Pioneering Days: Thrilling Incidents

Before the whites invaded Australia were the dusky aborigines of the great continent a happy people? This question is very hard to answer with any degree of certainty. That the males lead a happier life than the unfortunate females goes without saying. The greatest fear and dread a tribe sustained was from its own neighbours--generally an everlasting feud which, now and again, broke out with fearful bloodshed and cold murder, not on innocent men alone but on women and children. When the slaughtering idea got into one tribe's head they would not hesitate for a moment, if strong enough to kill every one of a neighboring family--men, women, and children--they would generally commit the brutal deeds without giving their enemies the slightest warning, their minds and modes of assaulting equal to the tiger or the dingo. From where did the Australian come from? Is he a special creation of this vast, ancient continent, like the marsupial and the emu? Of course, scientists make out, or try to make out, that every tribe of the genus homo must have been created anywhere else to where he and aeons resided, in some other country before reaching that land they now inhabit. A Victorian professor averred that the blackfellow only inhabited Victoria for a period of about 1,000 years. Had he come to the conclusion 10,000 or a 100,000 years he might have been more accurate. The Australian blackfellow is the same type wherever you go--from Port Phillip to Port Darwin, from Swan River to Cape York--all the one and the same breed, The same traits and characteristics; using practically the same style of weapons; the same style of hunting; the same style, without hardly any material variation of building his gunyah. If not the produce of the Australian soil he must have struck the coast somewhere as one type and family; and, as his slow growth of populating the vast continent must have taken countless ages to spread so far and wide. It is useless relying on any of his traditions or legends. He can count up to the number of his fingers. He has no religion worthy of the name, and you cannot Christianise him. You may think you can, but it turns out in the end a big failure. He is, however, an adept at picking up all the evil doings and unchristian language of his white brother. Passing away at such speed to the happy hunting ground of the future, it is only a question of years when the last of him will vanish--the Truganini of Australia.

Whilst on the subject I may mention two or three more incidents of a very narrow escape by one or two of our party. The one who had his hat carried away on the point of a spear at Mary Lake had another close shave at Frances Lake. Our camp at the time was at the later waterhole, and the niggers still kept up their game of planting twigs around the hole. One day two of them came bodily up and started work as usual. The person in question walked up to them revolver in hand. They started away and he turned round to walk back. As he did one of the myalls swung round and hit him a terrible blow on the back of his head which rendered him insensible for three days. Fortunately the deed was noticed from the camp and two or three rushed down on foot and fired, but the niggers got clean away.