FIFTEEN
Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf ’s letter to Dr George Cross,
2nd August 1915, continued III It had become clear to me, in the granary of the Motherland – that the first countrymen may have sown wheat but reaped thorns. I was in many ways still a babe when we arrived in Australia. A small and unworldly child. As time progressed, many of the kind residents of our town, our town that was expanding with vineyards and less sour white wine each year, revealed to me our heritage and how it was that we ended up on the other side of the world. That they themselves were persecuted and exiled and sought refuge in this country, and now to suffer this great harassment because we came from that same place has me questioning the reason of man to no end. I must tell you here and appeal to your sensibilities – I am shoulder to shoulder with my fellow citizens under the British flag and am no threat to the State. Yet, what has occurred towards people that I know also to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain, and to be simple and good- natured in their lives here, is most deplorable and must be aired.
After numerous subsequent visits through the grasslands to Massacre Plains, I took it upon myself to write to the Colonial Secretary. The letter was sent in May 1879 upon the subject, and, after waiting two months, I received a kind reply signifying his interest in my proposal to erect a House of Mercy, and requesting certain items of information, which, according to my memory, I supplied. It was six months after this reply, in searching for a suitable site for a Mission, that I found a portion of the river at a dogleg rapid below a large rock peak, large enough to get one’s bearings from each corner of the property’s five hundred acres. The land had recently been revoked from lease and I had hoped that I should thus escape any unpleasantness with the resident squatter, but when word filtered through the district that I would establish the Mission it was not well received. I had
come upon the sentiment while lodging at the less aristocratic hotel in Massacre Plains, as my preferred accommodation was closed upon arrival.
I had ridden the horse to the rear of the premises, where several rough- looking men had gathered. I dismounted to enquire after the manager. There was a strange manner to these men and I soon ascertained that they were, more or less, under the influence of liquor as they hurriedly cleared away bottles and pannikins from the back table. It was clear I had interrupted their recreation, but on saying, ‘Well, men, I see what you have been doing, now don’t be dishonest, make a clean breast of it’, they seemed to regain their wits. I explained who I was and what I wanted. They directed me to the front of the hotel and the manager received me kindly, at the same time apologising for the disorderly state of domestic affairs. On signifying my wish to remain overnight, he said I had better go on and bed down at the woolshed some three miles distant. But on my complaining of fatigue, he agreed I could stay, saying he expected every patron to provide his own blankets. Having assured him I could do that, the horse was turned out and I turned in to my room.
To my surprise over the course of the evening, three of the young men came to me and said they had recently been making asses of themselves, and would I give them the abstainer’s pledge. I should only be too happy to do so, I replied. The result was that six took the pledge, some for a year, and some for half that, but all with the understanding that it was not to commence until twelve o’clock at night, so that they might finish the supply they had on hand. I made myself as comfortable as circumstances would allow, my greatest discomfort being the sounds of revelry from the adjoining room, for as soon as my address had finished they hurried away to drain their bottles, which I think they managed to do. As I was departing the next morning and having not complained of the noise, the manager said that he had heard from other fellows in the region that I was a stuck-up parson and he was glad to find I was not so. Little did I know, those same men taking abstinence would later become the greatest cause of distress on our very lives at the Mission.
That day, on passing the local Police Depot on my route north, I found several unfortunate Natives chained like so many dogs to each other around the neck. They had no space to even turn their shoulders from each steel fixture. A bolt attached them to the main chain, with only a few links
between each, the main chain ran along and was secured to a tree. As though that were not sufficient to prevent their escape, some of the poor beings were shackled by the ankles, and in such a condition of squalor that they had obviously sat there hour after hour, and perhaps day after day.
They were awaiting the arrival of the Police Magistrate, and thence to be tried, or so the young constable told me. On my asking why they were without complete clothing, just a rag covering their modesty, and in their own mess, and, furthermore, chained!, he simply told me that it was ‘necessary’. I had no business remaining there and no authority to intervene so I proceeded north once again along an established wagon track, with little to engage my attention except for the birdsong and the appearance of a few weary kangaroos. Occasionally I passed a wool team with its inevitable Native girl or woman attached. On making brief acquaintance with several of the drivers, I asked why they had females with them. Some replied boastfully that they preferred their docility compared to the male workers while others did not blush on admitting that they had them for immoral purposes.
The land I prevailed upon ran along the most bountiful area of the Murrumby River where around the banks hundreds of solid acacia pines were growing, fit for construction. The only requirement the Government made of my endeavour was that the Mission be at a sufficient distance from the town to minimise contact with White society. This requirement I met and over the years made further provisions to separate us as much as I could from the township. In the end this was for the betterment of my residents themselves. Only on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s birthday commemoration each year did I encourage all the residents to visit the town for the blanket distribution. I encouraged them to return immediately and not to engage with the political discussions over Corroboree. It is common knowledge that the neighbouring Natives like to gather during blanket distribution, each May, to persuade each other to demand autonomy.
Although I know a marked diminution in number of the race gather there and each year there are reports that death has been busy. They say that soon, the miserable doling of blankets for the ancient lords of the soil will no longer be required. They say with their decrease that the Natives must soon wholly disappear from the face of the Earth. It is written in the local express that soon the Aborigine will be as rare on the banks of the Murrumby as in the streets of Sydney. On the contrary I had still seen a number of,
seemingly free, male and female Blacks carrying rocks into the river, which I later learned were for constructing fish traps. The Blacks of this area who seemed still in relation with the land were perhaps the finest I had seen, very tall, lean and nimble.
My friend Pastor Otto Baumann, who had his own small Mission of a hundred souls set up some two hundred miles south and four hundred miles inland by an artisanal lake, had disposed himself, sharing my ambition that Prosperous Mission would be complete within the season. In God’s grace, with my small wages from my travelling work as clergyman, Baumann and I were able to begin work in real earnest, cutting down trees and preparing timber for building. In about a month, two huts – the first I had hoped for a married Black couple as occupants and the other for myself – were drawing near completion, and so it was the correct time to search for our householders.
With Baumann, we discovered a little camp of women and children south of the river and persuaded them to go along with us. The women did treat me with great suspicion and I reasoned that they had not met well with white men before. They seemed to understand none of my language and I, as to be expected, understood none of theirs. This became a great frustration to me, and although Baumann tried some of the few words he had mastered from his region, none volunteered to speak the same language back to him, and we left without the women and children in our care. Baumann suggested that I learn some of the Blacks of Massacre Plains language. That I should integrate them into sermons if I were to truly have them converted to the Bible. Over the years I have tried. In those early days, Baumann and myself then gave in to building the huts of the Mission once more and erected a schoolhouse for proposed lessons. After only two months Baumann was obliged to return to his own Mission, so it was left to myself to set to work on sowing the grain I had acquired for a reasonable sum.
It was impressed on me the importance of sustaining a source of consistent supply at the Mission, so of the five hundred acres at my disposal, I set aside fifty close to the riverbank for the experiment of planting a crop. I planted a kitchen garden, the soil dug like ashes. Orchids, lilies and mosses flourished among the strange grain crop that had been growing in some patches here and there by the river. Later, when I enquired, the Natives referred to the grass as gulaa and motioned to their mouths as if it were edible. The straw of the Natives’ grain I threshed and buried in pits,
and threw in with it everything that I thought would rot and turn to manure.
I dug the lot in with the grass, and having removed the fallen timber to burn it from the ground, I dug in the ashes with it. I then hoed it up, never exceeding more than seven or perhaps eight rods a day. I had merely scratched over ground, but properly done this, I think, was almost equal to ploughing. Then I let it lie as long as I could, exposed to air and sun, and, just before I sowed my seed, turned it all up afresh. Once I had reaped the wheat I hoed it again, and harrowed it fine, then sowed it with turnip seed, which mellowed it and prepared it for the next year. By this process it seemed the silt took on a good colour after the once-over each following year. In that way it was not like my father’s vineyard – which had been horribly dry, and had needed thrice doing. I was able to oblige a local settler to loan me two Blackfellows he had in his possession to assist me. Quite freely they got to work building, fencing, gardening, clearing and assisting me with the new crop. The workers were able to communicate some of their greetings and I dutifully noted them in my journal and endeavoured thereafter to greet them in their own language – which seemed to please them deeply. In the evenings after my work at the Mission or when travelling the Plains, I read my passages by the bark resin light and after retiring thought on all that I had witnessed and thanked God that I had the piece of land in order to build a home of safety for the poor waifs and strays.
