The Blackness of Pat Eatock's Politics
'Occasionally cases come before court which show the law has been used as an instrument of injustice. The present is such a case.’
‘Quite often … I found cases that would come before me where the actual outcome was something no-one ever intended.’
- Former Justice Ron Merkel speaking with regard to migration cases in 2006 [Ref 1]
On 28 September 2011, outside the Federal Court in Melbourne, a large incongruous group of people had gathered – some cheered with happiness, raised their arms in a battle triumph and waved brightly coloured flags; others yelled and screamed insults at still others in dark suits and ties, who looked forlorn and bewildered at their unexpected loss in the court battle.
Figure 1 - Outside the court on Judgement Day 28 September 2011 in the Eatock v Bolt case.
To some, a great injustice had been righted by the presiding judge, Mordecai “Mordy” Bromberg - journalist Andrew Bolt had been humiliated and brought to heel for contravening the racial vilification provisions the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 with his newspaper articles, which ‘were reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate’ the applicant, Aboriginal woman Pat Eatock because of her ‘race, colour or ethnic origin.’
On exiting the court, Pat Eatock exclaimed that,
“I'm telling you now, this is the highlight of my career, of my life.”
Others believed that the opposite had occurred – a new injustice had been created and a legal precedent had been set to restrict the right to free speech for Australians in general and journalists in particular.
“This is a terrible day for free speech in this country,” Andrew Bolt told the assembled media.
But there was another, very small, un-noticed group of observers who had been following the case carefully - amongst them lawyer Peter Faris QC [see at 03:15], historian Keith Windschuttle [Quadrant 2010 & here] and writer Michael Connor [Quadrant 2011] at the time; and myself today [Dark Emu Exposed website]. This group feared that the case, driven to success by advocate Ron Merkel QC on a pro-bono basis for his client Pat Eatock, would have profound implications for Australia over the coming decades, if not generations.
Thirteen years later these fears appear to have been well founded.
For Justice Bromberg, the issue had not just been only whether or not Pat Eatock the individual was reasonably likely to be offended, but also whether a new ‘class of persons’, described by Bromberg J as ‘fair-skinned Aboriginals’ or, as Bolt labelled them, “white Aborigines” - were reasonably likely to be offended [see Eatock v Bolt at 270 & 288; and Ref 4, p1).
Bromberg J, perhaps unwittingly, had formally recognised (some might say legally “created” or even “invented”) a whole new ‘class’ of Australians before the law – those Australians with some Aboriginal ancestry, often very minor, who self-identified as Aboriginal, but who ‘would be particularly sensitive to the fact that their appearance does not fit the stereotypical image of an Aboriginal person and would be the more offended’ by challenges to the legitimacy of their identity (Ref 4, p1-2 and Eatock v Bolt at 290 & 291; see also historian Henry Reynolds on this vexed question from 07:10 here).
The advocacy of Ron Merkel QC and the judgement of Bromberg J had, in the opinion of these few, insightful observers, spawned a great, new injustice that would go on to create dangerous divisions within our country based on race and ethnicity. The judgement had given a cloak of legal protection to any Australian brazen enough to put on an Aboriginal T-shirt, paint their face in ochre, drape themselves in an Aboriginal flag and self-declare as a proud [insert tribal name(s) here] Aboriginal (wo)man. It did not matter if they had any Aboriginal ancestry or not - after Bolt’s defeat no-one would have the courage to ask or check.
Thus, a New Age was legally born - that of the ‘Aboriginal’ New-Identifier, the Box-Ticker, the Pretendian, and ultimately, the Mistaken, the Fake and the Fraud [these categories will be defined in a later Post. See a summary by Andrew Bolt on the extent of the problem].
Prior to 2011, the odd rat-bag that appeared, self-identifying as a ‘fake Aboriginal’, was laughed out of their silliness, or humiliated by exposure. But after Eatock v Bolt, ‘real’ Aboriginal people would once again experience what ‘dispossession’ felt like as they watched their organisations, their government assistance, their dreams and aspirations, and what little remained of their culture and history, get taken over by Merkel and Bromberg’s self-identifying, ‘fair-skinned Aboriginals’, the new ‘cultural colonisers.’
The broader Australian community would not be immune either to these Box-tickers, with their fakery, pseudo-Indigenous culturalism and ideological drive to re-interpret and even erase our nation’s past history. After Bolt’s loss, anyone, whether Aboriginal or not, who wanted to question a claimant’s belief that they were Aboriginal would think twice and probably keep their concerns to themselves – no-one would have the courage to call them out and ask for their proof, for fear of being sued, or branded as “racist”, “scum” or “an evil person”, as Bolt had been called by the supporters of Pat Eatock’s win outside the court on that judgement day in 2011.
But how did we, as a country get to this point – staring down an ugly road to a future society based on legal and court-enforced, racial and ethnic divisions?
Well, this is where the story gets interesting, very interesting - because in fact Pat Eatock herself was what is now commonly referred to as a ‘fake’ Aboriginal.
Figure 2 - 'Aboriginal' woman, Pat Eatock, 9/6/2012. (Photo Gail Radford) Source ANU
She was mistaken to believe that she was of Aboriginal descent via her grandparents, William and Lucy Eatock.
Newly discovered genealogical and archival evidence will be presented here to show that none of Pat Eatock’s ancestors were Aboriginal [subject to the disclaimer in Figure 3 below].
In fact, according to genealogical records, all of Pat Eatock’s ancestors were of Scottish descent except one - her biological great grandfather, Richard Rose who was actually a ‘man of colour’ from the island of Bequia in St Vincent and the Grenadines in the West Indies.
Furthermore, Richard Rose was born a slave in 1831, the son of William Rose, a slave-owner with some 166 ‘negroes’ on his Union Estate plantation. One of estate’s slaves, the domestic worker, Harriet Williams, was Richard’s mother.
On William Rose’s death in 1839, his 8-year-old son Richard, a ‘boy of colour’, was recognised in the will and left some funding for his care. Later Richard became a registered seaman, found his way to Queensland, where he worked as a miner, had a brief relationship with a married woman, Catherine Eatock, that produced a child, William Rose. Richard Rose separated from Catherine while William was still a baby, resulting in William’s birth surname being changed to Eatock to match his still-married, mother’s surname [evidence is provided in Part 3 of this series, on William Eatock].
Thus, the modern Eatock family line is actually descended from William Rose (later Eatock) who was a Queensland stockman as the family claimed, but he was not an ‘Aboriginal’ one, as they believed.
When Ron Merkel QC read out to the court his client’s witness statement, a statement that Pat Eatock had signed and swore an affirmation to [Ref 3], he was unwittingly misleading the court:
“My grandmother’s husband, my grandfather, was an Aboriginal man, Bill [William] Eatock. They married in 1894 [sic 1895]. He looked very Aboriginal. I have seen a photograph of Bill; he had a very black face and a long white beard.”
- Ron Merkel QC, reading his client’s witness statement (Ref 2, p51-2)
Pat was undoubtably correct that William probably had a ‘black face’ - his grandmother after all had been an African or West Indian negro slave - but Pat had just assumed that ‘blackness’ in Australia was solely derived from being an authentic Aboriginal. It is almost as if Pat had thought to herself, “My grandfather was black and looked ‘very Aboriginal', so he must have been Aboriginal.”
And thus the irony and injustice of the Eatock v Bolt case is revealed:
Pat Eatock successfully sued Andrew Bolt because he dared to look at her ‘fair-skin’, and then spoke and wrote about her not being Aboriginal in a real, meaningful way. Rather he saw her as a white, Australian woman of mainly Scottish ancestry, who was relying upon a small percentage of claimed Aboriginality to, “thrive as an Aboriginal bureaucrat, activist and academic.”
But Pat Eatock did exactly the same thing when she looked at the ‘dark-skin’ of her grandfather and only saw him as a black, Aboriginal man rather than the Australian stockman of Scottish and West Indian heritage that he really was. She went on to write and speak mistakenly about her identity, as an Aboriginal woman, with no fear because she was now one of the protected new class of “fair-skinned Aborigines.”
In reality, Bolt got his facts essentially correct and Pat was wildly mistaken as to her own ancestry - her father and grandfather weren’t Aboriginal at all. But more worryingly, Ron Merkel QC and Justice Bromberg believed her, and agreed with her, thereby creating a legal precedent that was to protect all future ‘fake’ Aborigines from legitimate scrutiny.
Justice Bromberg had thus endorsed a great injustice, not only to Bolt, but to the rest of Australia as well, particularly to the ‘real’ Aboriginal Australians who now find the ‘fakes’ infiltrating and influencing increasingly larger segments of their lives and culture.
By censuring Bolt, Justice Bromberg had thwarted the real value that free-speech plays in a liberal, democratic and egalitarian modern society like Australia’s - citizen’s need to be able to freely speak their minds, without fear or favour, so that ideas and proposals can be debated, assessed and selected to enable societal progress, or to be rejected, or to be modified, as the case maybe.
Inadvertently, besides crippling free-speech in the commentary of Aboriginal affairs, Merkel QC and Bromberg J have allowed great harm to ensue on Australian race-relations in general, and the protection of ‘real’ Aboriginal people from the onslaught of ‘fakes’ running through our institutions in particular. They should be ashamed of their conduct.
This is very long post and it has been deliberately filled with detail, because it refers to a very important legal case that has turned out to be something of a watershed for social cohesion in Australia - a turning point if you will. As much detail as possible has been provided so readers can make up their own minds on the merits, or otherwise, of the direction in which Justice Bromberg’s ruling has sent our country.
In my opinion, it is a legal case to which the country should return for re-assessment and perhaps even re-adjudication and re-legislation, otherwise Australia will continue on the path of racial classification and division that the precedents of this case have given a life to.
Part 1 of this series of posts, setting the legal background of the 2011 Eatock v Bolt case, appeared here: Part 1 - Merkel v Merkel
This post is Part 2 and is concerned with presenting evidence to show that the late Pat Eatock was mistaken to believe that her grandparents, William and Lucy Eatock were Aboriginal, and that the family’s oral history that supported her beliefs were largely fabricated by herself and her late sister, Joan DeCressac (nee Eatock).
In the final Part 3 post, evidence will be presented that resolves Pat and Joan’s dilemma - they could find no documentary proof that their father Roderick Eatock, and grandparents William and Lucy Eatock were Aboriginal, but deep-down they knew these three must have been Aboriginal because as Pat said, they each had ‘a very black face’, or ‘clearly looked Aboriginal.’
Pat and Joan saw the colour black and jumped to what they naturally thought was a logical conclusion in Australia - their forebears must have been Aboriginal.
But they were wrong, very wrong, as will be shown.
Part 2 - Why Pat Eatock Was Mistaken to Believe that She Was Aboriginal
Based on information from members of the extended Eatock family, coupled with publically available genealogical records and other archival sources, an alleged family tree of Pat Eatock has been constructed (Figure 3).
It shows that Pat Eatock was mistaken to believe that her grandparents William Eatock [birth name Rose] and Lucy Harriet Eatock (nee Wakenshaw) were Aboriginal. They were in fact of Scottish descent, with William additionally having a grandmother who was of African or West Indian slave ancestry.
Based on the work presented here, there is no Aboriginal ancestry in this branch of the William Eatock [Rose] and Lucy Harriet Eatock (nee Wakenshaw) Family Tree, subject to the disclaimer below in Figure 3.
Figure 3 - Alleged paternal branch of the Family Tree of Pat Eatock.
Disclaimer: This genealogical work has been undertaken in good faith and is based on the publicly available records. However, it cannot account for events which may result in Aboriginal ancestry entering into the family line such as via a private or unrecorded adoption of an Aboriginal child into the family, or a relationship out of wedlock between a family member and an Aboriginal person that produced a child of Aboriginal descent who was then incorporated into the family without record, or with a record that did not disclose the Aboriginality of that child.
The primary document that all other researchers reference when investigating the Eatock Family Tree is the marriage record of William Eatock and Lucy Harriet Wakenshaw (Figures 4). These marriage details were relied upon to form the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Lucy Wakenshaw. Many other Eatock family members include these same details in their published family trees on Ancestry.com (here).
Figures 4A&B - Marriage record of 18 November 1895 for William Eatock and Lucy Wakenshaw [Pat Eatock's grandparents]. Place of Marriage: Springsure (at Alexander Wakenshaw’s residence); William Eatock - Birthplace: Gympie, Queensland, Occupation: Stockman; Age 26 [thus born ca1869] ; His Father: Thomas [sic] Eatock; His Mother: Catherine Davidson.
Lucy Harriet Wakenshaw - Birthplace: Springsure, Queensland; Her Father: Alexander Wakenshaw; Age 21 [thus born ca1874] Her Father’s Occupation: Divisional Board Overseer; Her Mother: Jane Lindsay Cousins. Source QLDBDM# 1895/C/1891 - Full Page extract here pdf
William and Lucy’s marriage record provided the names of who William believed his parents were - Thomas [sic] Eatock and Catherine Davidson.
However, no record has been found of a Thomas Eatock marrying a Catherine Davidson - instead there is a record of her marrying a Timothy Eatock, in Gympie, Queensland in 1868.
Figure 5 - Extract of the 1868 Marriages Solemnized in the District of Wide Bay in the Colony of Queensland book showing the marriage of a Timothy Eatock and a Catherine Davidson in Gympie on 24 August 1868.
Date of Marriage: 24 August 1868; Place of Marriage: Gympie; Timothy Eatock, Widower, Labourer; Aged: 40; Place of Birth: Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Catherine Davidson, Widow [sic]; Aged: 27 [ie born ca1841]; Place of Birth: Edinburgh, Scotland; Father: Donald Davidson, Shoemaker; Mother: Allison Cooper.
Source: Marriage QLDBDM# 1868/C/322 - Full Page Copy here
This indicates that William Eatock, in his own marriage record (Figures 4 above), mistakenly recorded his father’s first name as 'Thomas' due to most likely never really knowing who his father was. Timothy Eatock appears to have separated from Catherine, her first son Donald, and William even before William was born [further discussed in Part 3 of the series].
The marriage record (in Figure 5) indicates that both Timothy Eatock and Catherine Davidson were born overseas - in England [see here] and Scotland respectively [Additional Research Notes confirming Catherine’s birth and census in Scotland and arrival in Queensland here].
All the other family researchers on Ancestry.com finalise their family trees at this point. They all believe that the apical ancestors of this branch are Timothy Eatock, born in England and Catherine Davidson born in Scotland [See extracts of other family trees here].
Before we consider the new research that shows the Eatock family, as well as all the other Ancestry.com researchers, are mistaken to believe that the Englishman, Timothy Eatock, was the biological father of William Eatock, it is instructional to provide the background on how two family descendants, the late Pat Eatock and her late sister, Joan deCressac (nee Eatock), successfully fabricated the family’s oral history to ‘fake’ their own Aboriginality.
This fabrication was so good apparently that it fooled some of Australia’s finest legal minds down at the Federal Court in 2011.
While they were alive, developing their ‘family story’ together, Pat and Joan could not always agree on the exact details of the family’s oral history. This is not surprising when family members set out to ‘fake’ an imaginary family ancestry. However, they were both of one mind when it came to their grandparents, William and Lucy Eatock - they really were Aboriginal because, ‘we really need them to be Aboriginal, and don’t let anyone say otherwise.’
Even if it took some ‘tall family stories’ and a manipulation of the archival records, and a few outright fabrications, then so be it. It was all in the righteous cause of Aboriginal political justice and a Truth-Telling aimed at righting the racism and past injustices of Australia’s colonial history. The only problem was that none of what Pat and Joan claimed about their professed Aboriginality was true.
1. Pat and Joan’s Fabrications
Pat and Joan were largely alone, in that generation of their family, in claiming Aboriginality for William and Lucy. Even the Australian Dictionary of Biography diplomatically declined to agree that Lucy was Aboriginal [and hints at the motivation as to why Lucy’s grandchildren (i.e. Pat and Joan) might be eager to claim Aboriginality for themselves]:
When, in a time of reawakened pride for indigenous Australians, Lucy's grandchildren and great grandchildren reclaimed their Aboriginality, they also suggested that Lucy's mother had been Kitty, an Aboriginal woman employed by the Wakenshaws. Neither Lucy nor any of her children [includes Pat & Joan’s father, Roderick] is known to have made such an assertion. - ADB [our emphasis]
None of the other family trees on Ancestry.com claim that there was any Aboriginality in this branch of the Eatock family line [See excerpts of the other family trees here]. In particular, none claim that William Eatock, Pat’s grandfather was Aboriginal. This lack of Aboriginality in William Eatock is supported by contemporary newspaper reports.
In 1906, the Queensland Times reported on a robbery:
Winton, June 11.
At the Police Court, to-day, William Newman, an aboriginal, was charged with entering a dwelling-house for an unlawful purpose, and also with illegally using a horse, the property of Cobb and Co. Evidence showed that the accused entered a tent at the Alice tank, on the Longreach-road, occupied by Mrs. Eatock, wife of a groom [William Eatock] there, during the night. The woman, who was awakened by the blackfellow accidentally kicking a kerosine tin, seized a pair of scissors, and the black, thinking it was a revolver, fled, taking one of Cobb's horses. On [William] Eatock's return the latter went in pursuit, and captured the aboriginal, and tied him up till the police came. Accused was sentenced to six months' imprisonment on each charge, the sentences to be cumulative. - Queensland Times, 14 June 1906, p. 10
This report raises an interesting point - if Pat Eatock was correct that her grandparents William and Lucy Eatock were Aboriginal, why wasn’t that noted in this article? The only person reported as being ‘aboriginal’ or a ‘blackfellow’ in this incident was the intruder, William Newman [who re-offended two years later].
Interestingly, as the research into the claims of Aboriginality in the Eatock family progressed, it became apparent that both Pat and her sister Joan were embellishing, if not out-right fabricating, some parts of the family’s history. For example, the account that Joan published of the ‘aboriginal intruder’ story above is markedly different to that of the newspaper’s [see Joan’s version here ].
Joan’s version illustrates a common ploy of ‘fakes’ - include Aboriginal ‘cultural markers’ or tropes that the reader should be aware of so as to give legitimacy to the hoax. This technique is commonly used by ‘fakes’ to lull the reader into thinking, “Oh yes, Joan must be a real Aboriginal and telling the truth - she recognises all the right cultural mores: ‘the Aboriginal intruder is a young male who as yet had not completed his intiation’; ‘the local Aborigines are wary of the new Aborigines, William and Lucy’; the local Aborigines are humbugging fringe dwellers living on handouts of food and clothing’. Never mind that in reality the intruder was described as, “a neatly dressed young aboriginal giving the name of William Newman” when he re-offended; and the incident with Lucy was nothing more than a case of petty theft.
Similarly, if William and Lucy were Aboriginal why were they listed on the Queensland Electoral Roll? (Figures 6 & 7). Queensland at that time had some of Australia’s most restrictive laws regarding Aboriginal voting, freedom of movement and labour, custody of children and control over personal property [Source]. William and Lucy did not seem to have these rights restricted in their case at all, which is further evidence that they were not considered Aboriginal.
Figure 6 - Extract from post-Federation Australian Electoral Roll of 1903 listing both William and Lucy Eatock in Springsure, Queensland.
Figure 7 - Extract of the 1908 Queensland Electoral Roll. The information here corroborates the 1906 Queensland times report on the robbery above - William and Lucy Eatock were living at the Alice Tank and William was a groom.
Figure 8 - Map showing some of the towns and places related to where William and Lucy Eatock lived and worked.
Neither the late Pat Eatock [1937-2015], nor her late sister Joan [1936-2006?], ever provided or published any documentary evidence to support their claims that William and Lucy were Aboriginal.
Figure 9 - 'Aboriginal' woman Joan Eatock in 2003 at her book launch. Source AIATSIS Archive : MS4304
Instead, they self-proclaimed their Aboriginal ancestry by asserting that they had undertaken ‘historical research’ themselves as well as relying upon their memories and the so-called oral history of the family.
When Ron Merkel QC stood up in Federal Court and read out his client’s sworn witness statement, he gave the appearance of believing what he was presenting and, because of his eminence, the court understandably came to the belief that he was endorsing Pat’s assertions about her grandparents as being truthful.
But anyone applying even a little critical thinking could see that Pat’s claims just sounded like ‘grandma’s family rumours’, especially since no independent corroborating documentary evidence was submitted to the court to support her ‘stories.’
For example, Ron Merkel QC told the court on Pat’s behalf that,
“I am an Aboriginal person with Aboriginal ancestry. My grandmother, Lucy Eatock, was born in Carnarvon Gorge in central Queensland in 1874. This is an Aboriginal birthing place, an Aboriginal women’s place, an Aboriginal commitment place. She was one of the Kirri people.”
During the trial, no one tendered, or even asked to be tendered, Luck Eatock’s birth record to corroborate Pat’s claim. If they had, they would have seen that it did not record that she was an Aboriginal from the ‘Kirri tribe’ [no record of tribe with that exact name exists in Tindale’s compendium here] - nor does it record that she was born in Carnarvon Gorge, 180km south of her actual birth place, Springsure (Figure 10).
Figure 10 - Extract of Birth Record for Lucy Harriet Wakenshaw (#296, second line entry) in the District of Springsure in the colony of Queensland
When and Where Born: 7 June 1874, Fulham, Springsure; Lucy Harriet [Wakenshaw] (not present [at registration]) – overwritten at a later date: “Died 1950 as Eatock”]; Sex female; Father: Alexander Wakenshaw, Bushman, 41 years, (Birthplace) Coldstream Berwick Shire Scotland; When & where married: 10 April 1857 Collingwood Victoria; Previous issue (children) :14 years, 12years, 10years, 8 years, 6 years, 4 years, 2 years [Lucy’s birth thus continues the 2 year interval between children]; Mother: Jane Lindsay Cousins; Accoucheur: [one that assists at a birth esp. obstetrician] Dr Callaghan; Nurse: Ann Keaogh? Name of Witness: nil; Registered/Registrar: Signed? 8th July 1874, Springsure
Source: Birth QLDBDM# 1874/C/3610. Second line entry in Full page here pdf
Instead, Lucy’s birth record confirms that she was born at the Wakenshaw’s family home, Fulham, which had been built by her bushman father, Alexander, when he settled in Springsure in 1870 (Figure 11).
Lucy was delivered by the town’s Accoucheur [one that assists at a birth esp. obstetrician] Dr Joseph Callaghan, who had been the second appointed surgeon at Springsure hospital commencing in 1874. The assisting nurse (midwife) was Ann Keaogh[?]
The ‘tall story’ about Pat’s grandmother Lucy being born in Carnarvon Gorge, that Ron Merkel QC related to the court in 2011, clearly did not match the documentary evidence.
Was Ron Merkel QC suggesting that the group consisting of the parents of Lucy, the town’s surgeon Dr Callaghan, and Nurse Keaogh, all conspired to fraudulently sign a birth record stating that the birth of girl named Lucy Harriet had occurred at a home in Springsure, when in reality she had been delivered ‘in an Aboriginal birthing place’ 180km south of town in Carnarvon Gorge?
Figure 11 - Said to be a photograph of where Lucy Eatock was recorded as being born - Fulham, Springsure[Home to Alexander and Jane Wakenshaw c. 1906 - named Fulham after the area in Scotland - the split slab buildings were built by Alexander, a bush carpenter. The two women are Jane and his daughter Mary Jane (known as Jane). Photo credit to Qld State Library]
Figure 12 - Map showing Carnarvon Gorge 180km south of Lucy Harriet's recorded birth place in Springsure.
At the time, Ron Merkel QC made no comment, and pushed on delivering Pat’s sworn witness statement to the court before Justice Bromberg:
“My grandmother’s mother was an Aboriginal woman called Kitty. My grandmother had a non-Aboriginal father. My grandmother’s father was, I believe, Adam Wakenshaw, although she was raised by his older brother, Alexander Wakenshaw. Adam Wakenshaw was a carter. Carters often had Aboriginal women as slave sex partners or assistants. My grandmother lived with my mother and our family from 1947 until her death in 1950. I have photos of Lucy; she is clearly Aboriginal but not particularly dark.”
One wonders whether Ron Merkel QC was conscious of the slanderous nature of these assertions, as he transmitted them to the court, for slanderous indeed they were.
As the birth record confirms, Alexander Wakenshaw was legally recorded as the father of Pat’s grandmother, Lucy (Figure 10). She was born on 7 June 1874, so if Alexander’s brother, Adam Wakenshaw, had really been Lucy’s father, as Pat alleged, then he would have had to have cohabited with Kitty in the Carnarvon Gorge/Springsure area some 40 weeks earlier, around 1 September 1873.
Unfortunately for Pat’s ‘tall tale’, Adam was a well-respected and busy farmer with a large family and had always lived in the Euroa region of Victoria, some 1800km south of Springsure [see Research Notes here].
And more importantly, as documentary proof that Adam could not have fathered a child on, or about, 1 September 1873 in Springsure, a notice in Victoria’s North Eastern Ensign newspaper recorded that Adam Wakenshaw jnr. was to be at a farmer’s meeting he had called at Duck Ponds in Victoria on 3 September 1873 (Figure 13).
Adam could not have been at two places, 1800km apart, at the one time. He physically could not have been in the Springsure area fathering a child with his alleged, “sex slave partner Kitty” while chairing a schoolhouse meeting in Duck Ponds, Victoria.
The sad irony one often sees in the process of exposing ‘fakes’ is how desperate they are to abandon, and even hate, their own European heritage in exchange for some self-appointed life as a ‘fake’ Aborigine, putting on a coloured T-shirt and trying to live in a culture that they just will never understand, nor gain any real acceptance within. Pat Eatock would have done better justice to herself and her family if she had studied and embraced her own Scottish heritage, perhaps heeding the warning of her real, tribal elder, Sir Walter Scott:
"O what a tangled web we weave,/ When first we practice to deceive"
- canto 6, stanza 17 in the 1808 poem Marmion by Sir Walter Scott
Figure 13 - Newspaper Notice confirming that Adam Wakenshaw jun[ior] was in Victoria around 3 September 1873 and could not have been 1800km north at Springsure, fathering a child with his "sex slave partner" Kitty, as claimed by Pat Eatock. [Note: Adam Wakenshaw senior was father to both Adam jun and Alexander (in Springsure)]. Source: The North Eastern Ensign (Benalla, Victoria), 22 August 1873, p. 3
Figure 14 - Said to be a photograph of Adam Wakenshaw jnr, possibly with his second wife on their wedding day in 1882
Source: Ancestry user Maggie Charlton originally shared this on 15 Jan 2021 [Annie Gordon Family Tree]; Marriage VICBDM# 805/1882,
Further Research Notes on Adam Wakenshaw (Lucy Eatock's uncle) here - for Pat Eatock to assert that a man such as this had an 'Aboriginal sex slave partner' in Queensland is clearly slanderous.
Pat Eatock had simply asserted, without providing any further detail or documentary proof that, “My grandmother’s mother was an Aboriginal woman called Kitty”, despite her grandmother Lucy’s birth record (Figure 10) legally confirming her mother to be, ‘Jane Lindsay Cousins’ [Alexander Wakenshaw’s wife] (Figure 15.)
Figure 15 - Said to be a photograph of Jane Lindsay Wakenshaw (nee Cousins) who is the recorded as the mother on Lucy Harriet Wakenshaw's birth record. Source: Ancestry user Robyn Barton Burrows originally shared this on 2 May 2023
In her witness statement Pat Eatock’ claimed,
“I have photos of Lucy; she is clearly Aboriginal but not particularly dark.”
For what it is worth, the following three photographs, said to be of Lucy Eatock, would not, to many people’s mind, reflect a ‘clearly Aboriginal’ appearance. Rather, it could be said that Lucy ‘clearly’ has similarities in facial structure and appearance to her solid, Scottish ‘birth record’ mother, Jane Wakenshaw (nee Cousins) (Figure 15), as one would expect.
Figure 16 - Said to be a photograph of Lucy Harriet Eatock (Unknown date).Source: Ancestry user Natalie Millgate originally shared this on 21 Mar 2023
Figure 18 - Said to be an Eatock Family Photograph (Bardon, Qld, Christmas Day, 1947).
Description: Standing (L toR) Jean, Pat (Pat Eatock), Ellen, Joan (Joan Eatock). Sitting: Lucy (Lucy Harriet (nee Wakenshaw), Pauline, and Elizabeth Stevenson (nee Stuart-Anderson), nursing Roderick. Source: Joan E Eatock book, Delusions of Grandeur, 2003
Figure 17 - Said to be a photograph of Lucy Harriet Eatock (Unknown date). Source: ADB
The late Joan Eatock, Pat’s sister, had her own theories about Lucy’s Aboriginality too, although she was much more vague about where it had originated from.
In her, some might think aptly named, 2003 book Delusions of Grandeur, Joan just states that Lucy was a ‘half-caste’, but she provided no reasoning or evidence to support her claim. Joan does introduce an Aboriginal woman named ‘Kitty’ into the household, as Pat did in her court witness statement, but she does not say how Kitty relates to Lucy’s assumed ‘Aboriginality’. Is she letting the reader connect the imaginary and scandalous dots themselves? (see here).
It seems that Lucy’s grand-daughters, the sister’s Pat and Joan, had disagreements about the “interpretation” of the family’s oral history, as Pat revealed under cross-examination during the 2011 trial by Bolt’s counsel, Mr Young [Ref 2, p70]:
Mr Young: “…When did your sister Joan become involved in that process of researching your family history?
Pat Eatock: I’m not really sure.
Mr Young: Well, she did become involved, did she not?
Pat Eatock: She did, and she wrote a book on it.
…
Mr Young: Now, you and your sister Joan have taken a view, or expressed a view in the family history about your family descent lines, have you not?
Pat Eatock: I’m sorry, I cannot accept responsibility for anything that Joan wrote. We have – we had, while she was alive, we had disagreements about interpretation in very many parts of that book.
Mr Young: Yes, all right. Well, let me ask you this: some of your relatives do not identify themselves as Aboriginal, as you do?
Pat Eatock: That’s right.
Mr Young: They’ve made different decisions about their Aboriginal identity?
Pat Eatock: That’s right.
Archival material held at AIATSIS was found to shed further light on Joan’s ‘interpretation’ of Lucy’s ancestry, and it is a very dim light indeed that inspires no confidence whatsoever in what Pat or Joan have asserted about Lucy.
The AIATSIS archive holds the research and transcription notes from a series of interviews that the ABC’s Lea Redfern had in 1999 with people connected to the Eatock family [AIATSIS Call number MS 4304 - Research papers Joan E Eatock]. Redfern used their input to produce the ABC Hindsight podcast, Lucy’s Legacy.
Figure 19 - Advertising summary of an ABC podcast, Lucy's Legacy, first broadcast in 1999. Importantly, the ABC producer, Lea Redfern also recognises the crux of the dilemma in Pat and Joan's claimed ancestry for their grandmother:"Lucy eatock was born in colonial Queensland in the late 19th century, her dark skin making the white parentage on her birth certificate somewhat ambigious [sic]". Source - Original program not available.
In one of the archival interview transcripts, Joan admitted that when speaking of her grandmother,
JE: “…it was only occasionally she’d come across this [racism] all of a sudden and the more she was with her husband, she’d find that the more she was dragged in to [sic] being a Koorie - even though [laughs] [one] couldn’t deny it but the thing was that she had never - you don’t ask yourself in the mirror and think, “Ooh I’m a Koorie, I’m an Aboriginal person” - you see yourself … you just see yourself - and she was shocked, you know, when she came across racism, and the more she was with her husband [William (Bill) Eatock], who I think - by the colour of their sons - was a bit darker than what she was…”
“…she [Lucy] didn’t look to be accepted in the Aboriginal community, she looked to be accepted in the European Community which was the sad part of the whole familiy.”
“Lucy grew up in Springsure Queensland. She was the eighth child - according to the birth certificate too - and I’m putting question marks there and its nothing I know, so I can’t really say. It’s a question mark - Ahhh to, um, Jane Lindsay Cousins and Alexander Wakenshaw…”
Interviewer: “Now, you put question marks around the birth certificate, can you tell me why?”
“Because the resemblance between the photos I’ve seen of her isn’t there - there isn’t that much resemblance - and I just don’t know how. She’s an Aboriginal woman - Jane Lindsay Cousins may have been an Aboriginal woman - it could have been that way. I can’t find Jane Lindsay Cousins coming to Australia on any boat record, I can’t, I haven’t tried to get her birth certificate from Scotland where she is supposed to have come from…“ [Ed: but our researchers have, here it is - her record on the Census’ in Scotland in 1841, ‘51 & ‘61 and her arrival in Brisbane on the boat, Jessie Munn, 1862].
“… Jane Lindsay Cousins, she could have been Aboriginal but they [other extended family members] deny it, and I’m not gunna [sic] argue with them. If she wasn’t an aboriginal woman she wasn’t my grandmother’s mother - it’s just that simple, but if she was an Aboriginal woman, she could have been, I don’t know. I don’t trust just bits of paper that somebodies written - that’s not to my [sic] proving anything when I know the woman.”
Interviewer: So, if Jane wasn’t your grandmother’s mother, who do you think was?
“ - well it could have been Kitty. Kitty was the housekeeper and in my aunt’s memoirs she said a lot about Kitty and I remember her talking about Kitty, but not anything specific, but as soon as I saw Kitty it triggered some memories - my thoughts - that I had heard about Kitty, but I don’t know how many people talk so much about the house-keeper, the kitchen girl or the young Aboriginal girl who was there.”
Interviewer: So what do you think happened in that family?
“- well if Jane Lindsay - if - this is all supposition, but if Jane was a white woman, then I think she just had enough of having children and she shut the door on her husband, and when he went elsewhere, she probably just agreed to put - because he put her name on the birth certificate not her - he did a month after the baby was born and she might have just agreed to put her name down and fostered the child because obviously she was a nice woman … I don’t know where the truth comes from - all I know is that they produced a very strong, very handsome, Aboriginal woman [Lucy] and how she was produced, I just don’t know.”
Reading this, one gets the impression that Joan had no idea how, nor had any documentary evidence to show that, Lucy was Aboriginal, let alone the daughter of an Aboriginal housekeeper called Kitty, who had supposedly been ‘seduced’ by either Alexander Wakenshaw (according to Joan), or his brother Adam (according to Pat Eatock’s version).
Lea Redfern also interviewed historian Hall Greenland in 1999 during her research into Lucy Eatock. Greenland wrote the ADB entry on Lucy Harriet Eatock, where he diplomatically pointed out that it was only,
“Lucy's grandchildren and great grandchildren [who] reclaimed their Aboriginality [and only they] suggested that Lucy's mother had been Kitty, an Aboriginal woman employed by the Wakenshaws. Neither Lucy nor any of her children [eg Roderick, Pat and Joan’s father] is known to have made such an assertion. The grandchildren [Pat & Joan] had made these suggestions about Lucy’s Aborginality in the new “…time of reawakened pride for indigenous Australians…”
Lea Redfern, the interviewer, posed a question to Hall: You’ve talked to a lot of contempts, family’s attitude to their Aboriginality?
Hall: “Wasn’t talked about … only post Lucy’s death in 1950s … that people started to talk … some of the Eatock’s decided to claim … others decided they were now part of white society and they’ve never mentioned it again and may or may not become annoyed if people did raise it …”
But then Greenland, with no evidence or documentary proof of his own, just parrots the hearsay of Pat and Joan when he tells his interviewer that,
“And I think Lucy was the result of, and I think there must have been a bit of this, a liaison between a white father and Kitty the housekeeper, the Aboriginal housekeeper.”
The most troubling aspect of this family oral history is the lack of evidence about the central character, the so-called Kitty. No one has provided any evidence, photograph, diary entry or other documented proof for the existence of this woman, who is said to have been a family employee in the 1870s-80s.
Joan Eatock is expecting her readers to believe what she says about Kitty, based on an aunt’s unpublished memoirs and Joan’s own “triggered” memories after she says she saw a photograph of Kitty - a photograph we have not seen because she did not include it in her book along with the other family photographs she deemed worthy of interest. And all this speculation happened 120 years after Kitty was supposed to have lived with the Wakenshaws. It all just sounds like a hoax.
An interesting counter to Joan’s theory about “Kitty the Aboriginal housekeeper” comes from ‘letter to the editor’ published in 1925, by an L. H. Eatock, who was none other than Pat and Joan’s grandmother, Lucy (Harriet) Eatock, herself.
Figure 21 - 'Letter to the Editor by L(ucy) H(arriet) Eatock on 11 August 1925 advising that, "My mother took the woman [a Kanaka [named Lizzie or Tacrow] and she was a very slow worker, but very kind and good to us children. She lived only a few years …
KANAKA HISTORY,
Sir, — Re the alleged enslaving of the Kanaka. I am a native of Springsure (not Springshore), and I know of no inhuman treatment of Kanakas. About 1884 a few were brought from the Islands, amongst them being four for Mr. Henry Richards, three men and one woman. One of the men went mad and murdered his two mates. My mother took the woman, and she was a very slow worker, but very kind and good to us children. She lived only a few years … I am certain that no Kanakas were treated as slaves round Springsure.— Yours, etc.,
L. H. EATOCK.
Bankstown [Sydney]
Could this South Sea Islander woman, a Tongan named Lizzie or Tacrow [from the inquest notes] have been the faint “family oral history memory” that ultimately became, 120 years later, the “Kitty” of Pat and Joan?
Grandma Lucy Eatock had been moved enough in 1925 to write ‘to the editor’ about a black housekeeper of her childhood, of 50 years ago. By the late 1940s, she was living with Pat and Joan, re-telling the family stories of the past. Was this particular story, ‘re-imagined’ by Pat and Joan for use, as Hall Greenland implied, in a “time of reawakened pride for indigenous Australians…”, to provide the link to “blackness” so desperately needed by modern-day Eatocks to secure their place in the era of Aboriginal “reawakened pride”?
We will probably never know, but the following story is a good example of just how far Joan Eatock would go in reimagining the family’s past.
2. An Aboriginal Re-imagination by Joan Eatock
Joan Eatock’s 2003 book, Delusions of Grandeur, is riddled with ‘tall stories’ based on embellished or even false tales, whose sole aim is to subtly guide the reader into believing that the family has an oppressed, Aboriginal ancestry. For example, Joan wrote:
Figures 22A&B - Extracts of the 'cattle-branding family story' from Joan Eatock's 2003 book, Delusions of Grandeur, p12-13.
In all great hoaxes there always has to be an element of truth that the fraudster relies upon to beguile his victims into believing the total fraud. In this story, Joan wants the reader to believe that William and Lucy were two oppressed Aborigines, living on the margins of a white society that denied them legal access to the branding irons they needed to get their share of the pastoral boom.
The truth of the matter was that both William and Lucy did not need to use subterfuge - by inventing a special interlocking WE brand that, as ‘Aborigines’ they could hide if disturbed by a white boss - to get a branding iron. All they had to do was to apply for a brand legally under Queensland’s Brands Act 1872, which is exactly what they did.
A year prior to his marriage to Lucy, the 1894 records show that William already had his own 3 digit stock brand registered - a notice appeared in a Supplement to the Queensland Government Gazette to advise that he had been granted a ‘change of residence’ of where the brand was to be used.
Figures 23 - Extract of a Notice in Queensland Government Gazette advising of a 'Change of Residence' for William Eatock's 3-digit brand - No. of Certificate: 1162, Name of Proprietor: William Eatock, Run or Farm where Brand is to be used: Balmy Hills, Nearest Post Town: Springsure, Remarks: Brands Directory for 1893
Source: Volume 62, Brisbane. T.P. Pugh's Printing Office, 1894, Supplement to the Queensland Government Gazette, Tuesday, 28th August 1894, Vol. LXII., No. 47. p. 452
Not to be outdone by her husband William, Lucy obtained in her own name a brand by transferring (buying?) one from a Ned Collins in the year 1901, as reported in the Qld Government Gazette:
Figures 24 - Extract of a Notice in Queensland Government Gazette advising of 'BRANDS TRANSFERRED DURING THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1901'. No. of Certificate: B28540; Transferor: Ned Collins; Transferee: Lucy Eatock; Name of Run or Farm where Brand is to be used: Springsure; Nearest Post Town: Springsure.
Source: Queensland Government Gazette (Text Queensland), Volume 74, Brisbane. T.P. Pugh's Printing Office, 1900, , Supplement to the Queensland Government Gazette, Tuesday, 23rd October, 1900, Vol. LXXIV., No. 121, p.1191
The dilemma for Joan Eatock’s readers is thus - if William and Lucy were oppressed Aborigines, how is it that they were legally allowed to register their own stock brands? What was the real story in the 1890s-1900s - were Aborigines allowed to own brands or not?; or maybe William and Lucy were just not Aboriginal after all?
To further devalue anything Joan Eatock has written regarding her early family history, the fundamental error she has made in this fabricated story about her ancestor’s ‘hidden’ WE cattle-brand is that, under the Queensland law, all brands had to be of 3-digits: either, two letters plus one numeral; or two signs and one numeral. This is illustrated in William and Lucy’s registered brands in Figures 23 and 24 above respectively.
Thus, there would have been no point in alleged cattle-duffers like William and Lucy (another slanderous claim made by modern-day Eatocks, with no real evidence, against their ancestors) producing a 2-digit brand - even if it was devised by Joan to be a romantically entwined “WE” - an interlock of ‘love?’ A 2-digit brand would have been seen as the clear counterfeit that it was, and any cattle thus branded would have been rejected at market as being probably stolen. (Figure 25).
Figure 25 - Information from a Family History website on the use of stock-brands in Queensland genealogical research. In particular brands had to be made of 3-digits : either two letters plus one numeral; or two signs and one numeral.
The real sadness of the Pat and Joan Eatock story is that they were willing to trash not only the good name of their own ancestors, but also that of Australia and its pioneers of the 19th century, who built the nation we all enjoy today.
The horrific killings of the Kanaka men near Springsure - the Marmadilla Tragedy - occurred in 1881 when Lucy would have been about 7-years-old. The sole survivor of the group, the black Kanaka ‘gin’ as she was referred to in the press reports, then worked as a housekeeper in the Wakenshaw house after Alexander and Jane took her in. She looked after Lucy for “a few years until she died.”
Many observers would see the Presbyterian Wakenshaws as being very compassionate people by their willingness to take in a ‘black’, a Kanaka survivor from a mass killing, and it is not surprising that Alexander Wakenshaw was a respected Elder of the church.
Somehow, when one reads the published life of Alexander Wakenshaw - his successful rise from poor immigrant, to bushman and farmer and family man on the Queensland frontier, and ultimately to a respected civic and church figure in Springsure, and then compares that to the so-called achievements of his grand daughters, Pat and Joan Eatock, with their slanderous, unfounded accusations against Alexander’s family, one just feels so sad that it should have come to this for Pat and Joan.
When one reads of the family divisions caused by Pat and her false claims to Aboriginality and watches videos [here and here] and reads her court statement, of the broken-down life of penury that Pat seems to have ended up with, one can’t help but feel very, very sad that the court judgement of Justice Bromberg is only going to open the flood gates to what many Australians today see as no more than a bunch of racial, attention-seeking ‘grifters’, the modern-day, ‘fake’ Aborigines.
This Part 2 has focused on providing the evidence to show that Lucy Harriet Eatock was not Aboriginal - both her parents had been born in Scotland.
The next Part 3 in the Revisiting Eatock v Bolt series will be posted tomorrow, September 13th, and will focus on providing the evidence to show that Lucy’s husband, William Eatock [birth name Rose] was not Aboriginal either.
References
Ref 1. In the opening quote used in this post, Ron Merkel QC was refering to migration cases:
'Occasionally cases come before court which show the law has been used as an instrument of injustice. The present is such a case.’ & ‘Quite often … I found cases that would come before me where the actual outcome was something no-one ever intended.’
- Former Justice Ron Merkel speaking with regard to migration cases in 2006 on the Law Report ABC Radio Broadcast Tue 23 May 2006 at 8:30am. [Transcript here]
Another apt Ron Merkel J quote:
“Merkel J held otherwise, finding that the incorrect naming meant that Mr Wang had never been notified of the IRT decision. Rather surprisingly, his Honour’s judgment opens with a two-paragraph castigation of the IRT for plunging Mr Wang into a Kafkaesque fantasy - “Occasionally a case arises which makes the word Kafkaesque appear to be a description of fact rather than fiction. The present is such a case”.
- quoted in FEDERAL COURT v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION, John McMillan
Ref 2. TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS,
Day 1 MELBOURNE, 10.16 AM, MONDAY, 28 MARCH 2011, FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA, VICTORIA REGISTRY, BROMBERG J, Eatock v Bolt
MR R. MERKEL QC appears with MR H. BORENSTEIN SC, MS C.M. HARRIS and MS P.C. KNOWLES for the applicant; MR N.J. YOUNG QC appears with DR M.J. COLLINS for the respondents
Ref 3. EVIDENCE ACT 1995 - SCHEDULE Oaths and Affirmations, Subsections 21(4) and 22(2)
Pat Eatock took the ‘affirmation’ and was affirmed as a witness at 2:42 pm on Monday, 28 March 2011 [Ref. 2, p60]
Oaths by witnesses:
I swear ( or the person taking the oath may promise ) by Almighty God ( or the person may name a god recognised by his or her religion ) that the evidence I shall give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Affirmations by witnesses:
I solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Source
Ref 4. Nicolas Kirby discusses Eatock v Bolt [2011] FCA 1103, Media responsibility under the Racial Discrimination Act. Source
Further Reading
As further proof that Joan Eatock was willing to distort the truth, or even fabricate stories, to fit her narrative that the Eatock family was Aboriginal, consider this ‘story’ where she explained Bill’s [William’s] decision to leave Lucy and Brewarrina..
Joan disrespectfully blames the supposedly white racist attitudes in Brewarrina for not accepting Lucy’s ‘dark-skinned older boys’, and then she culturally appropriates the idea of Aboriginal boys needing to go through their traditional initiation rites, as an excuse for Bill to leave Lucy and Brewarrina with the boys. That is the fantasy that Joan wants us to believe.
The reality is a lot more mundane. Joan’s grandmother Lucy had an affair, by which she got pregnant with her last child Noel [b 19 Feb 1912 - d.?] and her husband Bill left her and filed for divorce when he found out. Not the most ideal outcome for the sake of the kids, but perhaps understandable from Bill’s point of view.
The divorce proceedings, lodged in 1915 detail the circumstances. The unfortunate consequences - Bill wandering the country, pursued for maintenance payments until his final death in Prahran, Melbourne in 1943 - follow a typical working class trajectory from the early 20th century. Nothing Aboriginal about these social conditons at all - just another tall story from Joan seeking to fake her family as Aboriginal. [see research notes here]
