Page:Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland.djvu/32

8 These black police were aborigines from New South Wales' and distant places, and they, with their white leader, came and shot several blacks, the remaining poor things returning at once to their friend in a great state, protesting they had not touched a beast. Father met the squatter soon after, and said to him: "You're a nice sort of fellow; how could you cause those poor blacks to be shot like that? You know perfectly well they did not kill your cattle." The man excused himself by saying that it was done without his knowledge, that he had a young fellow learning station work who got frightened over the blacks, and went for the police on his own account.

Another time, while out riding in the bush, my father heard a great row, and a voice calling, "Round them up, boys!" And on galloping up he came upon a number of poor blacks—men, women, and children—all in a mob like so many wild cattle, surrounded by the mounted black police. The poor creatures tried to run to their friend for protection, and he inquired of the officer in charge what was the meaning of it all. The officer—a white man, and one, by the way, who was noted for his inhuman cruelty—replied that they merely wished to see who was who. But Father knew that if he hadn't turned up, a number of the poor things would have been shot. Can one wonder there were murders committed by the blacks, seeing how they were sometimes treated? This same police officer (Wheeler, by name), later on was to have been hanged for whipping a poor creature to death, but he escaped and fled from the country. It is possible he is still alive. His victim was a young blackfellow, whom he had tied to a verandah post, and then brutally flogged till he died.

Three men were once murdered at St. Helena Island by aboriginals, and this is the side of the question given by "Billy Dingy" (so called by the whites), one of the blacks concerned. Billy said that he and two other young men, each with his young wife, were taken in a boat by three white men, who promised to land them at Bribie Island, as it was then the great "bunya season," and the aborigines always met there before travelling to the Bunya Mountains