Smoke signalling resistance
Aboriginal use of long-distance communication during Australia’s frontier wars
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2021.3Keywords:
Aboriginal, communication networks, frontier wars, smoke signallingAbstract
This essay reconstructs defensive/offensive mechanisms of Aboriginal communication networks and presents historical examples of their application as a means of resistance during Australia’s frontier wars. The principal focus is on smoke-signalling systems, especially in Queensland.
References
John Keegan, Intelligence in war: Knowledge of the enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (New York: Knopf, 2003), pp. 9, 27, 18; Michael I. Handel, War, strategy and intelligence (Abingdon: Frank Cass & Company, 1989), p. 13; Rose Mary Sheldon, Intelligence activities in ancient Rome: Trust in the gods, but verify (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. xvi, 4–5.
Frank Santi Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece (Chicago: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 5; Keegan, Intelligence in war, p. 16.
Malcolm Prentis, A study in black and white: The Aborigines in Australian history (Sydney: Methuen, 1975), p. 27; Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior and John Connor, ‘Aboriginal armed resistance to white invasion’, in Peter Dennis (ed.), The Oxford companion to Australian military history (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 3; Dean Ashden, ‘Best we forget?’ The Age, 23 April 2013; Keith Windschuttle, The fabrication of Aboriginal history, Vol. 1, (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2002), pp. 129–30; Keith Windschuttle, ‘Guerrilla warrior and resistance fighter? The career of Musquito’, Labour History 87 (2004), 221; Keith Windschuttle, ‘Doctored evidence and invented incidents in Aboriginal historiography’, in Bain Attwood and S.J. Foster (eds), Frontier conflict: The Australian experience (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2003), p. 13.
‘Simpson letter book’, ed. Gerry Langevad, Queensland Ethnohistory Transcripts 1(1) (1982), 5.
‘Moreton Bay’, Empire (Sydney), 24 March 1851, 2; ‘Current news’, Queenslander, 7 December 1878, 293; ‘Reclaiming the savage: Aboriginal missions’, Darling Downs Gazette, 8 August 1907, 7; Phillip P. King, Narrative of a survey of the inter-tropical and western coasts of Australia: Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 with an appendix containing various subjects relating to hydrography and natural history, Vol. 1 (London: Murray, 1827), p. 68.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, p. 5.
Keegan, Intelligence in war, p. 27; Sheldon, Intelligence activities in ancient Rome, pp. xvi, 4–5.
Chris McNab, The Native American warrior 1500–1890 (London: Amber, 2010), p. 175ff.
Edward M. Curr, The Australian race, Vol. 1 (Melbourne: John Ferres, 1886), p. 67; Gerald C. Wheeler, The tribe and intertribal relations (London: John Murray, 1910), pp. 57–59; W. E. Roth, North Queensland ethnography bulletin no. 8 (Sydney: Australian Museum, 1910), 5.
‘Some Aboriginal customs’, Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil, 16 May 1889, 71.
‘Some original views around Kilcoy: The Aboriginal perspective’, in Gerry Langevad (ed.), Queensland Ethnohistory Transcripts, Vol. 1 (1982), pp. 26–7.
‘Australian Aborigines’ customs’, Brisbane Courier, 18 May 1889, 7.
‘Fifty years ago’, Brisbane Courier, 2 June 1906, 12.
Ray Evans, ‘Against the grain: Colonialism and the demise of the Bunya gatherings, 1839–1939’, Queensland Review 9(2) (2002), 64; Courier (26 July 1861), p. 2; Ray Kerkhove, The Great Bunya Gathering – Early Accounts (Pemako: Maleny, 2012) p. 23.
‘Simpson letter book’, p. 5.
Libby Connors, Warrior: A legendary leader’s dramatic life and violent death on the colonial frontier (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015), pp. 98ff; Ray Kerkhove, ‘Tribal alliances with broader agendas? Aboriginal resistance in Southern Queensland’s ‘Black war’, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6(3) (2014), 42ff; Ray Kerkhove and Frank Uhr, The battle of One Tree Hill: The Aboriginal resistance that stunned Queensland (Brisbane: Boolarong, 2019), pp. 100–7.
Leichhardt 30 July 1843, in Thomas A. Darragh and Roderick J. Fensham (eds), The Leichhardt diaries: Early travels in Australia during 1842–1844 (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 2013), p. 266.
UQF, University of Queensland Fryer Library Ms Olga Miller, Companion to the Legends of Our Lands, 198?, pp. 5, 17.
‘Simpson letter book’, 3 October 1843, 5.
Moreton Courier, 24 February 1855, 4.
Alice M. Duncan-Kemp, Where Strange Gods Call (Brisbane: W.R. Smith & Patterson, 1968), pp. ix–x.
‘Moreton Bay Burnett district’, Freeman’s Journal (Sydney), 29 April 1852, 11. Richard R Ware, ‘Bucca Bucca’, Queenslander, 5 December 1908, 62.
Moreton Bay Courier, 26 February 1848, 89; ‘Moreton Bay’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 November 1844, 2.
‘Moreton Bay’, Northern Times, 29 May 1858, 4.
Sheldon, Intelligence activities in ancient Rome, p. 3.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, p. 149; J. Baker and S. Brookes, ‘Signalling intent: beacons, lookouts and military communications’, in Maren C. Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (eds), The material culture of the built environment in the Anglo-Saxon world, Vol. 2 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), pp. 216–17, 220.
Baker and Brookes, ‘Signalling intent’, pp. 220, 223–5; Ward Beers, ‘Fire and smoke: Ethnographic and archaeological evidence for line-of-sight signalling in North America’, in Emily J. Brown, Carol J. Condie and Helen K. Crotty (eds), Papers in honor of Sheila K. Brewer: Papers of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico 40 (Santa Fe, NM: Archaeological Society of New Mexico, 2014), pp. 27–8.
Solveig A. Turpin, ‘Smoke signals on Seminole Canyon: A prehistoric communication system?’ Plains Anthropologist, 29 (1984), p. 104.
Gaiarbau, ‘Some original views around Kilcoy’, pp. 26–7, 66.
Archaeo & Historico, Toowoomba Bypass Planning Project Volume 6 Appendix 17 Cultural Heritage Report, Report of Main Roads Cultural Heritage Survey and Assessment: Toowoomba Bypass, Toowoomba (Brisbane: Archaeo & Historico, July–November 2002), p. 7; J.C. Bennie, ‘The Bunya Mountains: Early feasting ground of the blacks’, Dalby Herald, 13 February 1931, 7.
‘Aboriginal etiquette: The meaning of message sticks’, Australasian, 11 January 1930, 6.
‘An Aboriginal legend’, Daily Mercury, 30 April 1938, 11.
‘Aboriginal etiquette’, 6.
JOL John Oxley Library VF, Robert A. Johnstone, Spinifex and wattle: Reminiscences of pioneering in North Queensland, 16 May 1903.
Tom Vigilante, ‘Analysis of explorers’ records of Aboriginal landscape burning in the Kimberley region of Western Australia’, Australian Geographical Studies, 39(2) (2001), 135ff.
Gaiarbau, ‘Some original views around Kilcoy’, p. 66.
Gaiarbau, ‘Some original views around Kilcoy’, p. 66.
‘The smoke signals of the Australian Aborigines’, 6.
Ian Uhlmann, Minor miracles – being notes on my life, 2nd ed. (London: Lulu, 2014), p. 9.
Johnstone, Spinifex and wattle.
‘An Aboriginal tragedy’, Warwick Daily News, 13 September 1921, 6
Eli Rhys, ‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, Queenslander, 10 September 1921, 11.
John Hawkesworth, James Cook and D. Warrington Evans, An account of a voyage round the world with a full account of the voyage of the Endeavour: In the year MDCCLXX along the east coast of Australia by Lieutenant James Cook, Commander of His Majesty's Bark Endeavour (Brisbane: W.R. Smith & Paterson, 1969), pp. 484–5, 488, 581–4.
Russell Hopkins, The Beerburrum story (Brisbane: Department of Forestry, 1987), p. 7; M.E.M. Tooth, ‘Station life in the early sixties: Wide Bay and Burnett regions’, Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 23 December 1909, 1.
Adelaide Hope, ‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, South Australian Register, 29 December 1893, 7.
Thomas Hall, c.1900 (reprint 1987), A short history of the Downs blacks known as ‘the Blucher tribe’ (Warwick: Vintage), pp. 47–8.
Rev R.B. Bousfield, ‘The Australian Aboriginal: Superstitions and battles’, Advocate (Burnie), 3 October 1924, 5.
‘Aboriginal smoke signals,’ Sydney Mail, 10 November 1937, 3.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, pp. 147–8; Beers, ‘Fire and smoke’, p. 26.
Gaiarbau, ‘Some original views Around Kilcoy’, p. 66.
D.J. Woolliscroft, Roman military signalling (Charleston: Tempus, 2001), pp. 22, 23.
Beers, ‘Fire and Smoke’, p. 25; Baker and Brookes, ‘Signalling intent’, p. 224.
J C Bennie, ‘The Bunya Mountains,’ The Dalby Herald, 13 February 1931, 2
Ray Kerkhove, Aboriginal campsites of Greater Brisbane: An historical guide (Brisbane: Boolarong, 2015).
Ralph Cilento, Clem Lack and Committee Centenary Celebrations Council of Queensland, Triumph in the tropics: An historical sketch of Queensland (Brisbane: Patterson, 1959), p. 107.
Richard Kimber, ‘Black lightning: Aborigines and fire in Central Australia and the Western Desert’, Archaeology in Oceania 18(1983), 38–45.
Hope, ‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, 7; Baldwin Spencer, Report of the work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Part IV, Anthropology (London: Dulau and Co, 1896), p. 86.
Fred Cahir, Sarah McMaster, Ian Clark, Rani Kerin and Wendy Wright, ‘Winda Lingo Parugoneit or why set the bush [on] fire? Fire and Victorian Aboriginal people on the colonial frontier’, Australian Historical Studies 47(2) (2016), 225–40.
Ian Abbott, ‘Aboriginal fire regimes in South-West Western Australia: Evidence from historical documents’, in Ian Abbott and N.D. Burrows (eds), Fire in ecosystems of South-West Western Australia: Impacts and management (Leiden: Backhuys, 2003), pp. 119–46; Cleve W. Hassell and John R. Dodson, ‘The fire history of South-West Western Australia prior to European settlement in 1826–1829’, in Ian Abbott and N.D. Burrows (eds), Fire in ecosystems of South-West Western Australia: Impacts and management (Leiden: Backhuys, 2003), p. 81.
Woolliscroft, Roman military signalling, pp. 21–31, 36–48.
Harry Perry, Pioneering, the life of the Honourable R.M. Collins (Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson & Co., 1923), pp. 25–6.
M E M Tooth, ‘Station life in the early sixties,’ Gympie Times and Mary River and Maryborough Gazette, 23 December 1909, 1.
Rhys, ‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, 11; Dimon, ‘Australiana: Aboriginal Smoke Signals’, The World's News (Sydney), 1 May 1929, 12.
Vigilante, ‘Analysis of explorers’ records’, pp. 135ff; Noel Preece, ‘Aboriginal fires in monsoonal Australia from historical accounts’ Journal of Biogeography 29(3) (2002), 321–36; Roderick J. Fensham, ‘Aboriginal fire regimes in Queensland, Australia: Analysis of the explorers’ record’, Journal of Biogeography 24(1) (1997), pp. 11–22.
T. Vigilante et al., Island country: Aboriginal connections, values and knowledge of the Western Australian Kimberley islands in the context of an island biological survey, Records of the Western Australian Museum (Supplement) 81 (2013), 145–82.
‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, p. 3.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, pp. 146–7, 149; Beers, ‘Fire and smoke’, pp. 24, 25.
‘The smoke signals of the Australian Aborigines’, South Australian Register, 24 October 1893, p. 6.
William Clark, ‘Explorer Walker – organiser and first commandant of the Native Police Force’, Queenslander, 30 November 1912, p. 8.
Alexander Thomas Magarey, Australian Aboriginal tracking, water finding and smoke signalling (Carlisle: Hesperian Press, 2015), pp. 17–28; Rhys, ‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, 11; Dimon, ‘Australiana: Aboriginal smoke signals’, p. 12.
Beers, ‘Fire and smoke’, p. 25.
‘The smoke signals of the Australian Aborigines’, 6.
Gaiarbau, ‘Some original views around Kilcoy’, p. 66.
Clark, ‘Explorer Walker’, 8.
‘To the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1857, 8.
‘The northern blacks and our Native Police Force’, Queensland Figaro, 22 November 1884, 15.
Hall, A short history of the Downs blacks, pp. 47–8.
John Leitch, ‘Aborigines’ smoke signals’, Gosford Times and Wyong District Advocate, 21 April 1921, 2.
P. Selheim, ‘Treatment of Aborigines’, Courier (Brisbane), 5 March 1862, 2.
South Australian Register, 24 October 1893, 6.
‘Capture of the murderers of Mr Beveridge’, Cornwall Chronicle, 5 December 1846, 938.
D.S.S., ‘The blacks in the “forties”’, Coburg Leader, 8 March 1912, 4.
Bennie, ‘The Bunya Mountains’, 5.
‘The lone black eagle of the Glasshouse Mountains’, Macleay Chronicle, 27 November 1935, 6.
‘An Aboriginal tragedy’, Warwick Daily News, 13 September 1921, 6.
‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, p. 3.
Thomas Dowse, ‘Loiterings in the Bay’, Empire (Sydney, 22 December 1857), 2.
Baker and Brookes, ‘Signalling intent’, pp. 216–17, 221, 226, 228.
Joseph Bradley, Adventures of a native of Australia when astray from his ship, the Barque ‘Lynx’ (a whaler) and his consequent cruise in a boat on the ocean: A True Narrative (Brisbane: Amphion Press, 1988), pp. 28–9.
D.H. Mitchell, ‘Humpybong’, Daily Mail, 22 May 1926, 17; Hope, ‘Aboriginal smoke signals’, 7.
Hawkesworth, Cook and Warrington Evans, An account of a voyage, pp. 509, 510.
Derek Pugh, Fort Dundas: The British in North Australia 1824–29 (Rapid Creek: Derek Pugh, 2017), pp. 87, 90.
Phillip P. King, Narrative of a survey of the inter-tropical and western coasts of Australia: Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 with an appendix containing various subjects relating to hydrography and natural history, Vol. 1 (London: Murray, 1827).
Joseph Smith, ‘Spitfire Burdekin expedition’, North Australian, Ipswich & General Advertiser, 11 December 1860, 4.
‘Cape York Peninsula natives’, Queenslander, 27 June 1891, 1231.
‘Aboriginal link with the past’, Observer (Adelaide), 16 August 1919, 49; Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 28 April 1890, 4; Mitchell, ‘Humpybong’, 17.
Alice M. Duncan-Kemp, Our sandhill country (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1933), p. 200.
‘Intercolonial news’, South Australian Advertiser, 24 December 1861, 2.
‘Capture of the murderers of Mr Beveridge’, 938.
Keegan, Intelligence in war, p. 20.
‘Aboriginal etiquette’, 6.
‘Aboriginal etiquette’, 6.
Wheeler, The tribe, and intertribal relations in Australia, pp. 111, 113; R.H. Mathews, ‘Message-sticks used by the Aborigines of Australia’, American Anthropologist 10(9) (1897), 289.
Philip Jones (ed.), Gillen’s modest record: His journal of the Spencer-Gillen anthropological expedition across Australia, 1901–02 (Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2017), pp. 139–40; Mathews, ‘Message-sticks used by the Aborigines of Australia’, p. 290; Clark, ‘Explorer Walker’, 10; ‘Paper yabber and bush telegraph: Aborigines as friends – and foes’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 April 1942, 7.
Wheeler, The tribe, and intertribal relations in Australia, p. 100.
‘Our Australian blacks’, Australian Star (Sydney), 25 March 1893, 7.
E.J.W., ‘Aboriginal postmen’, World’s News (Sydney), 5 August 1911, 10.
Lindsay Page Winterbotham and Ian Holly, LA 3177 5/11/49 Garabau’s Story of the Jinabara Tribe of South East Queensland, Tape 3178 (Brisbane: Queensland University Museum), 25/2/50 6/11.
Wheeler, The tribe, and intertribal relations in Australia, p. 110; Jones, Gillen’s modest record, pp. 139–40.
Keegan, Intelligence in war, p. 20.
Winterbotham and Holly, Garabau’s Story.
M.W.S, ‘The Cape York prospecting party’, The Queenslander, 3 July 1897, p. 20.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, pp. 10, 11, 13; Horst Grill, ‘Military intelligence,’ in John Powell, ed. Magill’s Guide to Military History Vol 2 (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2001), p. 42.
Johnpeter Horst Grill, ‘Military intelligence’, in John Powell (ed.), Magill’s guide to military history, Vol. 2 (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2001), p. 42.
E.J.W., ‘Aboriginal postmen’, 10.
Charles H. Eden, My wife and I in Queensland: An eight years’ experience in the above colony, with some account of Polynesian labour (London: Longmans Green, 1872), p. 68.
Edward B Kennedy, The black police of Queensland: Reminiscences of official work and personal adventures in the early days of the colony (London: J. Murray, 1904), p. 16.
Henry Reynolds, History of Tasmania (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 54; Philip Jones, Ochre and rust: Artefacts and encounters on Australian frontiers (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2007), p. 9; Henry Reynolds, ‘The other side of the frontier: Early Aboriginal reactions to pastoral settlement in Queensland and Northern New South Wales’, Historical Studies 17(66) (1976), 105.
‘Domestic intelligence Ipswich’, Moreton Bay Courier, 23 August 1851, 2.
Nehemiah Bartley, Australian pioneers and reminiscences (Brisbane: Gordon & Gotch, 1896), p. 206.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, pp. 144–5.
‘Aboriginal etiquette’, 6; Wheeler, The tribe, and intertribal relations in Australia, p. 110; Bousfield, ‘The Australian Aboriginal’, 5. Mathews, ‘Message-sticks used by the Aborigines of Australia’, 288; Piers Kelly, ‘Australian message sticks: Old questions, new directions’, Journal of Material Culture 25(2) (2020), 140.
Mathews, ‘Message-Sticks used by the Aborigines of Australia’, 288–9, 292.
‘Aboriginal etiquette’, 2, 6; Kelly, ‘Australian message sticks’, 136, 139.
Mathews, ‘Message-sticks used by the Aborigines of Australia’, 289.
Bousfield, ‘The Australian Aboriginal’, 5; Winterbotham and Holly, Garabau’s Story.
‘Aboriginal marching orders – a message stick interpreted’, Observer (Adelaide), 31 October 1925, 18.
Winterbotham and Holly, Garabau’s Story.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, p. 4.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, p. 149.
Clark, ‘Explorer Walker’, 10. Clark also states that ‘a system of tomahawk marks’ was used by the ‘Brisbane tribe’ to convey information to others.
‘Aboriginal etiquette’, 6.
‘Early days – Abos fearsome and resentful but brave and kindly’, Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser, 3 June 1932, 3.
Kennedy, The black police of Queensland, p. 147.
Blackfellows sign language,’ Weekly Times (Melbourne), 6 August 1927, 52; E.O.G. Scott, ‘Aboriginal gesture language’, Examiner, 5 August 1941, 5; Clark, ‘Explorer Walker’, 10.
‘Aboriginal gesture language’, 5.
Barron Field, Geographical memoirs on New South Wales: By various hands: Together with other papers on the Aborigines, the geology, the botany, the timber, the astronomy, and the meteorology of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (London: Murray, 1825), p. 103; ‘Aboriginal fishing methods in Moreton Bay’, Brisbane Courier, 25 March 1922, 16.
Russell, Information gathering in classical Greece, p. 150.
John Campbell, The Early Settlement of Queensland (Brisbane: Bibliographic Society of Queensland, 1936), p. 19.
‘Christie Palmerston – prince of pathfinders’, Townsville Daily Bulletin, 24 October 1952, 7.
James Bonner, personal communication, Toowoomba, May 2016.
Kennedy, The black police of Queensland, pp. 121–2.
Duncan-Kemp, Our sandhill country, pp. 205–6.
