Brisbane The Aboriginal Presence

This second edition has been reviewed and expanded to include some of Australia’s best qualified historians and researchers in Aboriginal history. Many of these authors continue to campaign for more research into First Nations history and the Frontier Wars. This second edition of Brisbane: The Aboriginal Presence now comprises a foreword which examines recent research in Aboriginal studies, and seven instead of six papers on race relations in the Brisbane region between 1824 and 1860. It covers the convict and early settlement periods until the Separation of Queensland from New South Wales in late 1859. The papers provide overviews of race relations during each of these periods, and highlight various themes, including: • Aboriginal occupation before European settlement • The impact of European settlement • Reciprocal attitudes and relations • Aboriginal resistance and European repression • Sexual relations between Aborigines and Europeans • The role of law, administration and the press • Aborigines in the local economy • The failure of assimilation • The fate of local clans These themes are illustrated by numerous incidents and case studies including: • The observations of explorers, missionaries and administrators • Convict, runaway and settler experiences • Violent clashes on Stradbroke Island in 1831–32 • Aboriginal hangings between 1841 and 1859 • Unrest in the ‘suburbs’ during the late 1840s to 1850s • Squatters, Governor Gipps and the Kilcoy poisonings between 1841 and 1843 • The white raid on Yorks Hollow camp in 1846 • The police attack on Breakfast Creek camps in 1846 These papers are based on detailed research of primary sources by experienced historians who are distinguished for the originality and calibre of their work. This attractive and informative volume is for everyone interested in race relations generally and Brisbane in particular, including students, teachers, schools, libraries, academics and the general reader.

With an open heart and inquiring intellect, Raymond Evans sets out to uncover a past not studied in the school books of his youth. Growing up in the 1950s, he lived in a community devoid of Aboriginal presence. It was an enclave of Welsh migrant families, with all the rituals and traditions of a faraway "Home". His evolving historical consciousness was fired by the need to connect with these shadowy absences and to engage with his adopted homeland. Interwoven with his personal journey is a revealing selection of race relations histories, which cover a wide arena from the Aboriginal/European conflicts of colonial Queensland to the anti-Chinese riots of 1888 and civilian internment during World War I. Evans also moves beyond frontier conflict into the long period of repressive government control of Aboriginal lives. In writing on race, gender and labour relations he illustrates how selective history can be by omitting the contribution of Aboriginal labourers, men and women. These form a critical bridge to understanding the complexities of race relations today.

Highlights the contribution Aboriginal people made in assisting European explorers, surveyors and stockmen to open the country for colonisation, and explores the interface between Aboriginal possession of the Australian continent and European colonisation and appropriation.

This is the first book of its kind in Australia: a history of Aboriginalcampsites. This is also the first guidebook to the location and features of the numerous Aboriginal camps that flourished in and around Brisbane from convict times to - in some cases - as late as the 1950s. Many of Brisbane’s suburbs trace their names, parks and key events to these former campsites. This book focuses on 15 key areas, and includes a full suburban listing at the back.

Governance and Public Space in the Australian City is a rich and evocative examination of the production and use of public spaces in Australian cities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Using Brisbane as a case study, it demonstrates the way public spaces were constructed, contested, and controlled in attempts to create ‘ideal’ city spaces. This construction of space is considered not just in the literal and material sense but also as a product of aspirational and imaginative processes of city-building by municipal authorities and citizens. This book is as much about people as it is about cities – uncovering the manner in which perceived models of ideal urban citizenship were reflected in the production and ordering of city spaces. This book challenges common narratives that situate public spaces as universal or equalising aspects of the urban sphere. Exploring three distinct types of public space – the streets, slums, and parks – the book questions how urban spaces functioned, alongside how they were intended to function. In so doing, Governance and Public Space in the Australian City situates public spaces as products of manipulation and regulation at odds with broader concepts of individual liberty and the ‘rights’ of people to public space. It will be illuminating reading for scholars and students of urban history and Australian history.

A history of government intervention in the lives of Australian Aboriginal people living in Queensland over a 150-year period to 1988. Reveals conflicts between state and federal politicians over Aboriginal affairs, struggles between churches and government, and the activities of vested interests that competed to retain Aboriginals as cheap or unpaid labor. Includes bandw photos. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration, not to mention serious attention. This broad-ranging book is a comprehensive and critical account of that epic survival up to the present day. Starting from antiquity, the book examines the devastating arrival of Europeans and subsequent colonisation, warfare and exile. It emphasises the regionalism and separateness, a consistent feature of Aboriginal life since time immemorial that has led to the distinct identities we see in the present, including the unique place of the islanders of Bass Strait. Carefully researched, using the findings of archaeologists and extensive documentary evidence, some only recently uncovered, this important book fills a long-time gap in Tasmanian history.

Collection of stories from Aboriginal people of the Brisbane area. Contains personal accounts which highlight the day-to-day struggles and triumphs of ordinary indigenous people and stories of some who have achieved greatness on a local or national level. A chapter on activism is included. Indigenous author and historian studied at Griffith University and has been employed at the Queensland Museum.

In 1840, Brisbane was the furthest outpost of settled Australia. On all sides, it was embedded in a richly Indigenous world. Over the next few years, mostly from across New South Wales northern plains, a large push of pastoralists poured into the Darling Downs, Lockyer and much of southern Queensland, establishing huge sheep stations. The violence that erupted welded many of the tribal groups into an alliance that, by 1842, was working to halt the advance. The Battle of One Tree Hill tells the story of one of the most audacious stands against this migration. It concerns actions engineered by a father and son, Moppy and Multuggerah. In 1843, this culminated in an ingenious ambush and one of the first solid defeats of white settlement in Queensland. The battle at Mount Table Top, 128 kilometres west of Brisbane, astounded many at the time. The response was most likely the largest action of the frontier wars: the assembly of some 100 or more officers, soldiers, police and armed settlers – much of the region’s white settlement – drawn from hundreds of square kilometres. This force sought to drive out the warriors, but despite their best efforts, resistance not only persisted, but managed a few more victories. A fort had to be established to protect travellers, and brutal skirmishes, massacres, raids and robberies trickled on for decades. The Battle of One Tree Hill introduces us to many of the flamboyant characters, curious reversals of fortune and neglected incidents that together helped establish early Queensland. This narrative work combines decades of archival research, analysis, reconstruction and interviews conducted by historians Ray Kerkhove and Frank Uhr.