You Can't 'Fact-Check' Someone's Lived Experience - Until Now
In this post we report on the progress of our complaint to the ABC.
We also provide a lot of material on Professor Megan Davis’s family in particular, and Australian South Sea Islanders in general, as we begin to unpack the claimed lived experience of Professor Megan Davis.
The Professor is exhorting her fellow Australians to vote YES for Constitutional change based on what she claims is her ‘cultural uniqueness’.
Therefore, if we are to be informed voters, we had better understand what makes her, ‘culturally unique’.
1. Complaint Lodged with the ABC
In a recent post, Davis Family Truth-Telling or Misinformation?, we explained how we contacted the ABC’s Complaint Department regarding an ABC documentary, Australian Story, that featured Uluru Statement and Voice architect, Professor Megan Davis.
Our complaint centred on the claim made in the documentary by Professor Davis’s sister Lucy, regarding the family’s ancestry that,
"My grandmother Elizabeth Ober was a South Sea Islander woman. She was taken and brought here from Vanuatu. They would basically kidnap people and brought them here to work in the sugar cane industry." [see ABC excerpt here from about 2:18].
Our complaint to the ABC that was that it was untrue that the family's grandmother, Elizabeth Ober was taken [kidnapped] from Vanuatu and brought to Queensland, and therefore the program was misleading to viewers.
We provided evidence to show that Professor Megan Davis and her family were mistaken if they believed their grandmother was born in Vanuatu.
In fact, the records show that Elizabeth Ober was born in Queensland on 1 November 1891, as recorded in the Queensland Births, Deaths & Marriages Records #QLDBDM# 1891/C/8961.
She was not born in Vanuatu, but instead grew up with her parents in Queensland until her marriage to John Malary on 22 February 1911, as confirmed in the Queensland Births, Deaths & Marriages Records QLDBDM# 1911/C/2220.
Clearly, Megan and Lucy Davis’s grandmother Elizabeth Ober could not have been ‘kidnapped from Vanuatu’, given that she was born in Queensland and spent her early life there.
Our full complaint to the ABC can be read here.
2. The ABC’s Response
Very professionally on behalf of the ABC, we received three weeks after lodging our complaint, a detailed and thoughtful response from the Executive Producer of Australian Story, Rebecca Latham, as shown below,
Dear Roger [Editor Dark Emu Exposed]
Thank you for your email about our story on Megan Davis.
At the time of the interview, Lucy Davis told us the information about her family history as she understood it. She didn't have access to her grandmother's birth certificate and wasn't aware of the information you have which says that her grandmother Elizabeth was born here in Australia.
This was not a deliberate effort by the producers to deceive viewers. At the time of our interview with the Davis sisters they believed it was their grandmother, rather than their great-grandparents, who had come from Vanuatu.
As you outline in your ‘Dark Emu Exposed’ website, Megan and Lucy Davis’s two great-grandparents were born in Vanuatu and came here in the late 19th century at a time when many South Sea islanders were bought here to work in the sugar cane industry. This information is new to the Davis family.
In reference to your statement that we intended ‘to mislead the viewers that colonial and pre-Federated Australia was a racist country that treated ‘people-of-colour’ in general, and Elizabeth Ober in particular, as ‘slaves,’’ we allowed the Davis sisters to tell their story as they see it.
They did not use the word ‘slave’ but they did refer to the well documented history of often forced migration and racial discrimination suffered by the South Sea Islanders. Official reports back them up. This 2015 House of Representatives Standing Committee report says:
‘Although some South Sea Islanders came to Australia by choice, many were tricked by recruiters or kidnapped and brought here by force. Most worked in difficult conditions in the Queensland cane fields, and those who remained in Australia after Federation faced ongoing racial discrimination and harsh treatment throughout the 20th century.’ (Source: p8. 1.2)
A 1992 Human Rights Commission report into the disadvantage suffered by the Australian South Sea Islander community, commissioned by the Federal government, finds:
‘They were brought here, often against their will, from some eighty Pacific islands’ (p1, Introduction); and ‘The South Sea Islander history indicates that over the past century their general treatment was as close to slavery as the laws of the time would allow. White society used them as labourers when needed and discarded them when no longer needed’ (p13, 2.3.7)
We thank you for your feedback and your correction of the family's birth details and we hope you continue to watch our program.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Latham, Executive Producer Australian Story
Firstly, we should praise Ms Latham, undoubtably the very busy Executive Producer for Australian Story, for taking the time to promptly respond to our complaint - within three weeks of it being lodged.
To our mind, this suggests that the ABC are taking their new complaints procedure seriously, especially since this is now the second time they have dealt with one of our complaints in a very professional manner (see also here).
Secondly, we replied to Ms Latham with an apology on one point.
If we were misled to believe that her program was, "a deliberate effort by the producers to deceive viewers", which Ms Latham assured us was not the case, we now accept that we were wrong on this point.
Instead, our suspicions of being misled were due to the ABC’s practice of, as Ms Latham advised, “we allowed the Davis sisters to tell their story as they see it.”
The misleading was therefore due to the inadvertent and incorrect belief by the Davis family that they thought their grandmother Elizabeth Ober was born in Vanuatu.
However this misunderstanding arose, it still goes to the heart of our critique that, in the “Age of Assertions”, trusted organisations such as the ABC need to either provide some basic fact-checking of what their program guests ‘assert’, or else provide balance by interviewing a subject with a counter viewpoint.
Nevertheless, we understand that the format of Australian Story is to let the subject ‘tell their own story’, so our critique should now focus on 'the ‘story’ that Professor Megan Davis and, to a lesser extent, Lucy her sister, are asserting on our ABC.
3. The “Intellectual Bait & Trap” - A Useful Technique
One of our principles at Dark Emu Exposed is to regularly explain to our readership the details and methodology of our research methods. This methodology involves showing as much of the primary data as possible, so readers can make up their own minds on our stories based on the real facts and evidence we have uncovered. We also often discuss the genealogical techniques used to accurately build a person’s family tree.
This can make for long-winded posts, full of data and original documents, as we weave and twist towards a final conclusion. However, we believe our style is important and is what makes this website of interest in a world where most news and blog sites are no more than opinions and assertions based on little presented evidence.
Thus, readers might like to know about a research technique known as the, ‘intellectual bait and trap.’
When a small, investigative group, such as us here at Dark Emu Exposed, wants to engage with a subject, whether they be, in many of our cases, an Aboriginal ‘fake’, or an academic who we believe is making assertions without evidence, we often write to them with the aim of trying to start a mature debate, giving them the opportunity to respond to our findings.
Invariably they just ignore, or fob off, requests from ‘little non-academic people’ like us, presumably thinking that we will just give up, as is the case here for enquiries that have been so far directed to Prof. Davis.
In a ‘David & Goliath’ situation such as this, a strategy for the David’s of the world is to find a powerful ‘bait,’ - something that a ‘Goliath’ can not resist or refuse to take - a bait that forces Goliath to engage with David.
In our case, the ‘bait’ was the ABC, or more specifically, its powerful ABC complaints procedure.
The ABC are increasingly sensitive to criticism, so when a formal complaint is lodged, they follow it up very diligently. After we lodged our complaint, the ABC were ‘obliged to investigate’.
As we hoped/predicted, they contacted the Davis family for clarification of our concerns. This obviously was ‘forceful’ enough to prompt Prof. Davis and/or Lucy Davis to provide the ABC with some sort of explanation as to why they claimed their grandmother was taken/kidnapped from Vanuatu.
As we predicted, Prof. Davis could ignore a direct enquiry from ‘little people’ who she perhaps felt she could fob off with silence or delay, but she felt obligated to provide further clarification, once she had ‘taken the bait’ of being contacted by a larger, respected organisation such as the ABC complaints department.
Ms Latham, the Exec Producer of Australian Story, then promptly forwarded a reply to us with arguments and links to evidence (supplied by Prof. Davis?) to refute our criticisms and support the ABC’s claims.
And thus an intellectual trap is sprung and Prof. Davis is now potentially locked into engaging further on the topics we will raise. This is because the defences that she has provided (via the ABC) to our criticisms, after her taking of the ‘bait’, raises a whole set of new questions that goes to the heart of Prof Davis’s assertions on why Australia should vote YES in the Voice Referendum.
Her response also provides further detail on the intellectual basis on which she is making her case, a basis that we believe is flawed, as we will explain. Thus an engagement has begun.
Even though we will reject the defences she has offered (see below) we are very pleased that the ABC and Prof. Davis have put in the time and effort in addressing our criticisms and we thank them both for this. We can also highly commend the ABC for its new Complaints Procedure.
4. Professor Davis and the ABC’s Response
What we learnt from the ABC’s reply was that the Davis family knew that their grandmother, Elizabeth Ober, was a South Sea Islander from Vanuatu. But that they just assumed that she was born in Vanuatu. They didn’t know that she was actually born in Queensland.
As the ABC related to us,
‘She [Lucy Davis] didn't have access to her grandmother's birth certificate and wasn't aware of the information you have which says that her grandmother Elizabeth was born here in Australia.’
Readers should ponder on that for a moment - Professor Megan Davis, as one of Australia’s leading constitutional lawyers is asking 26 million Australians to Vote YES to a change to our Constitution to give her and her family an additional advisory role to government, based on her family’s ancestry, heritage and ‘cultural uniqueness.’
But then how could it be that, as Lucy Davis admits, her very senior, legal-academic sister Megan did not know, or could not be bothered to find out, about her own grandmother’s ancestry details?
Ancestry will play a major part in deciding who gets to vote in the deliberations of the Voice, should it be enshrined in our Constitution.
One would have thought then, that prior to writing the legal case for the Uluru Statement of the Heart and the Voice, Prof. Davis would have already known in detail the origins of her own family’s ancestry?
Yet she, as one of the architects of the Voice, does not seem to know important ancestry details about her own family.
This lack of knowledge by the Professor also begs the question, were the Professor and her sister, ‘just making up’ this kidnapped grandmother story to elicit a sympathetic response from Australian Story’s viewers about how badly their grandmother had been treated, the aim presumably being to play on the ‘white guilt’ of the viewers to influence them to vote YES?
To us, this looks like poor scholarship on the Professor’s behalf, given that we were able to easily locate her grandmother’s Queensland birth records from the same archives which the Professor claims to have used to compile the Davis ‘family file’ (see here at 01:48).
Figure 1 - Birth Extract of Queensland Births, Deaths & Marriages Records for Elizabeth Ober (nee Woolangarty). Elizabeth, and her siblings, are registered under both parents first names as their surnames. Neither Woolangarty nor Booty had a last name.
5. Why the ABC and Professor Davis are Wrong in Other Ways Too
To support the ABC’s defence of the program, Ms Latham supplied (from Prof. Davis?) some additional references as evidence.
On the face of it, these additional references appear credible but, on closer examination, the quotes the ABC and/or Prof. Davis have relied upon just prove our point on how corrupted Australian historiography has become. These quotes are perfect examples of the Pascoesque technique of misquoting, or just plain making stuff up, to suit one’s particular ideological narrative.
Ms Latham writes in her email to us that,
‘They did not use the word ‘slave’ but they did refer to the well documented history of often forced migration and racial discrimination suffered by the South Sea Islanders. Official reports back them up. This 2015 House of Representatives Standing Committee report says:
‘Although some South Sea Islanders came to Australia by choice, many were tricked by recruiters or kidnapped and brought here by force. Most worked in difficult conditions in the Queensland cane fields, and those who remained in Australia after Federation faced ongoing racial discrimination and harsh treatment throughout the 20th century.’ (Source: p8. 1.2)
Yes it is true that neither Prof. Davis, nor sister Lucy, used the word ‘slave’ in this ABC program, but the Professor’s views on this matter are well known and have been reported elsewhere confirming her belief that some of her ancestors were ‘enslaved,’
‘Part of my family came to Australia via the practice of "blackbirding" – that is, the kidnapping and enslaving of South Pacific Islanders to work on plantations, especially in Queensland.’
- Professor Megan Davis, The Guardian, 16 May 2014
We checked the ‘official report’, the 2015 House of Representatives Standing Committee report, Section 1.2 that the ABC says supports the Davis family claims - (see Figure 2),
Figure 2 - Excerpt of the 2015 Parliamentary Committee Report relied upon by the ABC and/or Prof. Davis to claim (Item 1.2):
‘Although some South Sea Islanders came to Australia by choice, many were tricked by recruiters or kidnapped and brought here by force. Most worked in difficult conditions in the Queensland cane fields, and those who remained in Australia after Federation faced ongoing racial discrimination and harsh treatment throughout the 20th century.’ [1] [Ed. NOTE - Reference #1 in footnote as cited source]
Source: File.pdf Report
To any older Australian who has had a good solid education in Australian history this quote doesn’t quite look right - did only ‘some South Sea Islanders come to Australia by choice’, with ‘most being tricked by recruiters or kidnapped and brought here by force’?
Or rather, was the truth the other way around, with most coming voluntarily and only some being tricked or kidnapped, as I learnt at school and university?
We actually checked the source for this claim cited in the footnote - “Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Australian South Sea Islanders, http://www.datsima.qld.gov.au/people-communities/australian-south-sea-islanders, viewed 3 March 2015.”
This particular link is now broken some 8 years later, but fortunately the original page can be found on the Wayback Machine, where we were able to view the 28 Feb 2015 version (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 -Screenshot of the Reference #1 cited in Figure 2 above. Source: Wayback Machine here
Readers will note that the 2015 Parliamentary Committee Report quote in Figure 2 is not a direct quotation.
Instead, the assertion made in Reference #1
‘While some ancestors of Australian South Sea Islanders may have left their homelands by choice, they were more often than not subjected to the same discrimination and harsh treatment as those that were deceived or taken by force.’
has been turned by the 2015 Parliamentary Committee in Item 1.2 of their report (see Figure 2 above) to read
1.2 - Although some South Sea Islanders came to Australia by choice, many were tricked by recruiters or kidnapped and brought here by force. Most worked in difficult conditions in the Queensland cane fields, and those who remained in Australia after Federation faced ongoing racial discrimination and harsh treatment throughout the 20th century. [1] (Ref #1 - see Figure 2 above).
This does not mean the same thing.
The Committee have decided to further weaponise the original quote to make it look like the South Sea Islander Indentured Labour program was predominately one based on trickery and kidnapping, and not a mainly a voluntary imported labour program, just like our PALM (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility) Visa Scheme, which is operational today.
The misquoting here is just further evidence that there is an intellectual corruption pervading our institutions where misquoting, misinformation and disinformation are easily discovered with a little ‘fact-checking.’ It appears that the drive to control the political narrative in Australia over-rides an aim of good scholarship and truth-telling.
The ABC call the thin, 2015 Parliamentary Committee Report as one of the,“official reports [that] back them [the Davis’s] up”, but as a scholar, Prof. Davis would know that this report is far removed from the primary and secondary sources that hold the understanding of what the South Sea Islander Labour programs were really like.
In our opinion, it is not sufficiently professional for Prof. Davis to rely on this report for her understanding of what it like was really like for her South Sea Island grandparent and great-grandparents.
The second ‘official report’ relied upon up by the ABC (via Prof. Davis?) to support their case case is a 1992 Human Rights Commission report into the disadvantage suffered by the Australian South Sea Islander community. This report was commissioned by the Federal government.
Ms Latham told us that this report found that,
‘They were brought here, often against their will, from some eighty Pacific islands’ (p1, Introduction); and ‘The South Sea Islander history indicates that over the past century their general treatment was as close to slavery as the laws of the time would allow. White society used them as labourers when needed and discarded them when no longer needed’ (p13, 2.3.7)
The two excerpts relied upon by the ABC and Prof. Davis from this 1992 Human Rights Commission Report are in Figure 4 (see part of first para.) and Figure 5 (see last para.) below.
Figure 4 - Excerpt from the 1992 Human Rights Commission Report on the Situation of South Sea Islanders. Source Trove Online
Figure 5 - Excerpt from the 1992 Human Rights Commission Report on the Situation of South Sea Islanders. Source Trove Online
But is this 1992 HRC Report really true?
Did the HRC base its report on reliable primary and secondary sources, given that it was written over 80 years after the end of the South Pacific Islander labour programs?
In the Further Reading Section below we discuss the quality of this report, but our interest here is the following question :
How valid is it for Prof. Megan Davis and her family to rely on the general tone of these reports that her particular South Sea Islander grandmother and great-grand parents were actually kidnapped and enslaved?
Were the ABC and Prof. Davis correct when they told us that the following statements are true for the Davis family’s South sea Islander ancestors?
“Part of my family came to Australia via the practice of "blackbirding" – that is, the kidnapping and enslaving of South Pacific Islanders to work on plantations, especially in Queensland.” and
"My grandmother Elizabeth Ober was a South Sea Islander woman. She was taken and brought here from Vanuatu. They would basically kidnap people and brought them here to work in the sugar cane industry."
and that,
“Although some South Sea Islanders came to Australia by choice, many were tricked by recruiters or kidnapped and brought here by force… “
“They were brought here, often against their will, … their general treatment was as close to slavery as the laws of the time would allow. White society used them as labourers when needed and discarded them when no longer needed.”
6. The Real Story of the South Sea Islander Ancestors of the Davis Family
The evidence uncovered by our researchers at Dark Emu Exposed would seem to indicate that the Davis family’s South Sea Islander ancestors were not tricked, nor kidnapped by force, and enslaved in Queensland’s sugar industry.
Rather, the records support the idea that Prof. Davis’s three great-grandparents were South Sea Islanders who willingly came to Queensland under indentured labour contracts. We located records to show that two of them returned to their native islands at the expiry of their labour contracts, but that within a year or so, they re-signed new contracts [or independently decided] to return to Queensland - hardly the choice of anyone who was ‘enslaved.’
If Prof Davis’s ancestors were really kidnapped and enslaved by force would they willingly agree to re-sign up [or just return] for another bout of slavery, if it really was all that bad?
We will now discuss in detail what the records show of Professor Megan Davis’s three great-grandparents, who were born in the South Sea Islands, and who subsequently came to Queensland as indentured labourers:
A) Wallangartie (aka Mary Marlo, wife of Robert Ober (Booty) below, and mother of Elizabeth Ober, Prof. Davis’s stated grandmother) who was born in 1853 at Malao, Sanma, Vanuatu, South Sea Islands and died aged 95 on 25 May 1948, Pialba(?) Queensland. She was one of Prof. Megan Davis’s great-grandmothers;
B) Tinwilligan or Tanwilligan (aka William (Billy) Willighan) who was born in 1856 in the South Sea Islands and died aged 80 on 5 November 1936 Maryborough, Queensland. He was one of Prof. Davis’s great-grandfathers, and
C) Booty (aka Robert Ober) who was born in 1852 on Aoba Island, New Hebrides (central Vanuatu), South Sea Islands and died at age 81 on 24 November 1933 Point Vernon, Queensland. He was one of Prof. Megan Davis’s great-grandfathers.
The relative positions of these three South Sea Islander ancestors in the alleged paternal family tree of Prof. Davis are shown in the Family Tree excerpt below (see Figure 6).
Figure 6 - Excerpt showing two branches from the alleged paternal Family Tree of Prof. Megan Davis showing her three South Sea Islander ancestors. Download File.pdf here
6.1 - The Actual Lived Experience of Wallangartie (aka Mary Marlo, wife of Robert Ober (Booty)
In 1946, a small news item appeared in the Entertaining section of Queensland’s Maryborough Chronicle. It described how the, Torquay Baptist Church had been,
‘… decked with bowls of clove-scented stocks, on a Monday afternoon, when the Torquay Baptist Ladies' Guild entertained The Rev. Edwards, President of the Queensland Baptist Union, at their 21st birthday social…’ (see Figure 7)
The reporter went onto describe that,
‘… there was a little aged coloured lady from Urangan, who remembered Mr. Edwards. She is Mrs. Ober, who is in her nineties, and mother of Mrs. Harry Davis, who does so much concert work for charities….Mrs. Davis very sweetly rendered “God Send You Back”,….’ (See Figure 8)
Figure 7 Source: Maryborough Chronicle, 19 October 1946, p. 8
Figure 8 Source: Maryborough Chronicle, 19 October 1946, p. 8
This ‘little aged coloured lady’ was the great grandmother of Prof. Davis - born in Vanuatu as Wallangartie, but who became known as Mary Marlo in Queensland and then Mrs Ober on her marriage to fellow Ni-Vanuatu man, Robert Ober (Booty) [see Note 3 below for spelling variations].
Their daughter, Elizabeth Ober, went on to become the common-law wife of part-Aboriginal man, Fred Davis, who was Prof. Davis’s grandfather (see Figure 6).
Mrs Ober lived to the grand old age of 95, some 20 years more than the average Aboriginal woman today, and so Prof. Davis’s own great-grandmother seemed to have ‘Closed the Gap’ in life expectancy, using her own agency, without having a constitutionally enshrined Voice in her day! (see Figures 9 & 10)
Figure 9 Death notice for Prof. Megan Davis’s SSI great-grandmother Mary Ober (Wallangartie). Source: Maryborough Chronicle, 27 May 1948, p. 4
Figure 10 - Death record for Mary Ober. Source: Qld BDM records
This information might create a conundrum for our readers.
On the one hand, Prof. Davis is providing narrative and government reports that claim that South Sea Islanders, such as her own great-grandmother, Wallangartie, were ‘kidnapped’ and ‘enslaved’ and sent to work in Queensland’s sugar industry, ‘against her will, … her general treatment [being] as close to slavery as the laws of the time would allow.’ Prof. Davis relies on the claim that ‘white society used them as labourers when needed and discarded them when no longer needed.’
But on the other hand, the records show that Wallangartie did not go back to live permanently in Vanuatu after her labour contract expired, but instead she returned to settle in Queensland, married, had children and integrated into society. She received a basic ‘indigent allowance’ and ultimately she was deemed entitled to, and did receive, the government old-age pension [possibly as a result of the widows pension and social service reforms of 1942-1946] until she died in 1948 at the ripe old age of 95!
This paradox of what the Davis’s would have us believe about the ‘slave’ life that their great-grandmother was said to be ‘forced’ to live under, and what the records actually suggest is further explained in the 1948 newspaper obituary of Wallangartie or Mrs Ober.
LINK WITH EARLY DAY ISLAND LIFE
In the death of Mrs. Mary Ober, Urangan, on May 25, there was severed another link with the old black-birding days, when natives from the South Sea Islands were brought to Queensland to work for the sugar industry (writes our Torquay correspondent).
The late Mrs. Ober, who was in her 95th year, was born on Marlo Island, in the New Hebrides, and was brought to Queensland as a young girl in her teens.
She often spoke of her first position, in which she worked for white people on Magnetic Island [off Townsville]. She could not understand one word of English, but her mistress was very kind and very patient, and would repeat everything several times, until Mary could say it after her.
She always spoke very highly of those people, for whom she worked three years. [Ed. note: this indicates a typical, legal, indentured labour 3 year contract, willingly entered into].
They took a great interest in the island folk, and at Christmas time would try to give them a little reminder of their island home by killing a pig for them. The flesh of the pig and fish was the staple diet of the islanders. If there were many islanders on Magnetic at Christmas time, they would kill several pigs for them.
Mrs. Ober, when telling the story, would say that they did it out of the kindness of their hearts, but it would tend to make many of them homesick for their native isles.
After leaving Magnetic island, Mrs. Ober worked in Townsville, Cairns and Cooktown.
After her years of probation were completed she was free to return to her island home, but by that time she had become accustomed to the ways of the white people and had overcome her home sickness, but she had not heard from her home folk all those years, and so she decided to return home.
There was always much feasting and jubilation when one of the long lost ones returned. Mrs. Ober said that she remained on the islands for twelve months or so, and then returned once more to Queensland on her own free will.
On her return to Queensland, Mrs. Ober worked in the Maryborough district, on the Yerra Sugar Plantation.
There she did all of the work from cutting, thrashing and planting cane, and working in the mills, to scrub cutting and clearing.
It was at Yerra where she met her late husband. It was there they were married and raised their children.
Later they came to work for Mr. Scotney, Doojong, Urangan-road. In her younger days Mrs. Ober was a great walker and it was a very common sight early on Sunday mornings, to see her and her son Syd, wending their way into Pialba, to the seven o'clock church service conducted at the Church of England a distance of 5 miles or so. On winter mornings they would leave before sunrise to get to church in time for the service and then they would walk home again afterwards.
On Marlo Island, Mrs Ober would say the people were kind and always helped others and this tradition was carried on by the Islanders in Queensland and always made their home a home for others who came after.
Mrs. Ober never forgot her native tongue, and even to the last, would teach her grandchildren songs and ditties in the island language, and, strange to say, she never quite mastered the English tongue. After all her years of residence in Queensland she still spoke broken English.
After her husband's death 15 years ago she lived with her son, Syd Ober and his wife and family at Urangan. She was able to look after herself until the last. She was very fond of sewing, and loved patching which was a boon to the mother of her small grandchildren.
She did not possess very many clothes for the indigent allowance she received was not conducive to extravagance. After years of faithful service to the country of her adoption, she was granted the monthly sum of £1 1s.8p. per month, on which to cloth and feed herself. Her family tried often to get the old-age pension for her during those years, but it was not until three or four years ago that she was granted the full old-age pension.
The late Mrs. Ober is survived by two daughters and one son. Elizabeth (Mrs. Fred Davis), Annie (Mrs. Harry Davis), and Syd Ober, also 17 grandchildren and 17 great-grand children. Her husband pre-deceased her by 15 years. One son died in infancy, and another son died 20 years ago. One daughter, Mrs. Harry Davis, is well known for her social works for the Church of England and the Bush Children's Health Scheme.
The funeral took place from the Church of England Pialba, and was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Perkins.
- Obituary Maryborough Chronicle, 9 June 1948, p. 3 [our emphasis]
What this obituary tells us is that Prof. Davis’s great-grandmother, Wallangartie (Mrs Ober) expressed her own agency during her lifetime - she signed up initially to work for her very kind, white mistress on Magnetic Island for three years; she then worked elsewhere in Queensland before returning to her island home in Vanuatu. However, she only remained a year or so before once again signing-up to return [or just came back] to work on a Queensland plantation ‘on her own free will’.
We suspect that Wallangartie had no qualms about what her great-granddaughter Megan might think 170 years later of her decision to switch from a traditional life on a Vanuatu island (perhaps like the Aoban - from Ambae, Vanuatu - girls below) to a life of ‘modernity’ as an immigrant in Queensland.
Figure 11
Wallangartie was not ‘enslaved’ in the sense most people understand that word with visions of the ‘chattel slavery’ of the Southern USA as depicted in the movie, Gone With Wind.
She was paid an amount of money that she and her compatriots must have considered acceptable otherwise the indentured labour trade would not have lasted the 40 or so years that it did. Indentured workers would not have re-signed two or three times as many did, or settled permanently in Queensland as cane workers, if they did not agree that it was worthwhile for them to do so.
She was not deported when the indentured labour programs ceased in the early 1900s, indicating that she had settled and integrated into Queensland society well enough that she was ‘exempted’ from deportation.
In our opinion, commentators such as Professor Davis are just ‘weaponising’ the lived experiences of their ancestors to portray a certain ‘anti-colonial’ political narrative today - “my ancestor was a South Sea Islander so she must have been ‘black-birded’, which meant kidnapping and enslaving under cruel working conditions on sugar plantations that has resulted in so much inter-generational trauma, that my family and I need special recognition, treatment and recompense today from the government and my fellow citizen taxpayers.’
Historically, it has been impossible to ‘fact-check’ a persons claimed ‘lived experiences’ and, in our opinion, this has enabled some people to make unsupported, and at times outrageous and opportunistic, claims as they attempt to re-write our nation’s history.
However, with the exponential growth in the amount of data now being made available online, plus our greatly increased ability to search and locate very specifc historical records, the lived experience claims of commentators can now be ‘fact-checked’ to an amazing level of accuracy.
In our example here, when the family of distinguished constitutional law expert, Professor Megan Davis implied that their grandmother Elizabeth Ober was a South Sea Islander woman who was ’basically kidnapped’ and brought to Queensland from Vanuatu, we can now ‘fact-check’ this claim of the family’s lived experience and show that it is false.
As shown here, records were easily found to show that Elizabeth Ober was in fact born in Queensland and was never ‘kidnapped.’ The Davis family now admit that they did not know this.
6.2 The Actual Lived Experience of Tinwilligan [Tanwilligan] (aka William (Billy) Willighan)
[see Note 1 below on how genealogists determined that this is Prof. Davis’s great-grandfather]
A 1901 memorandum (see Figure 12) from the archives of the Queensland Dept. of Immigration has been located describing the savings of a Billy Tinwilligan, who we claim was Prof Megan Davis’s great-grandfather.
The text of the memo reads:
17 October 1901
From: Department of Immigration, Brisbane
To: The Inspector P. Islanders, Maryborough
Under separate cover I forward Savings Bank Book No. M. 1730 with Twenty five pounds (£25) at credit, belonging to Tinwilligan (Billy) of Valua ex “Lady Darling” 3/3/87 first employed by Forbes & Co of Colinton [Qld]. Billy is now I understand at Westwood Station near Boompa [Qld], and I have advised him that you hold his book and that he will have to apply to you if he wishes to operate on the account. Please acknowledge receipt of book on official receipt form as usual.
Figure 12 - Memo on the savings bank accout of Prof. Megan Davis’s great-grandfather Tinwilligan (Billy). Source: Qld SSI Archives
A few other records were also located, such as a wages register, some cash deposit records and his Death Certificate listing one of his sons as being Fred (Prof. Davis’s grandfather).
From the Death Certificate (above) we see that Prof. Davis’s great-grandfather lived to the age of 80.
In 1936, when he died, the Australian general population life expectancy (at birth) was about 65 years for ‘white’ Australians. In 1856, when he was born, the life expectancy for a ‘white’ Australian (at birth) was less than 35 (see Figure 13).
Thus, this family member of Prof. Davis’s had well and truly, ‘Closed the Gap’ by living some 15 - 45 years longer than ‘white’ Australians! Not bad for someone who we are told was an overworked slave.
Figure 13 - Historical Life Expectancy for Australia. (Source)
The records show that Tinwilligan (Billy) arrived from Valua [Vanuatu island of Vulai? or Ile Valua?] on the “Lady Darling” on 3/3/87. We could not establish any further details of this exact voyage, but we did find a reference to a schooner called the Lady Darling that was associated with the South Sea Islander recruitment trade.
Figure 14 - Newspaper report of the “Lady Darling” (schooner) being shipwrecked in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) off Malicolo on 7 March 1881 [six years prior to Billy’s arrival]. This suggests that the Lady Darling was recovered, repaired and out back into service - or perhaps a new ship of that name appeared in the trade? (Source: The Brisbane Courier, 28 March 1881, p. 2)
Was Tinwilligan (Billy) kidnapped or did he sign-up under a indentured labourer’s contract and come of his own free will to Queensland?
Professor Davis asserts that her ancestors were kidnapped and enslaved. We haven’t been able to locate a contract specifically related to Tingwiligan, but the fact that he arrived in 1887, some twenty years after the labour trade had begun, suggests that he would have come willingly and legally under contract.
His pay and savings details were officially recorded (see links to records above), so this suggests the authorities had him on their books and he most likely was therefore a signed-up, indentured labourer under a contract, such as shown in Figures 15A&B (this particular form from 1892 only has the details recorded on the back page about this labourer, who is reported to have died).
Tingwilligan had arrived only 5 years earlier (1887) than this form record (1892), which is based on the 1884 Labour Act, so it is more than likely that he was under a similar written contract.
Figures 15A&B - Typical Indentured labour contract under 1884 Act - this example dated 1892 (Source: Qld records)
The 1887 arrival date of Tinwilligan also means that he was most likely not kidnapped as the recruitment trade was well established by then (see Figure 16 for numbers of recruit arrivals per year).
Although outright kidnapping did certainly occur in the very early years of the trade (1860-70s), by 1887 the trade was well established and regulated and the islanders were wise enough not to seccumb to kidnappers (although some reports of kidnapping were still reported in the 1880s in the Solomons, with the last recorded one being 1894. Overall, it has been estimated that less than 5% of recruits were kidnapped, although 20-25% may have been indentured illegally in the sense that the paperwork, or mutual understanding, was incomplete (see Further Reading “Definitions - Kidnapping” below).
Figure 16 - Statistics for the number of South Sea Islander indentured labourers (Kanakas) entering Queensland from the ”early days of black-birding” in 1863 to the cessation of the trade in 1904. Note that the total is the total number of contract entries and includes many individuals who contracted more than once. The estimate is that these 62,565 contract entries represent about 50,000 individual islanders, that is some 12,565 were repeat contracts. Source TBA
In fact, the islanders were well accustomed to the labour trade by 1887, as they had seen with their own eyes the successful return from Queensland of many of their emigrant fellow-villagers. These returnees were rich by island standards and loaded with valuable goods and gifts on their return (Figure 17).
Figure 17 - Photograph of ‘cashed-up’ Kanaka workers returning to their island from Queensland. (Source: TBA)
In fact, the recruiters found that, by the late 1870s, many islanders were so keen to join the trade that the need to carry out any illegal kidnapping became largely redundant in the islands.
Prof. Davis’s great-grandfather was more than likely an eager young man, who willing joined the trade and indentured himself on contract in Queensland. So popular was the pull of Queensland that newspaper reports indicated that often the recruiter’s boats were swamped with more recruits than they could handle!
Figure 18 - Newspaper clipping outlining eagerness of some South Sea Islanders to sign up as labour recruits for Queensland plantations. Source: Mackay Mercury, 26 January 1878, p2
6.3 The Actual Lived Experience of Booty (aka Robert Ober)
Booty (aka Robert Ober) was born in 1852 on Aoba (Ambae) Island, New Hebrides (central Vanuatu), South Sea Islands. He arrived in Queensland “in the early days” and died at age 81 on 24 November 1933 at Point Vernon, Queensland.
We know that he was one of Prof. Megan Davis’s great-grandfathers from the information in his death notice and obituary.
1933 Death Notice Maryborough Chronicle, 21 November 1933, p. 6
OBER.—At Urangan-road, Pialba, on November 20, Robert Ober, beloved husband of Mary Ober, and father of Sidney Ober, Elizabeth Davies [sic Davis] and Annie Davies [sic Davis]; aged 81 years. "At Rest."
1933 Obituary Maryborough Chronicle, 21 November 1933, p. 9
MR. ROBERT OBER
There passed away at Urangan-road, Pialba, yesterday, a well-known identity of the district, Mr. Robert Ober. He was born in the South Sea Islands and came to Mackay in the early days, where he worked on the sugar plantations. After three years in that district he returned to the Islands. Later he came back to Australia, settling at Yengarie where he followed work on the sugar plantations. He married a countrywoman, and subsequently went to Urangan-road, where he was employed by Mr. H. Scotney for 20 years. He is survived by his widow, one son (Sidney, Urangan-road), and two daughters (Mrs. Elizabeth Davies [sic Davis] and Mrs. Annie Davies [sic Davis], Point Urangan). The funeral will move from St. John's Church of England, Pialba, this afternoon for the Polsen cemetery.
Prof Megan Davis and her sister Lucy claimed in the ABC’s Australian Story documentary that their, ‘grandmother Elizabeth Ober was a South Sea Islander woman.’
From the above death notice and obituary we now know that Elizabeth Ober’s father was a South Sea Islander named Robert Ober, which is further confirmed by Elizabeth’s birth record below. This lists her father as “Booty (aka Robert Ober)” and her mother as Woolangarty (see Figure 19).
Elizabeth Ober’s married name was Davis [Davies] as she was the common-law wife to part-Aboriginal man, Fred Davis, Prof. Davis’s grandfather.
Thus we can now confirm this alleged branch of Prof. Davis’s family tree as shown in Figure 18.
Figure 18 - Excerpt of one of the branches of the alleged Family Tree of Professor Megan Davis showing her Aboriginal and South Sea Islander ancestry, with her grandmother Elizabeth Ober as being 100% Ni-Vanuatu, South Sea Islander.
As further confirmation that the above family tree branch is correct, we located Elizabeth Ober’s birth record which has Booty (aka Robert Ober) as being her father and her mother as Woolangarty (aka Mary). Her brith name is recorded as Elizabeth Woolangarty, her mothers name, which suggest that her parents were not married when she was born.
Figure 19 - Extract of the Queensland birth record details for Elizabeth Ober showing her parent’s names. Elizabeth, and her siblings, are registered under both parents first names as their surnames. Neither Woolangarty nor Booty had a last name.
Some further information we obtained were the Queensland electoral rolls from as early as 1931, which clearly showed that Prof. Megan Davis’s Aboriginal ancestors had the vote contrary to much popular myth that Aboriginal people were disenfranchised until 1967 [See Note 2 below].
Also listed along with Fred Davis were his brother Harry and their two South Sea Islander wives Elizabeth (nee Ober) and Annie (nee Ober) who were also sisters, as well as sisters-in-law by their marriages to the two brothers, Fred and Harry.
Figure 20 - Extract of the Queensland Electoral roll of 1931 for Pialba showing the Aboriginal Davis family voters
Figure 21 - Extract of the Queensland Electoral roll of 1936 for Pialba showing the Aboriginal Davis family voters
Figure 22 - Extract of the Queensland Electoral roll of 1949 for Pialba showing the Aboriginal Davis family voters
Figure 23 - Extract of the Queensland Electoral roll of 1954 for Pialba showing the Aboriginal Davis family voters
6.3 Was Booty (aka Robert Ober) Kidnapped or did he come of his own free-will to Queensland?
Professor Megan Davis appears to prefer the negative “kidnapping” narrative to describe how her South Sea Islander ancestors came to Australia but, as we have shown with two of her ancestors above, we could find no evidence that they were kidnapped and brought against their will to Queensland.
Indeed one of her ancestors, Wallangartie [Woolangarty] (aka Mary Marlo, wife of Robert Ober (Booty) had at first returned to her island after her three-year indenture period was up, but in 12months she had decided to return to Queensland - hardly the action of a ‘kidnapped’ and ‘enslaved’ islander.
Her husband had a similar experience. After his initial 3-year contract of indenture expired he ‘returned to the Islands [and] later he came back to Australia, settling at Yengarie where he followed work on the sugar plantations. He married a countrywoman [Wallangartie], and subsequently went to Urangan-road, where he was employed by Mr. H. Scotney for 20 years.’
These life-choices hardly sound like the action of islanders who, as Prof. Davis told us in the ABC’s response,
‘… were brought here, often against their will, [where the] history indicates that over the past century their general treatment was as close to slavery as the laws of the time would allow. White society used them as labourers when needed and discarded them when no longer needed.’
From what we can surmise, it appears to us that Booty too was expressing his own agency - he went to Queensland for the adventure or financial opportunity, returned home to his island a relatively rich man. After 12 months he realised a better future for him lay in Queensland so he returned, settled down as a married man and had a daughter Elizabeth, who became Prof Davis’s grandmother, and the rest is history.
NOTES
Note 1 - Finding Tinwilligan
How did our genealogists determine that Tinwilligan [Tanwilligan] (aka William (Billy) Willighan) was Prof. Davis’s great-grandfather?
During this work, the genealogist researchers easily traced Prof. Megan Davis’s paternal line back to her grandfather, Fred Davis.
From Fred Davis’s death certificate they found that his father was recorded as “William Willigan Davis” [details on his Aboriginal mother, Lily Davis (nee Johnstone) will be reported on in a subsequent post].
Figure 24 - Extract of Fred Davis’s Death and Burial Details. Source: 1978 Burial Frederick “Fred” Davis - Find a Grave
We also know that Fred Davis’s father was a South Sea Islander (SSI) because, from a record in the 1962 Native Housing Register, Fred Davis is listed as a H/C [Half-caste Aboriginal man] with a SSI father. This record also confirms that Fred was part-Aboriginal. It thus confirms that he and his community considered he was part-Aboriginal and supports the claim by Prof. Megan Davis that she is of Aboriginal descent via her grandfather Fred Davis.
Figure 25 A. Source: 1962 Native Housing
Figure 25 B. Source: 1962 Native Housing
Thus, to find Fred Davis’s father, our researchers needed to search the records looking for a South Sea Islander man, named William Willigan Davis (or a closely similar name given that traditional SSI names were often routinely varied and/or Anglesized), in the correct age bracket to be the father of Fred (who was born ca1890/3 and died in 1978) and in the correct geographical area so as to be linkable to Fred.
After much computer and AI searching, the only candidate that appeared from the records was a SSI man known as Tinwilligan (Billy). The primary document supporting this candidate is the wages memo in Figure 12 above.
Our researchers are confident that this is Fred Davis’s father given that:
Tinwilligan was his native name, from which an Angelized name of William logically follows (from Tin..willi..gan), and shortened to ‘Billy’ in the typical Australian vernacular;
Tinwilligan arrived in Queensland via the Lady Darling voyage of 3/3/1887 and started work at Colinton [Qld] (as per memo in Figure 12). Fred Davis was born in Warra, Qld, which is only 180km west of Colinton (see Map 1 below), around three to six years later in 1890 to 1893 [various birth years for Fred are recorded]. This fits with a logical scenario where Tinwilligan moved after his first 3 year contract had finished allowing him to meet Fred’s mother in/near Warra;
By 1901 (as per the memo in Figure 12) Tinwilligan was working at ‘Westwood Station near Boompa’, which is only 18km east of the town of Biggenden (see Map 2 below) where the man known as Billy Willighan died in the local hospital in 1936 at the age of 80. One of his two sons on the death certificate is recorded as being named Fred (see Figure 26).
Tinwilligan’s birth year is thus 1856, (1936 less 80) making him about 31 years old when he arrived on the Lady Darling, which is an acceptable fit.
Fred lived a large part of his life only 120km east of Biggenden in Urangan, where he also died (See Map 2).
Our researchers only ever found one Fred Davis in the Urangan, Pialba and Hervey Bay area.
Thus the names, times and geography all fit well to support the notion that Tinwilligan was one and the same man as Billy Willigan and William Willigan Davis, who had a son named Fred and lived and died in the same districts as Fred Davis, who we know was Professor Megan Davis’s grandfather.
Figure 26 - Extract of Death Certificate for Billy Willighan (aka Tinwilligan (Billy), aka William Willigan Davis), Professor Megan Davis’s great-grandfather.
Map 1 - Warra town (circled on left) is where Fred Davis was born; Colinton (circled on right) is where Tinwilligan first served his indentured labour contract.
Map 2 - Biggenden (circled on left) is where William Willigan Davis died in 1936. Boompa (circled in centre) is where Tinwilligan (Billy) first worked. Urangan (circled in right) is where Fred Davis lived and died.
Note 2 - Voting Rights for Fred Davis and Family
Fred Davis was entitled to vote in Queensland as he identified and was classified as a “Half-Caste” (H/C). Electoral officers and bureaucrats took “half-castes” not to be the same as ‘full-blooded Aborigines” based on an advice in 1901 by Alfred Deakin, Australia’s first Attorney-General (and later Prime Minister).
Note 3 - Name variations for Wallangartie
Invariably in the old days, various spellings were recorded for people’s names. This is especially the case for South Sea Islander records given their initial lack of English, difficulty by the authorities in understanding or knowing naming protocols for Islanders, plus the general Australian habit of Anglesizing the names of New Australians and/or giving them shortened or nick-names.
Thus, Prof. Davis’s great-grandmother Wallangartie [the name we use here] has been various recorded as Mary Marlo, Mrs Robert Ober, Woolangarty, Waluenartis and even Maluncarlis on various of her children’s birth certificates (See Figures 1 & 26B).
Figure 26B - Extracts of Birth Certificates for some of Wallangartie’s children.
Further Reading
Did Fred Davis Express his Own Agency and Decide to Move from Aboriginal Society and Integrate Into the Wider Australian and South Sea Islander Community?
We know that Fred Davis was given in 1926 an "Exemption Certificate”, which was “granted only to those Aborigines who demonstrated to the Chief Protector's satisfaction the capacity to survive in the outside world" [ Reference (but opinionated) ANU].
Figure 27 - Extract of Exemption Certificate details for Fred Davis. Source: Queensland Exemptions Held in 1947
In NSW it was said that, "Certificates of Exemption could be granted to an applicant who, in the opinion of the Aborigines Welfare Board, ought to no longer be subject to the provisions of the Aborigines Protection Act and Regulations 1909-43, Section 18c (Regulation 56). Upon being issued with a Certificate of Exemption, a recipient was no longer eligible to receive any benefit, assistance or relief from the Board, and had to undertake to provide a home deemed by the board to be 'proper' for themselves and their family." Find and Connect]
In the ABC’s Australian Story, Prof. Davis offered a snippet of her grandfather’s official file (see Figure 28 for screenshot). Given that he was given an Exemption Certificate and allowed to leave the control of the mission we can assume that he was ‘not habitually associating with aboriginals’ as defined under the Act.
Figure 28 - Screenshot of the ABC documentary Australian Story of Professor Megan Davis, which indicates that Fred Davis was ‘not associating with aboriginals’ given that he was provided with an Exemption Certificate. Source: ABC Australia Story at 02:00
By all accounts Fred Davis was a man of initiative, drive, hard-work and family.
He showed determination by leaving, in 1926, Cherbourg mission after living there a number of years. He had come to Cherbourg from his place of birth, Warra, which around that time was described as ‘practically an aboriginal encampment’ (Source: The Dalby Herald, 17 May 1921, p. 3).
He moved to Unangan in Hervey Bay where he cleared a block of land to build his house and raise his family with South Sea Islander woman, Elizabeth Ober.
Quite incredibly, our researchers found a reference to Fred Davis in a book on the history of the Kanaka labour trade by Peter Corris.
The fact that Fred Davis built a house such as this tends to suggest that he was integrating, by his own agency, into the wider European and South Sea Islander culture in which he lived. He appeared thus to have decided to ‘not associate with aboriginals’ in terms of his residence and his ‘day-to-day’ culture or society.
To lend support to our speculation that Fred Davis was moving away from an Aboriginal world into a European/South Sea Islander world, we found a short video of another descendent of Fred Davis and Elizabeth Ober, Melanie Yasserie.
In her film, Ms Yasserie says she is the great-granddaughter of Fred Davis (this compares to Megan Davis who is one generation closer to Fred as his granddaughter). Ms Yasserie decends from one of Fred’s other sons, most likely our researchers think, William Futi Malary/Davis [Fred Davis and Elizabeth Ober never married and the children were registered under her first husband's surname, Malary]. The records indicate that William Futi Malary/Davis was born 7 December 1922 (see short summary here)
As can be seen in Ms Yasserie’s video clip below, her lovely family seems to be living a normal Aussie family life in the Hervey Bay and Mackay areas, with a good overlay of a South Sea Islander culture. Ms Yasserie may be aware of her part-Aboriginal descent via Fred Davis, but she does not mention it in this film clip.
Figure 29 - Said to be a photograph of William Davis who was the son of Fred Davis [Fred was the grandfather to Prof. Megan Davis]
William Davis is the grandfather of Ms Melanie Yasserie and he is also an uncle of Prof. Megan Davis. Source: Film Clip (right) but see comments below on correction
As fellow Australian citizens, many of us would understand Ms Yasserie when she tells us in her video that she is a ‘fifth-generation’ Australian South Sea Islander, who ‘lived in a mainstream [Australian] world’ and had little interest in her South Sea Islander ancestry. Now that she is older, and her children are asking questions, she perfectly understandably has decided to learn about her family’s South Sea Islander ancestry.
Adopting a ‘SSI-variation’ of the 3-part rule for Aboriginality [SSI] to Ms Yasserie’s situation, one could say that she is an Australian who firstly, has South Sea Islander descent; secondly, identifies as an Australian South Sea Islander; and thirdly, is recognised as such by her community.
How Does Ms Yasserie’s Sense of Identity Compare to Professor Megan Davis’s?
Ms Yasserie and Prof. Megan Davis share the same apical Aboriginal common ancestor in Fred Davis, who in the 1920s was identified ‘officially’ as a ‘Half-caste’ - part-Aboriginal and part-South Sea Islander. Two of Fred’s sons went on to found their own family branches. Son William went off to create the family branch that led to Ms Yasserie and her family of Aussie South Sea Islanders. Another son Alfie, married Dawn Burns, a ‘white’ woman and teacher, who parented Prof Megan Davis and her family.
Another commentator has noted that,
“… neither Davis nor her indigenous father [Alfie] grew up within anything that could be called an Aboriginal community. The “continuity” she talks about with her dad and “his land” is not a uniquely Aboriginal sentiment since most normal Australians feel much the same about their own parents and the country towns or suburbs where they grew up. There is nothing particularly Aboriginal about it.
Davis’s connection to the Cobble Cobble people is solely genetic. In her interviews with the press, she has described her real cultural heritage well. It was determined by her white mother’s large home library, by her own childhood education in Queensland schools, and her tertiary education at the University of Queensland law school. In none of her interviews or numerous articles does she mention any cultural inheritance from contact with an Aboriginal community. She never spoke an Aboriginal language fluently and has never discussed any of the beliefs that sustained the Cobble Cobble people.
The remarkable feat of social mobility that she, and many other Aboriginal identities like her, have now managed to achieve is entirely dependent on the very cultural assets provided by the white society she and her fellow activists have spent their adult lives denouncing.
In other words, Davis is a legal academic and bureaucrat who does not have, and never had, a place within an Aboriginal community that might give her a special insider’s view of their needs. She is no better placed to understand Aboriginal problems, or to develop policies for Aboriginal people, than those white legal academics and bureaucrats employed in Aboriginal affairs but who are now labelled the problem not the solution.
What her position means is that Davis, and the great majority of those who have travelled a similar careerist road, are living contradictions of the principal argument behind the Voice and the constitutional referendum that is supposedly necessary to fix it in its rightful place. This is the claim that Aboriginal people will solve all their problems if their communities are given self-management and self-determination, or as Davis put it in an interview:
“One thing I think most Australians don’t know — because it’s all so managed — is just how powerless people in communities feel. Everything is ruled by bureaucrats in Canberra. They don’t want Aboriginal people having any responsibility or say.”
But Davis is an example of the very same problem. Although she is employed in Sydney by the University of New South Wales, her constitutional writings and reports are all aimed at reform in Canberra. In real terms, it is she who is yet another Canberra bureaucrat. She might answer this charge by saying that the Voice itself that she endorses represents the emergence of an authentic Aboriginal opinion. But, again, the reality is that the Voice is primarily the product of the theories, hopes and dreams of white bureaucratic political operators.
There is now plenty of evidence that this is so. In fact, as it has become clear from the public debate in the press in recent weeks that the whole idea behind the Voice came from propositions put together a decade ago by three white men, Greg Craven, Julian Leeser and Damien Freeman, and one Aboriginal man, Noel Pearson. This quartet are now very angry that their own proposal, which was designed to advise the parliament about Aboriginal ideas for reform, has been transformed by Davis and her colleagues into a demand for access to the executive government — a dramatic shift in the political power the Voice would wield if the constitutional referendum is won.”
Keith Windschuttle, White Man’s Dreaming, Quandrant, 14th May 2023
The Claimed Cultural Uniqueness of Professor Megan Davis
The point of the above section of the post is that many of us just don’t believe Professor Megan Davis is really in a position to speak on behalf of Aboriginal peoples as a collective.
She is completely entitled to have her own opinion, but the rest of us don’t have to believe her when she claims that she has the, "cultural uniqueness of a First Nations people." (see film clip below).
To our mind, she has been shaped by the personal agency of her part-Aboriginal/South Sea Islander grandfather Fred, her part-South Sea Islander/Aboriginal Father Alfie and her wonderful, single ‘white’ mother who instilled ‘Western Values’ of education and aspiration into her.
These familial influences and facts show that she has had a life that was anything but the ’cultural uniqueness’ of an Aboriginal.
In a later post we will explore these issues further.
Further Reading
Disinformation from our Government
In the 1992 Human Rights Commission Report quoted by the ABC and Prof. Davis in their response to us, [The Call for Recognition - A Report on the Situation of Australian South Sea Islanders HUMAN RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION 15 December 1992] the HRC claimed that ‘remarkably little had been written’ about SSI’s. The HRC relied upon the sources described in Figure 30.
Figure 30 - Excerpt on references used in 1992 HRC Report. Source The Call for Recognition - A Report on the Situation of Australian South Sea Islanders HUMAN RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION 15 December 1992]
This list of referenced sources looks somewhat restricted (and perhaps biased?).
The HRC primarily relied upon one unpublished book by Patricia Mercer [which has now (1995) been published & we have now ordered but have not received as yet] for their source of academic research into their report.
They appear not to have cited, or relied upon, the following, well known academic books on the subject - Peter Corris, Passage Port and Plantation [Corris, as late as 1968, was able to contact 18 men who had actually ‘stepped into the boats, touched the pen (to sign the contract), and gone off to Queensland and Fiji’ as indentured labourers; W.E Giles, ‘A Cruize…’, Deryck Scarr, Fragments of Empire, the ‘first sensitive and rounded portrait of the labour trade’ whose overall assessment was clear: “As a business, however, the labour trade required the substantial consent of all concerned, which was, in a considerable measure, forthcomimg from the islanders who were involved in it.”; Clive Moore, ‘Kanaka’; and Kay Saunder ,Workers in Bondage.
Some might think that the HRC has a history of restricting the sources it uses when writing its reports?
Further Reading
Some Definitions Used by the HRC
Indentured Labour
The Need For Historical Context
Many activists today want to portray the labour markets in colonial Queensland and NSW as some sort of racist, plantation system built on the back of black slave labour. These activists reproduce photographs showing forlorn looking workers in cane-fields to support their case.
Sure, life and work was tough in those days, but that was the way things were for all working people back then - blacks, whites, Chinese, Japanese and Islanders. Most of the activists complaining today always seem to look as if they have never done a hard day of manual work in their lives.
The historical reality is that Australia has always, and continues to be, a growing economy in need of labour. In pre-colonial times the majority of the daily grind was provided by the labour of Aboriginal women.
After 1788, the labour was predominately supplied white convicts.
Figure 34 - Convict Tramway, Van Diemen’s Land (Wikipedia)
From say, the 1850s onwards, it was predominately ‘free-immigrant labour’ - white shepherds, settlers, miners and in more remote regions Aborigines, as well as their horses. By the 1880s they were joined by white factory workers and a trickle of Kanaka labour recruits from the South Sea Islands.
To put the relative populations into context, the population of colonial Australia in 1900 was some 3.74million (Figure 35), after which some 162,000 convicts had arrived and some 62,000 individual Kanaka contracts issued (to approximately 50,000 individuals as many signed up two or three times). Thus, the influence of 50,000 South Sea Islanders was hardly influential in the bigger demographic picture.
Figure 35 - The historical convict population (ca163,000) an dteh South sea Islnder population (ca50,000) are insignificant on a national basis to the total colonial population on teh eve of Federation in 1900 (ca3.74million). Source
Was the Indentured Labour Trade Based on Kidnapping and Slavery?
If, as the Davis family believe , the South Sea Islander labour trade was so bad, and based on kidnapping and slavery, why did it last some forty years and why did the Davis family ancestors sign-up and return on second-contracts? And more importantly, why did they seek exemption certificates that entitled them to stay in Australia permanently?
Some of reasons are related to the fact that life in the islands was not always idyllic.
There was constant warfare in many islands, not only between tribes but also within tribes. Many of the senior men were ruthless fighters, which is easy to image when looking at some of Prof. Megan Davis’s possible ancestors (Figures 36 & 37).
Figure 36 - Malekula (Vanuatu) warrior. Prof Davis may have had an ancestor such as this. Source: E. Docker The Blackbirders, 1970, p52op
Figure 37 - Malekula (Vanuatu) warrior. Prof Davis would have had an ancestor such as this. Source: E. Docker The Blackbirders, 1970, p52op
Furthermore, in some South Sea Islands such as the Solomons, head-hunting was rife, as written about by Peter Corris (see Figures 38A&B).
Figures 38A & B - Extract from Peter Corris’s, Passage, Port and Plantation, p29-30. [Note: western islands of the Solomons]
Corris concludes that indigenous slave raiding and head-hunting reduced the number of labour recruits seeking to escape Solomon Island society by providing enough ‘enjoyment’ for the men to keep them at home.
Many of us would wonder however, why 17,756 Solomon Islanders still decided instead to indenture [‘enslave’] themselves to Queensland sugar plantations? This group represented 28% of the total of recruits to Queensland - the second highest share after Vanuatu (53% - Figure 16).
Was it because that a life consisting of two choices - hunting-heads or having your own head hunted - was not that attractive compared to the access to modernity that a labour contract in Queensland offered? [or were they members of the Solomon’s gentle LGBTQIA+ community fleeing an Indigenous ‘militaristic patriarchy' ? Modern activists are surprisingly silent on the LGBTQIA+ communities of pre-colonial Indigenous societies. Or are LGBTQIA+ politics a social construct like race? There must be an Australia Council grant somewhere in this?].
Modern Day Indentured Labour from the South Sea Islands
When the activists take to the high-moral ground and blame a ‘racist’ colonial Australia for the South Sea Island labour trade, it is instructional to point out that the trade still exists.
However, over the past 150 years a modern, honest and moral country such as Australia keeps progressing, at the best of our ability, to regulate the trade to enforce rights and obligations on all participants.
See Figures 39 & 40 for a modern day example of the South Sea Islander indentured labour trade going well.
Figure 39 - Source: The Australian 18 August 2023
Figure 40 - Source: The Australian 18 August 2023
And an example where the ABC’s 4Corners program are telling us that there are problems with the modern day trade.
Figure 41 - In 2015 the ABC was telling us that there is widespread “Labour exploitation, slave-like conditions found on farms supplying biggest supermarkets” built around 417 Visa workers (modern form of indentured labour), but then they would say that wouldn’t they? Source: Labour exploitation, slave-like conditions found on farms supplying biggest supermarkets
[Ed. Note : The same ABC that: ABC admits it may have underpaid 2,500 casual staff for six years].
Further Further Reading
Below is a good account of the how, why and what happened to, a couple of young Solomon Island '“boys” Tobebe and Afio, who were kidnapped for the Queensland labour trade. The activist Left will play up the first part of their story, but will never mention the final outcome.
Readers can make up their own morality play on what happened to them, but at the end of the day it’s history and the boys dealt with life as best as they could, on their own terms. We today should not feel guilty at all, only interested and willing to learn.
Figure 42A,B & C - Source: Corris p26
Source: Corris p27
Source: Corris p29
Odds and Sods - Interesting items come across during our research
Figure 43
Letters/ memos from the Queensland Archives showing that the authorities seemed to be doing their best, with limited resources, to ensure the Kanakas were treated fairly
Figure 44 series
What Is Defalcation?
The term defalcation primarily refers to an act committed by professionals who are in charge of handling money or other resources. This typically entails the theft, misuse, or misappropriation of money or funds held by an official trustee, or other senior-level fiduciary. As such, it's considered a form of embezzlement, either through the misallocation of funds, or the failure to account for received funds.
The following is a document that shows that the turn of century (1902), our society’s attitude was changing with regard to labour in the tropics and the rights of workers. Up until then it was generally considered that white labourers could not do manual labour in the tropics and labouring wages were to be kept as low as possible. However, the working man started to agitate for better pay and conditions and wanted to ensure wages were held high. To achieve this organised labour had to push back against commercial interests and one of the first ‘casualties’ was low-wage, indentured labour. Hence, the termination of the SSI labour-trade and the eventual expulsion of most of the South Sea Islanders.
Figure 45 - Letter from a grower D. Pratt illustrating the social change underway to move to white labour even when new SSI recruits were still available.
Mackay, 27th Feb 1902
H Hornbrood(?) Esq. (?), (?)
“I have indented 2 recruits per “Clansman” but I have now decided to try to grow cane with white labour.
Will you kindly oblige me by endeavouring to have the boys transferred to somebody who would like to have them.
Yours faithfully, D Pratt
The removal of new SSI recruits paved the way for the employment of ‘white’ cane cutters on higher wages and ultimately the emergence of the cost cutting mechanization of the sugar industry. Today Australia is one of the most efficient sugar producers in the world, a perfect example of progressive social policies leading to successful economic outcomes, even if that required the enactment of the White Australia Policy for some 60 years to effect this transition.
The short video below illustrates that the life of the Kanaka cane cutter and the early white cane cutters might not have been all that different.
Figure 46 - This ca1890 photograph is the favourite used by the activist Left to elicit sympathy for the ‘Kanaka cane-worker as oppressed slave’ narrative, despite their being well dressed and in Queensland voluntarily under contract. Source: Kanakas photographed on a sugarcane plantation with the overseer at the back of the group. ca. 1890. Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Collection reference: APO-25 Photograph Album of Cairns Views.
Figure 47 - These types of photographs from 1915 are not at all well known, even though they show cane-workers only some 25 years after those in Figure 46 adjacent. Is it because these cane workers are white? Source: The Robley family - “Between 1912 and 1915 , with his brother, Percy Charles, Sydney James worked as a cane cutter in Queensland”
Postscript: The history of the South Sea Islander Labour Trade is a lot more complicated and nuanced than we can hope to cover here in this post, which was mainly concerned with Professor Megan Davis’s family SSI ancestry.
At a future time we may return to the general topic of the Kanaks in Australia and post some more articles.
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