*Now I feel I should give a trigger warning. This post contains mention of a historical massacre. I like to use humour in my writing but this post isn’t humorous. Don’t expect funny asides or tongue in cheek facetiousness This isn’t funny. The subject isn’t a laughing matter. Things are going to get heavy in the next few paragraphs, and if it offends you, I’m not particularly sorry. No festering wound ever got healed by ignoring it.
I do a fair bit of travelling around this country, and if you keep your eyes, heart and mind open, it doesn’t take long to get an inkling of what’s meant by the double edged phrase, “Australia has a black history”. I’ve seen quite a few monuments and memorials to our murderous history and the concerted effort that was made to eradicate the original inhabitants of this land I love. The emotions they elicit are mixed, to say the least. This side of our past wasn’t taught to me in school and the slow revelation of it over the years has been hard. It’s not easy to face the fact we weren’t always the historical heroes. Sometimes, we were the villains and we all still benefit from those evil acts. It’s no wonder so many white Aussies have a hard time facing it. It’s not pretty.
Recently, I was travelling through the town of Gin Gin. It, like so many places in Aus, has a troubled past. It has a good example of how the narrative presented around the country is unbalanced.
In Gin Gin is a place where you can park your caravan for a night and camp for free. It has toilets, a driver reviver and toilets. The park also has three monuments, set out in a triangle like a no frills Stonehenge, and it offers a particularly one sided history of the early interactions between settlers and the local indigenous peoples. The site says more by what’s missing than by the stone memorials themselves. As they say, history is written by the victors.
One, dedicated in 1959, says a lot about the attitudes of that time. The relevant bits read, “…and commemorates the pioneer settlers of this area William Forster and Gregory Blaxland… Gregory Blaxland was murdered by hostile blacks…” Another stone memorial, erected in 1992 is dedicate to two boys, John and Peter Pegg, aged 12 and 14 “…who were speared to death by aborigines near here on the 4th of June 1849, being the first white people to die in the Kolan Shire…” It hints that attitudes hadn’t changed a great deal in the 33 years between both memorials’ erections.
The fact that no monument joins the others telling the history of the settlers indiscriminate retaliation against the locals speaks volumes. There’s nothing to commemorate the atrocity that came next. Nothing memorialising what is now referred to as the Paddy Island Massacre. No one knows exactly how many were killed but it is estimated to be at least in the hundreds. Men, women and children. Nothing is there to represent the other side of the story. No stone cairn exists expressing the idea that maybe the locals didn’t like losing their ancestral home or being driven from the land that they had walked for thousands of years.
Perhaps a monument to the massacre should be added, for balance, you know. Just saying.
Now I should stress again, Gin Gin is not alone in the sin of omission. It’s merely the latest example I’ve come across. Think of it as an allegory. An example of something amiss in the culture of our nation. Strip away the “whataboutism” and excuses, and just accept we have a problem. To paraphrase an oft used verse from the bible, The truth will set you free.
Personally, I believe it’s only by facing the past, by confronting our troubled history, that any progress can be made in the lives of our indigenous peoples and our national identity. We can’t continue to pay lip service and avoid the fact our past contains brutal darkness. The evidence is everywhere, but you have to look for it. We can’t keep turning away from it, hoping the wrongs will just go away. If we don’t confront it, we run the risk of repeating the sins of our forebears. I believe the persistence of racism in Australia and rise of far right political parties and neo-nazi groups is a direct result of this historical obfuscation.
I also believe we can be so much better than this as a nation. It won’t be easy, but with empathy, with open hearts and minds and hands, we can heal this old wound.
I hold onto this dream and hope you can join me in sharing this vision of a brighter future.
Part Time Lunatic 