when he got to the yards was an arm sticking out from under a blanket.  When he peeled back the blanket, George was dead with a smashed in skull as a result of a tomahawk blow.

Fox was then attacked by five Aboriginal men throwing spears. He was able to get away and raise help. When they returned, Deloitte lay dead in the outstation kitchen.  What would follow was the police leading two ‘punitive expeditions’ against the local Aborigines that year. There are no figures on how many Aborigines were massacred.

Years later, local Aborigines told researchers that the reason why Deloitte and Clark were killed was because they were raping the Aboriginal woman. According to Aboriginal law, they had broken a strict taboo and had to be killed. It had been pay back.    

  

FAMILY PLACE NAMES IN AUSTRALIA.

Statue of Benjamin Singleton. Singleton.

Various family members were early European settlers in Australia, largely in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Here are some of the place names that bear their names:

Paternal Side

Geary's Gap - Near Canberra. Named after my great, great, great grandfather, Daniel Geary, who used to run a pub there.

Mount Clark - A mountain in North Queensland. Named after my great grandfather, John Clark.

Lornesleigh Street - Townsville. Named after an old family cattle station.

Packer Street - Canberra. Named after a great, great uncle.

Maternal Side

Singleton - A town in the Hunter Valley. Named after Benjamin Singleton, a fifth great uncle.

Kingaroy - Named after two Markwell brothers who first settled the area.

Brisbane - There are six Markwell streets in various suburbs including Hamilton, Daisy Hill, Auchenflower.

Surfers Paradise - Markwell Street  is named after my great grandfather, William Markwell, who was one of the first settlers. Right near the beach.

SACRIFICE

Australia, my family and many others, gave everything to defeat tyranny. It wasn't just the "big" countries that did everything.

From my maternal family, twenty Markwell cousins served including my grandfather and his brother. Seven were killed. 

The Markwell cousins won; two Military Medals, one Distinguished Service Order, one Croix de Guerre, one Military Cross. Two were promoted to the rank of Major.

In World War Two, twenty-eight Markwell family served, including my mother who was in the Signals Corps. One of the Markwell cousins had already served in World War One. A Markwell cousin won the George Cross ( second only to the Victoria Cross). 

Another Markwell became a Major. Only my great uncle, Lenny, was killed out of those who served. He was killed in New Guinea. Lenny was also a Rat of Tobruk. When his fiance received the terrible news, she committed suicide.

Not finished yet. That's only the Markwell side. Two Bells, cousins of my grandfather, served in the Light Horse in World War One. 

In World War Two, my two uncles were both severely wounded at El Alamein which was one of the most crucial battles in history. My Uncle Jack later took his life due to the severe injuries he had received.Uncle Dick had severe PTSD.

 " I always smell blood and lime."

 Dick was in bitter hand to hand fighting against the Afrika Korps. He saw a close mate's head blown off. He bayoneted to death a German.

And not to forget my Grandmother Bell's massive monetary contribution to the war effort. Probably around a small fortune in today's money. Her large family residence, Mornington, was turned into a hospital during the war, run by Irish nuns. 

Countries like Australia, Greece, Canada, New Zealand gave everything and more.

John Clark: Forged Steel.

My great, grandfather, John Clark in the centre with grandfather Bell and my grandmother. Circa, 1915.

In this picture, John Clark is an old man; a very old man in those times. Clark was ninety-five when he died in 1917. At this time of his life in 1915, Clark was blind and was cared for by his daughters. I wonder as he poses for the camera, if he is reflecting on his life; a life forged by hardship and heart break but also blessed with huge monetary reward.

From humble and tragic beginnings in Scotland, Clark was placed in the care of a tyrannical uncle at a young age. Unable to bear the harsh treatment any longer, he ran away at the age of twelve to make his own way in life.
 Clark never received a formal education and  he remained illiterate throughout his life. Clark's education instead, came from the school of 'you have to fight for everything'.  From humble beginnings, John Henry Clark would become one of the largest land owners in Australia. His land holdings were so vast that they would have covered nearly seven per cent of his former homeland, Scotland.
But it all came at a huge price; his first wife and their child died tragically of disease as did two of his children by his second marriage.
He was renowned a tough and wily man; he had to be. But when a lot of European settlers were taking Aboriginal land with acts of genocide, Clark worked in with the local Aborigines. I also think, he was a man ahead of his time.
Clark would kill cattle for the local Aborigines to eat and he employed them on the cattle stations. One of Clark's most trusted employees was an Aboriginal man named Roddy Clark. Roddy is apparently buried next to Clark. One of his grandchildren was even delivered by Aboriginal mid-wives at Lornesleigh Station.

 As for vices and dislikes? Clark did like whiskey but he was never a heavy drinker. He did have an immense dislike of Catholics. Why, I do not know. Clark disliked Catholics so much that he refused to attend my grandmother's wedding to my grandfather, Richard Bell.

As John Clark had only two surviving daughters, he left all of his land holdings to them. No son in laws were put in charge which caused friction within the family. I haven't found any other women of that time operating a large pastoral company in Australia. Yes, he was a man ahead of his time.

A mountain is named after him on one of the former family properties but I think John Clark should be memorialised more; after all, if it hadn't have been for people like him busting their guts, Australia would not have become the prosperous country it is today.