Journal: 102

Henry Kingsley’s The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) is almost our first first-hand account (albeit fictional) of both the processes and the underlying philosophy of the British appropriating Aboriginal lands during the first century of white settlement in the continent now known as Australia.
As it happens, I am also editing, for my AWWC gig, to be posted Weds 10 May, Stacey Roberts’ account of representations of Indigenous women taken into service, which begins with the slightly earlier Clara Morison and Gertrude the Emigrant, and which covers some of the same territory.
While, like all of us, I have long been conscious of Australia’s inherent racism and our failure to accord Aboriginal people equal rights (unless they entirely renounce their own culture) I have been slow to understand/acknowledge white settlement as an ongoing process from which I/we continue to benefit. If one book got me started down that path then it is, as you may have gathered, Dr Chelsea Watego’s Another Day in the Colony (2021). Now I follow settler colonialism debate – at a very basic level – as well as I can, on Twitter for instance . There is a wikipedia entry on the theory, but it doesn’t specifically include Australia.
Kingsley’s vision for the colony is given in a speech by Dr Mulhaus to Hamlyn’s friends at a picnic:
“I see the sunny slopes below me yellow with trellised vines … Beyond I see fat black ridges grow yellow with a thousand cornfields. I see a hundred happy homesteads, half-hidden by clustering wheat-stacks.
“They have found gold here, and gold in abundance, and hither have come by ship and steamship, all the unfortunate of the earth … all the opressed of the earth have taken refuge here, glorying to live under the free government of Britain; for she, warned by American experience, has granted to all her colonies such rights as the British boast of possessing.
“I see a vision of a nation, the colony of the greatest race on earth, who began their career with more advantages than ever fell to the lot of a young nation yet. War never looked on them. Not theirs was the lot to fight, like the Americans, through bankruptcy and inexperience towards freedom and honour. No. Freedom came to them, heaven sent, red-tape bound, straight from Downing Street.
pp 354,5
They begin to talk over each other: “I see,” began the Major, “the Anglo-Saxon race —-” “Don’t forget the Irish, Jews, Germans, Chinese and other barbarians,” interrupted the Doctor. “Asserting” continued the Major scornfully, “as they always do, their right to all the unoccupied territories of the earth—-” (“Blackfellows’ claims being ignored,” interpolated the Doctor.)
As with most stories of this type, in the eastern states anyway, the owners of the “empty” land are imagined to have just faded out of the way, of no use or importance even as station hands. There are not even any mentions, that I can recall, as there are in Gertrude the Emigrant for instance, of traditional encampments in uncleared portions of the properties, or in the Alps to the north.
There is just one battle recorded, and it is out on the NSW western plains, on the Lachlan – Such is Life country – a thousand kilometres to the north west, and Hamlyn’s partner, Stockbridge is killed. Later in the book, though, Hamlyn comes upon an old fellow, a hutkeeper for shepherds, who knows of that death and what followed, which we hadn’t previously been told:
“I kenned your partner… He was put down up north. A bad job – a very bad job! Ye gat terrible vengeance, though. Ye hewed Agad in pieces! Y’ Governor up there to Sydney was wild angry at what ye did, but he darens say much. he knew that every free man’s heart went with ye… Ye saved many good lives by that raid of yours after Stockridge was killed. The devils wanted a lesson, and ye gar’d them one wi’ a vengeance!”
p. 359
And so another massacre slides by under the radar.
To finish with, what Kingsley really thought about Australia:
Any man once comfortably settled there [on the homestead verandah where we started] in an easy chair, who fetched anything for himself when he could get anyone else to fetch it for him, would show himself, in my opinion, a man of weak mind. One thing only was wanted to make it perfect, and that was niggers. To the winds with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Dred after it, in a hot wind! What can [Harriet Beecher] Stowe, freezing up there in Connecticut … know about the requirements of a southern gentleman when the thermometer stands at 125F in the shade? … all men would have slaves if they were allowed. An Anglo-Saxon conscience will not, save in rare instances, bear a higher average heat than 95F.
p.435
Let me mention in passing that slavery was “abolished’ in the British Empire in 1807, though Aboriginal Australians were largely unpaid (or had their pay confiscated by state governments) for their farm/station labour up until 1968; and convicts were forced to labour, though they did receive minimal pay, up until at least 1868 (when Transportation ceased).
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Map above from Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation website. I get the impression that the various properties in the novel are at the north-eastern end of Gunaikurnai Country.
Suggested Twitter follows: @drcwatego, @SaraSalehTweets, @OnlinePalEng, @Jairo_I_Funez
Henry Kingsley, The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (review)
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Recent audiobooks
Tarryn Fisher (F, USA), The Wrong Family (2020)
CJ Box (M, USA), The Bitterroots (2019) – Crime
Neal Asher (M, Eng), Zero Point (2012) – SF
Connie Willis (F, USA), Doomsday Book (1992) – SF
Priscilla Royal (F, USA), Valley of Dry Bones (2010) – Crime (Medieval)
Currently Reading
Henry Kingsley (M, Eng), The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859)
Caroline Leakey (F, Aus/Tas), The Broad Arrow (1859)
Alexis Wright (F, Aus/Qld), Praiseworthy (2023) – this will take a long, long time!
AWWC Apr. 2023
Date | Contributor | Title |
Wed 5 | Elizabeth Lhuede | Mrs McCarter: “well-known authoress” |
Fri 7 | Stories FTA | Mrs McCarter, Over-stepping (short story) |
Wed 12 | Debbie Robson | Australian Women in WWI: Scottish Women’s Hospitals |
Fri 14 | Stories FTA | Miles Franklin, Nemari ništa (It matters nothing) |
Wed 19 | Bill Holloway | Miles Franklin, Nemari ništa (review) |
Fri 21 | Stories FTA | Active Service Socks |
Wed 26 | Whispering Gums | Helen Simpson: “one of the giants”? |
Fri 28 | Stories FTA | Helen Simpson, Under Capricorn (fiction extract) |