FRONTIER JUSTICE
“…rife with prejudice, hearsay and innuendo…”
by Tony Roberts (University of Queensland Press), 2008.
Tony Roberts’ “Frontier Justice” is 316 pages of murder, mayhem and orchestrated genocide, a bloody account of Aboriginal-European slaughter in the pioneering days of the Northern Territory, in Australia.
According to the author, our early settlers deliberately ravished exterminated, enslaved and prostituted Aborigines all over the landscape as they confiscated tribal lands for their cattle herds.
Assisting were the “native police”, a specially selected contingent of Aboriginal killers from far-away places who felt no allegiance with local tribes.
A former employee of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, in Canberra, the author, liberally abetted in his research (?) by such self-ordained “historians” as Richard Kimber, of Alice Springs, the overall view is, predictably, left-wing in its focus, do-gooder in its attitude, with rather strange prejudices against the old-time mounted constables of the Northern Territory’s outback country, such as W. H. Willshire and E. Wurmbrand.
Such men he squarely accuses of outright genocide.
In fact, rather than criticising literally hundreds of alleged massacres, just one – on page 133 – might be a fairly typical example of the author’s bias.
Roberts says: “ … The Central Australian Native Police Unit, which Willshire used with … ruthless brutality that word began to spread. Constable Erwin Wurnbrand and … young Aboriginal troopers made dawn raids on countless Aboriginal camps, shooting occupants either in ‘self-defence’ or while they were ‘attempting to escape.’ Their young recruits were enticed (and retained) by the guns, horses, generous amounts of tobacco and equally generous opportunities for sex with captured girls. Wurmbrand was little better than Willshire. (Lutheran) missionaries from the nearby … mission station at Hermannsburg found the bodies of three alleged cattle killers huddled together in Glen Helen Gorge still chained together, after being shot by Wurmbrand …”
On what evidence was the murderer identified?
Or was Wurmbrand simply suspected of the murders?
Roberts doesn’t bother to enlighten us.
“… On another occasion,” the text continues, “Wurmbrand claimed that he shot one man and wounded others at the foot of Mount Sonder …”
To whom did the policeman confess to the murder?
Or was this common gossip?
“ … A station hand who was with him told the missionaries that seventeen Aboriginals had been shot dead …”
If true, why did not the Lutheran missionaries notify the authorities of the alleged murders?
If there was a reliable witness to the killings, why was not he summoned to give evidence in a court hearing?
Why was not Wurmbrand arrested and charged?
Indeed, why were the supposed killings of twenty Aborigines by rifle shots left unreported?
In short, Tony Roberts book is a rambling, sensationalist account that cannot be taken too literally. It is rife with prejudice, hearsay and innuendo.
COMMENTS
it’s easy to see which side of the predujice line you sit on. If you think Willshire was such a great bloke prove it
— phil hall · 18 June 2011 · #