Cold Open

It’s 1834 in Portland Bay in southeastern Australia.

An elderly member of a Gunditjmara clan hacks at the belly of a whale, his feet sinking into the sand as he works his knife through the tough blubber.  Other clan members work on the carcass alongside him. The atmosphere on the beach is celebratory but intense. The whale washed up here a few days ago, and the meat they’re harvesting will feed the clan for weeks—as long as they can claim it before the white men arrive.

It’s been 46 years since the first British settlers came to Australia. Their arrival had a seismic impact on the continent’s indigenous peoples. The diseases they brought killed around half of the Eora clan living near Sydney, while many others died in conflicts with the newcomers. Recently, white settlers have begun to expand south into Gunditjmara land too. They’ve built a whaling station and claimed the seas as their own, despite the fact that the Gunditjmara have been here for centuries. 

The old man looks up as a group of whalers hustles across the sand, their faces pink with sweat. The clansmen jerk their knives out of the whale flesh and hold them tight, ready for a fight. But the white men aren’t interested in a hand-to-hand combat. Instead, they stop a short distance away - and unsling their rifles from their backs.

The old man ducks behind the carcass, pressing his body against the wet sand as the whalers open fire.

Some bullets thump into blubber or bury themselves in the sand. But others find their mark. Several of the Gunditjmara fall, clutching at their wounds. The old man looks for a way to escape. The tree line is a few hundred yards away. He’ll have to risk the settlers’ bullets to get there. But he has no choice.

Keeping as low as he can, he makes a break for the trees. He feels like a coward for running away, but he also knows that the settlers’ guns make this fight an unequal one. Once again, the British have come to claim what does not belong to them - and the Aboriginal Australians have no way of stopping it.

All but two of this Gunditjmara group will be slaughtered by whalers in what will become known as the Convincing Ground Massacre. It’s one of the first clashes between Indigenous people and white settlers in this part of Australia—but it won’t be the last. The relentless expansion of the British colony in Australia will cause conflict to break out again and again. And eventually, the colonial authorities will come up with a notorious solution—they’ll forcibly remove children from their families in a crude attempt to wipe out the indigenous culture, leading to generations of trauma that begins with the passage of the so-called “Aboriginal Protection Act” on November 11th, 1869.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is November 11th, 1869: Australia’s Aboriginal Protection Act.

Act One

It’s early July 1836 at Mount Cottrell, a hill outside Port Phillip in southeastern Australia, two years after the Convincing Ground Massacre.

A white shepherd climbs a steep slope, breathing heavily. The sun is blazing overhead, and the ground at his feet is tinder-dry. The shepherd knows that he needs to find shelter soon. Overheating in weather like this could kill him. So as the shepherd reaches the crest of the hill, he spots his destination with relief: a dilapidated wooden hut.

About three decades ago, the first British ships began exploring the southern coast of Australia in hope of finding a sea route back to Britain. Whalers then arrived, setting up temporary camps on the coast during hunting season. Now, in the last two years, settlers have ventured out from existing British colonies on Australia’s east coast to establish permanent towns in the south. The most promising is around the large, enclosed bay of Port Phillip, where the Yarra River meets the sea. Many of the newcomers have claimed land nearby, but this has brought them into conflict with the people who already live there. 

The white shepherd picks a path through the thick brush and knocks on the closed door of the wooden hut. Two other sheep farmers, Charles Franks and Thomas Flinders, have laid claim to this part of the hillside, but the shepherd hasn’t seen them for a few days, so he’s trekked up the hill to check that all is well.

After knocking, no one answers. But the door is unlocked, so the shepherd pushes it open. Immediately, he recoils at the sight and smell that greets him. Blood is spattered on every surface of the hut’s interior. A swarm of flies buzzes furiously. And Charles and Thomas lie dead on the floor.

The shepherd staggers out of the hut, his heart racing. The hillside is still and silent. Whoever killed the two men must be long gone by now, but the shepherd still feels suddenly vulnerable, the heat around him close and claustrophobic. 

He rushes away as fast as he can to report the murders. And soon after, a party of white settlers from the nearby town sets out to track down those responsible. After a few days of searching, they find the camp of an Aboriginal clan and decide that these people must be the ones who killed the two shepherds. So, at dawn, they crawl to within 100 yards, and then, without warning, open fire with their muskets.

The camp is just stirring to life, and there are around 80 Indigenous Australians in the camp. But they have no guns to defend themselves with, and they can only flee in panic from the settlers’ bullets. Since they don’t know where the shooting is coming from, though, some run toward the men attacking them and are mercilessly gunned down. By the time the shooting finally stops, the camp has been abandoned and ten Aboriginal Australian men, women, and children are dead.

The settlers are jubilant at the success of their vigilante mission and return home to celebrate. Many in the local taverns praise them for avenging the killing of the two white men and think it will act as a warning to Aboriginals not to attack settlers again. But not everyone agrees with these aggressive tactics. Some settlers point out that there’s no proof that the local Aboriginals had anything to do with the deaths of the shepherds, and they fear that this atrocity will only provoke more violence in return.

Sure enough, the Mount Cottrell Massacre is not an isolated incident. As the settlement around Port Phillip grows, the tensions with the nearby Aboriginal clans worsen. Two years later, in 1838, eight white settlers are killed in an ambush by indigenous warriors at an inland creek known as Broken River. This then leads to a reprisal raid by settlers in which around 40 Aboriginals are massacred. And the violence only continues throughout the 1840s. 

And during this decade, the settlement at Port Phillip will become a thriving town known as Melbourne. But it will also gain a reputation as a lawless frontier marked by vigilante justice. So, when the Colony of Victoria is formally established in the region in 1851, the new colonial administrators will make calming the tensions between white settlers and local Aboriginal communities a priority—but their method of doing so will rip families apart and inflict trauma that will echo for generations.

Act Two 

It’s November 11th, 1869, at the governor’s residence in Melbourne, 18 years after the Colony of Victoria was established in southeastern Australia.

47-year-old Sir John Manners-Sutton lifts a cup of tea to his lips and takes a sip before replacing it on a china saucer. As the Governor of Victoria, it’s Sir John’s task to supervise the administration of the colony. He’s been in Melbourne for three years now, and he’s spent much of his time dealing with the aftermath of a series of massacres and skirmishes between colonists and indigenous Australians. Now, at last, he’s hopeful that real progress is about to be made.

Nine years ago, Victoria’s colonial assembly established a committee to investigate how relations with Aboriginal Australians could be improved. The members soon concluded that Aboriginal communities had a lifestyle that was incompatible with that of the white settlers. Indigenous peoples in Australia had a largely nomadic existence and sought to live off the land sustainably. In contrast, white settlers saw it as their mission to transform the countryside, making it more productive to support growing populations. This fundamental difference in philosophies and ways of life was inevitably leading to conflict, a conflict that could be only solved, in the committe's eyes, by removing the Aboriginal people. The board recommended a new law establishing Aboriginal reserves and granting the local colonial government authority over the lives of Indigenous Australians. The local assembly has just voted in favor of the proposal, so all the legislation needs now is the Governor’s approval.

So setting his tea aside, Sir John turns his attention to the document. It’s entitled “An Act To Provide For The Protection and Management of the Aboriginal Natives of Victoria”. Sir John turns to the last page, then takes up his pen and writes “in the name and on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, I assent to this act”, before signing his name below.

Soon after The Aboriginal Protection Act becomes law, government officers force 2,000 indigenous people in Victoria to move onto reserves, often rounding them up at gunpoint.

But life on these reserves is miserable. The inhabitants are provided with rations, but only if they attend church services every Sunday. They’re expected to work, but colonial officials dictate the jobs that they’re given. They’re given salaries, but so low they are almost slave wages. 

And the new act doesn’t just decide where Aboriginal people live. It controls how they live as well. The new law forbids Indigenous Australians from marrying white people, and even stops them from marrying each other if a colonial official deems the match unsuitable. 

But some Aboriginal Australians have already married or had children with white settlers. And in these circumstances, the new law allows officials to remove the children from the reserve. These mixed-race children are called ‘half-castes’ at the time, and they are sent to state-run schools and institutions far away from their families. There, attempts are made to erase all traces of their Aboriginal heritage. The children are forbidden from discussing their indigenous culture, speaking their own languages or practicing their traditional religion. And when they’re old enough, the colonial government intends for these mixed-race children not to return to their families, but to get jobs in the towns and cities of white settler society. 

And as the generations pass, the hope among the authorities is that the indigenous population of Victoria will simply dwindle away to nothing. 

It doesn’t take long for the new Aboriginal Protection Act to win the admiring attention of other colonial governments across Australia. Similar measures are soon adopted in New South Wales and in Western Australia.

But in Victoria, the colonial government decides insufficient progress is being made. It sets about expanding the range of powers it holds over the lives of indigenous Australians. And under the Half-Caste Act of 1886, any Aboriginal under the age of 34 who has white ancestry is forced to leave the reserves and assimilate into colonial society.

But the Half-Caste Act comes into effect just as Australia is entering an economic depression. The Aboriginal Australians expelled from the reserves struggle to find work, and many are plunged into the misery of poverty and alcoholism. But the extensive suffering caused by the forced separation of families won’t deter the colonial authorities. In the years ahead, they will double-down on their attempts to wipe out Aboriginal culture with a policy that will be even crueler and more divisive.

Act Three

It’s 1935 in a post office near the small town of Broome in Western Australia, 66 years after the Aboriginal Protection Act became law.

A 10-year-old indigenous girl hops from one foot to the other, waiting for the line of people in front of her to inch forward. She’s been dragged to the post office by her mother who’s running errands, but the girl wants nothing more than to return home so she can play with her friends.

35 years ago, Australia’s colonies merged to form a federal government. Afterward, the country’s leaders built on the web of laws they inherited from the old colonies to further expand the government’s authority over Aboriginal Australians. These new laws allowed officials to forcibly remove not just mixed-race offspring but any children from Aboriginal families.

And now, as the line to the post office counter moves forward, the door crashes open and several white police officers rush in. The girl huddles close to her mother, but that doesn’t stop the officers from grabbing them both and ushering them outside. A police truck is waiting. Several other Aboriginal mothers and their children are already sitting in the back, looking terrified.

The police officers shove the girl and her mother onto the truck too. After driving them across town, the police officers stop the truck. They get out and order the mothers off the back. The young girl tries to follow her mom, but one of the police officers orders her back. The girl doesn’t understand. And then, the truck’s engine roars and the vehicle pulls away. The little girl and the other children begin to scream. Their mothers are staying behind as the children are being taken away.

After two days locked up in the police station in Broome, the Aboriginal children are put on a boat all the way to the city of Perth, a journey of over a thousand miles. There, they’re placed in an orphanage and told to forget about their parents, because they’ll never see them again.

It’s a devastating story that will be repeated all across Australia. At the peak of the policy, up to one in three Aboriginal children will be removed from their families and raised in a state institution - supposedly for their own good. Only in the 1970s will the inhumane practice finally be stopped. And by then, no one will know for certain how many people were affected, but the damage done to these “Stolen Generations” will be all too clear. Those taken from their families showed no improvement in education or employment outcomes. Instead, the forced separation inflicted lifelong physical and mental trauma.

Even today, Australia still grapples with the legacy of this cruel practice. It was a policy that shaped the nation, with its roots stretching right back to the earliest days of white settlements in Australia, when the British colony of Victoria passed the Aboriginal Protection Act on November 11th, 1869.

Outro

Next on History Daily. November 12th, 1948. Former general and prime minister Hideki Tojo is sentenced to death for his war crimes after World War II. 

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammed Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.