Twisted histories
Words, voices and images: Connecting to cultures around the world
"The land was stolen, the cattle were speared and the people were shot. It is here the future begins to matter, we shape that future, by understanding the past”.
Duration
8.55
Director
Andrea and Peter Hylands
Cinematography
Andrea Hylands
In this film the founder of the Wallace Rockhole Community and Ilpurla Outstation in Central Australia, talks about what happened to the old people of the Finke River country.
WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS THE NAMES, IMAGES AND VOICES OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE NOW DECEASED
We are in outback Australia and 140 kilometers to the west of Alice Springs and it is here at Illamurta Springs with Mr Abbott senior, that we discuss the tourist information signs at an old police outpost. It is the missing histories in these signs that shape the sadnesses we all feel today.
Why do we care about what really happened? Well it is about finding justice for the old people who once owned this land and who will never be able to tell their stories.
The way in which we shape our own histories, we tend to be rather flattering about ourselves and most of the things we did in the past, mean our own histories are not the only story.
No matter where we are in the world that story of self-delusion is a constant one. Sometimes the truth can be very painful, best hidden and overlooked.
WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS THE NAMES, IMAGES AND VOICES OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE NOW DECEASED
We are in outback Australia and 140 kilometers to the west of Alice Springs and it is here at Illamurta Springs with Mr Abbott senior, that we discuss the tourist information signs at an old police outpost. It is the missing histories in these signs that shape the sadnesses we all feel today.
Why do we care about what really happened? Well it is about finding justice for the old people who once owned this land and who will never be able to tell their stories.
The way in which we shape our own histories, we tend to be rather flattering about ourselves and most of the things we did in the past, mean our own histories are not the only story.
No matter where we are in the world that story of self-delusion is a constant one. Sometimes the truth can be very painful, best hidden and overlooked.
A note on frontier wars
“It is a significant shift from the “history wars” of the 1990s, when accounts of massacres were heavily disputed as part of a broader debate on how to frame Australia’s national identity”. Professor Lyndall Ryan, Guardian Australia, July 2018
The first known punitive expedition against Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory occurred on the Cobourg Peninsula in December 1827. There were previous skirmishes, including British ships firing cannon at Aboriginal people, but these were at distance.
The last known massacre of Aboriginal people occurred at Coniston Station on 7 August 1928 when 17 Aboriginals were killed. As late as 1932 punitive expeditions by the Australian Government to East Arnhem Land "to teach the blacks a lesson” were averted by the intervention of missionaries and the anthropologist Donald Thomson. Sadly police were involved in many of the massacres that occurred across the Australian continent, in all killing more than 6,000 Aboriginal people, including women and children. Many more may be unaccounted for.
CONTEXT
There is no other Law concerned the story of Mounted Constable Willshire and the murder of members of the Arrernte people for which he and his Aboriginal trackers were put on trial in the late 1890s. It is also the story of Frank Gillen, one of the few representatives of the administration in Central Australia, who alerted the authorities to Willshire’s heavy-handed approach to enforcing the law of the colonisers. Research for this episode of the First Australians took place at the Northern Territory Archives Service, Alice Springs office, over a six month period in 2006- 2007. A research assistant initially visited to scout out what was available, and later on Rachel Perkins and her production team came along and looked at photographs and the record item we refer to as the “Willshire Journal”. This is the Alice Springs Police Station Journal from the time that Willshire was in the police force. In this journal, Willshire writes of his daily activities including travelling around Central Australia responding to pastoralists complaints of cattle killing. Rachel was quite excited to see this record. In some respects it brought the past closer to see Willshire’s own handwriting”. Records Territory, 2009
CONTEXT 2
"At the request of our Aboriginal members from Wallis Rockhole (who have paid tjauerilja to the Foundation for it), the history of Kwalba is set down here. 'Era Maiteraka Inteera ntjaberaka' - 'he became the ceremonial chief of the whole of Inteera'. Some of the acts of this site had been revealed to Spencer and Gillen in 1896 and Strehlow himself was taken over this great rara (or red kangaroo) site in 1960. Kwalba, also known as 'Policeman Jack [XLII]', had been one of the four black trackers accompaning Mounted Constable Willshire as he set out for Tempe Downs from Alitera (or Boggy Hole Police Station), and who gunned down two Matuntara men 'in the hour of grey dawn on 22nd February 1891'. Kwalba also assisted white station hand William H Abbott to burn the bodies by cutting the large amount of firewood (together with Archie Akorknaltjika) necessary for this job". Descendents of Kwalba (Policeman Jack), Strehlow Research Foundation Newsletters, 1983
CONTEXT 3
Kwalba's name however is assured a place in history for quite a different reason: 'The police shots that rang out through the morning air at Tempe Downs on 22 February,1891, had not only concluded the grim chapter whose first blood-stained pages had been written at Irbmankara one evening sixteen years earlier: they had also brought to an end a decade of uncurbed police violence in Central Australia. Gillen's courage [in attempting to bring Willshire to justice] was never forgotten by the Aranda; and some years later their gratitude found its expression in the ceremonial festival held in Alice Springs in 1896, where the secret totemic cycle of Imanda was revealed for the first time before the eyes of white men – to Gillen, and to his friend Baldwin Spencer' (pp 48-49, Journey to Horseshoe Bend).
A note on frontier wars
“It is a significant shift from the “history wars” of the 1990s, when accounts of massacres were heavily disputed as part of a broader debate on how to frame Australia’s national identity”. Professor Lyndall Ryan, Guardian Australia, July 2018
The first known punitive expedition against Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory occurred on the Cobourg Peninsula in December 1827. There were previous skirmishes, including British ships firing cannon at Aboriginal people, but these were at distance.
The last known massacre of Aboriginal people occurred at Coniston Station on 7 August 1928 when 17 Aboriginals were killed. As late as 1932 punitive expeditions by the Australian Government to East Arnhem Land "to teach the blacks a lesson” were averted by the intervention of missionaries and the anthropologist Donald Thomson. Sadly police were involved in many of the massacres that occurred across the Australian continent, in all killing more than 6,000 Aboriginal people, including women and children. Many more may be unaccounted for.
CONTEXT
There is no other Law concerned the story of Mounted Constable Willshire and the murder of members of the Arrernte people for which he and his Aboriginal trackers were put on trial in the late 1890s. It is also the story of Frank Gillen, one of the few representatives of the administration in Central Australia, who alerted the authorities to Willshire’s heavy-handed approach to enforcing the law of the colonisers. Research for this episode of the First Australians took place at the Northern Territory Archives Service, Alice Springs office, over a six month period in 2006- 2007. A research assistant initially visited to scout out what was available, and later on Rachel Perkins and her production team came along and looked at photographs and the record item we refer to as the “Willshire Journal”. This is the Alice Springs Police Station Journal from the time that Willshire was in the police force. In this journal, Willshire writes of his daily activities including travelling around Central Australia responding to pastoralists complaints of cattle killing. Rachel was quite excited to see this record. In some respects it brought the past closer to see Willshire’s own handwriting”. Records Territory, 2009
CONTEXT 2
"At the request of our Aboriginal members from Wallis Rockhole (who have paid tjauerilja to the Foundation for it), the history of Kwalba is set down here. 'Era Maiteraka Inteera ntjaberaka' - 'he became the ceremonial chief of the whole of Inteera'. Some of the acts of this site had been revealed to Spencer and Gillen in 1896 and Strehlow himself was taken over this great rara (or red kangaroo) site in 1960. Kwalba, also known as 'Policeman Jack [XLII]', had been one of the four black trackers accompaning Mounted Constable Willshire as he set out for Tempe Downs from Alitera (or Boggy Hole Police Station), and who gunned down two Matuntara men 'in the hour of grey dawn on 22nd February 1891'. Kwalba also assisted white station hand William H Abbott to burn the bodies by cutting the large amount of firewood (together with Archie Akorknaltjika) necessary for this job". Descendents of Kwalba (Policeman Jack), Strehlow Research Foundation Newsletters, 1983
CONTEXT 3
Kwalba's name however is assured a place in history for quite a different reason: 'The police shots that rang out through the morning air at Tempe Downs on 22 February,1891, had not only concluded the grim chapter whose first blood-stained pages had been written at Irbmankara one evening sixteen years earlier: they had also brought to an end a decade of uncurbed police violence in Central Australia. Gillen's courage [in attempting to bring Willshire to justice] was never forgotten by the Aranda; and some years later their gratitude found its expression in the ceremonial festival held in Alice Springs in 1896, where the secret totemic cycle of Imanda was revealed for the first time before the eyes of white men – to Gillen, and to his friend Baldwin Spencer' (pp 48-49, Journey to Horseshoe Bend).
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