What would it have been really like to live with the threat of Frontier Violence?
How Aboriginal people responded to the arrival of Europeans within the sphere of their world varied greatly over Australia.
In some places there was an initial shock and perhaps disbelief at the appearance of these new settlers with their strange equipment, animals, crops and ways of doing things, but soon both cultures negotiated a way of living with, and off, each other and violent clashes leading to deaths were infrequent.
Sometimes the clashes that did occur between Aboriginal people and the settlers led to some deaths, but not in numbers any greater than the other deaths that were occurring every week during the course of ‘every-day’ life in a new colony- deaths caused by intra-European conflict (eg: due to murders, robberies, domestic violence and even public hangings) and inter-tribal conflict between Aborigines.
For example, the settlement of Tasmania started off relatively peacefully. Brian Plomley in his book, The Tasmanian Aborigines, (1993) writes that,
‘In spite of the increasing number of settlers, there was no concerted resistence on the part of the Aborigines for the first twenty years. At most there were a few attacks each year, sometimes none at all, and the average rate between 1804 and 1823 is no more than 1.75 attacks per year.’ (ibid., p85)
These attacks resulted in only a few, and often no, Aboriginal deaths during this period in Tasmanian history up until 1823.
However, as the demand for land and resources by the settlers grew, competition with the local Tasmanian Aboriginal tribes increased such that very serious hostility and violence between the Aborigines and the new settlers began to occur.
When the so-called ‘Black War’ began in 1824, the number of annual attacks by the Aborigines on the settlers grew to a peak of about 220 attacks (say, one every other day) in the year 1830, before abruptly reducing by 1834 to only one per week, as the level of Aboriginal violence collapsed. (See Figure 1 below).
Plomley provides a graph of the number of clashes per year during this period - see Figure 1.
Figure 1:
During the height of these hostilities, the maximum recorded number of Aborigines killed was around 30 per year - See Green Line in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Aborigines killed by settlers 1804-1834, Total = 118 (Windschuttle, 2002, p387-397) and Tasmanian homicides 1954-1984, Total = 413 (Mukherjee (1989), p179)
Regrettable as these Aboriginal deaths were, to put them into some recent context to which we can relate, we have plotted the Aboriginal death toll during the 30 year ‘Black War’ alongside the figures we have found for the number of homicides reported in the general Tasmanian population for a 30 year period, from 1954 to 1984.
This comparison shows that the modern day level of homicides, from 1954 to 1984, (the brown line curve in Figure 1) was a very much higher number, at 413 during this 30-year period, when compared to the plausible, recorded killings of 118 Aboriginal people over the 30year period from 1804 to 1834. (Mukhuerjee, 1989, p179; Windschuttle, 2002, p387-397).
Another comparative way to look at the Aboriginal deaths caused by settlers in early colonial Tasmania (1804 to 1834) is to compare the numbers of Aborigines killed compared to Tasmanians (criminals) executed by hanging over about the same period, viz. 1806 to 1836
Once again, it can be seen that the number of Tasmanians executed for criminal offences during the years of the so called, ‘Black War’ was far in excess (more than double) of the number of recorded, plausible killings of Aboriginal people by the settlers.
Nevertheless, there was a genuine fear and anxiety amongst the settlers of being attacked or killed by the Aborigines, especially those living in their huts on their farms in the more remote areas.
It is difficult for us today to understand this fear and anxiety by just reading the history books. Perhaps one way however, to get a sense of it is to look at a modern-day proxy for an Aboriginal attack on a settlers homestead - a home invasion in suburban Melbourne.
Melbourne has had a spate of violent home invasions, as well as carjackings, in the years 2018 and 2019. Quite coincidently, the number of these violent ‘clashes’ was between 200 - 300 in each year across Victoria, which is about same number of Aboriginal/settler clashes reported by Plomley (a maximum of 220 in 1830) during the Tasmanian ‘Black War’ (see Figure 1 above).
So perhaps both communities, that in colonial Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), and that in modern day Melbourne (Victoria), were experiencing a similar level of fear and anxiety. To be true, the Tasmanian settlers probably had a greater fear of being killed; but then maybe not. When one considers our modern day society’s lower threshold for fear and anxiety (or even our diminished lack of courage and fortitude) it might be that the average suburban family living in an area prone to home invasions may be just as fearful and anxious each night as a tough settler family in their timber hut in the Tasmanian bush armed with a musket. One only needs to drive through certain suburbs of Melbourne today and observe the great number of homes fitted with metal security shutters, security doors and surveillance cameras to appreciate that many home-owners may indeed be as fearful and anxious as our Tasmanians ancestors.
So, what would it have been like to have been a settler on the frontier when the Aborigines attacked your hut and family?
We ask readers to watch the follow film clip of home invasions, as a proxy for the Tasmanian 'frontier conflict'. Perhaps a clash between between a ‘settler family’ and ‘thieves’ is not necessarily 'history' - it is still happening today and gives us an opportunity to reflect on the experiences of our settler ancestors.
References
Mukherjee, S.K., (1989) - Source Book of Australian Criminal & Social Statistics, 1804-1988, Aust. Inst. of Criminology, Canberra
Windschuttle, K., 2002 - the Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Vol 1, Van Diemen’s Land, Macleay Press, 2002
Film Clip from 4Corners program - Full Episode here
