INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS.
The early arrivals with stock in the Gulf country were obliged to obtain
rations and supplies from Bowen, on the east coast, as that was the only
port then opened in the North of Queensland. The distance was from five
to seven hundred miles through the desert country and down the Flinders,
and as the old-fashioned pole bullock-dray with only two wheels was then
in vogue, no great quantity could be carried in one dray load. The
opening of Burketown in 1865 as the second port after Bowen in North
Queensland, enabled the early settlers to obtain supplies more easily,
although the cost was still excessive. But the rations were fresher than
those the overlanders had been used to. Some of the flour that had come
out with the parties had been years on the road, and was very much the
worse for the long journey. This flour could only be used after much
sifting and airing; it was made into small thin cakes called Johnny
cakes, which were cooked in the ashes and eaten hot; even then it was
bitter and nearly brown in colour. The grubs and worms had long since
left it, or died in it from old age. It was said that some flour from
Bowen Downs that had left Sydney years before and come out to the Gulf
stations just formed, being too strong to use, was thrown out, and the
dingoes and crows were found lying dead round it. The sugar in those
days was the dark, treacly kind, that left a stain on the floor like
blood; it came in casks. However, people were not very particular as to
the quality of the supplies, provided there was anything at all to eat.
Pig weed (portulacca), boiled or roasted on a shovel was one of the
changes open to travellers; tea was made from the marjoram bush; and
very fair coffee was made from the scrapings of the burnt edges of
dampers, and was called Scotch coffee. When Burketown was opened, the
fresh supply of flour and stores was very welcome to the early settlers.
* * * * *
For the first year or two of Burketown's existence, a saturnalia of a
most original and determined fashion set in. There were only two or
three women in the town, and no police, and the crowd enjoyed themselves
in their own breezy, sunshiny way. Burketown was the haven of refuge for
all the outsiders and outlaws from the settled districts when they had
made other places too warm to hold them any longer.
"God forsaken, devil may care,
Every one with his sins to bear;
From East, from West, they are camping there;
Where all the bad lots go."
All kinds of characters made their way out to the Gulf in those early
days. Men went there who had been wanted by the police for years. Horse
stealing and forging cheques were very common pastimes among the fancy,
and Burketown society, in its first efforts to establish itself, was of
a kind peculiarly its own.
An ex police officer (O'Connor), who started business in Burketown, and
who hailed from the land of the shamrock, knew many of the "boys," as he
called them. One noted character broke out of the lock-up, swam the
Albert River, swarming with alligators, got a horse somewhere or
somehow, and was followed by Mr. W. D'Arcy Uhr far into New South Wales,
and brought back to Burketown, only to be discharged, whilst Mr. Uhr,
who was one of the smartest officers of the police was asked for an
explanation for leaving his district without permission.
The following case of horse-stealing will serve to show the lawless
state of things prevailing in the outside regions when the borders of
civilisation were undefined, and no laws could be enforced.
Three men were implicated, all notorious characters, even for those
days. They were called Dublin Bob, Firearm Jack, and One-armed Scotty.
They had spent some time mustering the horses and in building yards to
hold them, on Bowen Downs run. As soon as the theft was discovered, they
were followed by Mr. J. T. C. Ranken, the manager, Mr. J. Moffat,
Junior, a blackfellow, Jacky, and another man. They overtook the
horse-stealers on the range near Betts' Gorge, took possession of the
horses, and arrested the thieves, as Mr. Ranken and the other white men
had been sworn in as specials before starting. As they were riding
along, Mr. Ranken saw a horse down a gorge that he thought he
recognised, and leaving the prisoners in charge of the others, giving
them strict instructions to guard them carefully, he went to look at the
horse. On returning, he found the men had escaped, and no satisfactory
explanation was ever given as to their departure. This was in the year
1866, when there was a great demand for horses in consequence of so much
stock being driven to take up new country. In the previous year, 1865,
the first sheep were brought on to Bowen Downs, and another mob of
cattle was sent out to the Gulf country in charge of J. Neil, who
stocked the country on the Alexandra, a tributary of the Leichhardt
River, where there was a large waterhole ten or twelve miles long. The
Mud Hut on the Thomson had to be abandoned owing to the scarcity of
grass and the waterhole drying up before the end of the year. The year
1865 was a very dry one on the Thomson, the Barcoo, and the
Flinders--waterholes went dry that year that have never gone dry in the
thirty-five years that have followed. Law and order in those days was a
"go-as-you-please" sort of arrangement. At a shanty about twenty-five
miles from Burketown, a man was shot by the keeper of the shanty, and
died. The man was prosecuted, but owing to his detention waiting trial,
and his long sea voyage west about the Leeuwin, and other extenuating
circumstances in the case, the man being compelled to keep order in a
lonely place amongst a very disorderly crowd, he got off.
During the year 1864, a man named G. Nicol, and his wife, both of whom
had been employed at Bowen Downs, and had left with the intention of
going to Rockhampton, were found dead between Bowen Downs and
Stainbourne. They had been offered quiet horses for the journey, but
they preferred to walk. As they did not turn up at Stainbourne, a search
was instituted, and they were found on one of the branches of Bullock
Creek, both dead. The woman had been dead much longer than the man, as
portions of her corpse were missing, while the body of the man was
whole; the woman had a hole in her skull; the man had a revolver with
two chambers empty. She was the first white woman on the Thomson, and
was a very kind decent little body. The story remains one of the
mysteries of the bush that will never be solved. Another tragedy that
marked this year was the murder of Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill station,
and his overseer by the blacks. Mr. Meredith had been away from his
station on a visit, and when returning passed his teams loaded with
rations on the road somewhere between Bully and Cornish Creeks. In
passing them he promised either to meet them himself or to send someone
else. When he got to Cornish Creek, he saw so many blacks that he
decided to meet them himself; therefore, on arrival at the station, he
obtained fresh horses, and started back, taking his overseer, Mr. Robert
McNeely, with him. He intended to stay with the teams until they were
past all danger, but he never reached them. Both men were killed on
Cornish Creek, about fifty miles above Bowen Downs. The exact spot was
unknown, nor were the bodies ever recovered; but their clothes, watches,
etc., were found in the blacks' camp. The men with the teams were the
first to find out that something was wrong, for on bringing up their
horses one morning, they found some of the Tower Hill station horses
among them, one in particular that Mr. Meredith always rode himself.
Suspecting trouble, they went on to the Bowen Downs teams, a few miles
ahead, and the teamsters went back with them to search, and in the
blacks' camp articles were found which left no doubt that both Mr.
Meredith and his overseer had been killed. No doubt there had been a
night attack when the two pioneers were asleep in their camp, unaware of
the approach of the observant enemy. Blacks seldom attacked during the
day, but preferred to steal stealthily upon their victims and kill them
in their sleep. Numerous cases of this description might be mentioned,
and it was the rule among experienced bushmen to either keep watch at
night, or else to shift camp after dark.
In the early days, the blacks of North Queensland, and especially of the
Peninsula, used to be troublesome to stock, and never failed to kill
horses and cattle whenever a chance offered, cutting up and carrying
away the carcase to the scrubs or ridgy country. Great numbers of stock
were killed by them in the early days of settlement all over the Cook
district. Even teamsters' horses have been known to be killed close to
the road during the night, cut up, and carried away, or skinned of the
flesh and the skeleton left entire. Not alone to stock did they confine
their attacks, for many a white man and Chinaman, of whose death there
is no record, fell before their spears, and it is maintained they ate
their victims on many occasions. The usual war of reprisals went on
between the intruders and the native race, and the latter soon went
under, although the tribes inhabiting the country around the main rivers
were numerous. In no district in Queensland have the blacks shown
themselves more hostile to the settlers than in the Peninsula. The
Jardine Brothers' journal of their trip to Cape York is a record of
continued and unprovoked attacks by blacks on their little party. One of
the early settlers, a Mr. Watson, was killed on his own verandah at his
station on the Archer, and Gilbert, the naturalist belonging to
Leichhardt's party, was killed in a night attack by blacks, not far from
the Mitchell River. The lonely gullies about the Palmer hide the record
of many a lost prospector done to death by the savages; while the sight
of one of them was enough to cause a stampede among a camp of a hundred
Chinese, for the poor Chinamen always fell easy victims to the blacks,
as they would never show fight, and seldom carried firearms. It was a
very common occurrence for the early settlers to bring in cattle to the
yard for the purpose of drawing broken spears out of their sides. Horses
were hunted down as readily as cattle, and this in a district noted for
its native game.