Constructing a Life on the Northern Frontier
E.A.C. Olive of Cooktown
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S132181660000221XKeywords:
E.A.C. Olive, Cooktown, 'boom and bust' phenomena, northern frontierAbstract
Repeated ‘boom and bust’ phenomena have characterised the history of Queensland as a colony and state. In terms of infrastructure and cultural institutions, this has led to significant discontinuities: vital strategic centres of colonial power, such as Cooktown, now languish in relative obscurity and the role of their inhabitants as authors and agents of colonialism receives little attention. This study investigates the life of an early inhabitant of Cooktown, E.A.C. Olive, in the context of his location on Australia's northern frontier.
References
In 1986 the former Lutheran mission received a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) and formed the Hope Vale Aboriginal Council. In 1997, a Native Title determination was made for the lands covered by the Hope Vale Deed of Grant in Trust.
Wharton, W.J.L., ed., Captain Cook's Journal during his First Voyage around the World, Made in H.M. Bark ‘Endeavour’ 1768–71 (Australiana Facsimile Editions, [London, 1893]; Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1968), 289.
Robert Logan Jack, Northmost Australia, 2 vols (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1921), 375. A more northerly settlement, at Somerset, always precarious, was abandoned in 1877.
Jack, 421–423.
The Indigenous population in the Cooktown area in 1874 was substantial, as the climate and environment were very favourable: see Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861–1897 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1982), 3. See also Scott McKenzie, ‘Our Lost Tribes’, The Courier-Mail, 9 Jan. 1993: 8; an accompanying map by Norman Tindale suggests that the Cairns-Cooktown area may have been the most densely populated area in Queensland prior to white conquest.
Cooktown Courier, 3 Feb. 1877; quoted in Loos, Invasion and Resistance, 71.
Report of Commissioner for Police for 1875 in Henry Reynolds, ed., Aborigines and Settlers: The Australian Experience 1788–1939 (North Melbourne: Cassell, 1972), 12. See also Jean Farnfield, ‘The Moving Frontier: Queensland and the Torres Strait’, Lectures on North Queensland History (Townsville: History Department, James Cook University, 1974), 64.
Palmer, Edward, Early Days in North Queensland (1903; London: Angus and Robertson, 1983), 183.
Loos, Invasion and Resistance, 84. Loos records 147 deaths in ‘Settlers and their Employees Reported Killed as a Result of Aboriginal Resistance in North Queensland Between 1861 and 1897: A Summary’ in Invasion and Resistance, 189–247.
Loos, ‘Aboriginal Resistance on the Mining, Rainforest, and Fishing Frontiers’, Lectures on North Queensland History, 163.
Sir Cilento, Raphael and Snr, Clem Lack, Triumph in the Tropics: An Historical Sketch of Queensland (Brisbane: Smith and Paterson, 1959), 385. The lower estimate has been made by Pauline Grey, former Librarian of the Cooktown Library, on the basis of her detailed work on early records.
The original Court House was removed many years ago to 18 Owen Street, Mossman, where it is now a private dwelling: it was once the home of Emma Bradford Olive (a daughter of E.A.C. Olive) and her husband Richard Hope. The Bank of North Queensland building is today owned by the Ferrari family and is used as a commercial premises; the former Bank of Queensland is currently a Westpac Bank, but its future is uncertain.
Major-General [Reginald] Browne, Spencer, A Journalist's Memories (Brisbane: Read Press, 1927), 46.
A search of shipping records has failed to confirm the date of his arrival in the colonies, although he may be the Mr E.C. Olive who arrived on the Great Britain as an unassisted passenger in 1862: the age here is given as ‘A[dult]' although E.A.C. Olive would in fact have been only 18. His son Edmund James Neil died of diphtheria in Mt Perry on 18 May 1873.
Olive's, Mabel birth was registered as no. 64 in the District of Cook.
Information from Voters' Rolls, Cooktown.
Pike, Glenville, The Golden Days (Mareeba: Pinevale Publications, 1981), 63.
Jones, Dorothy, Trinity Phoenix: A History of Cairns and District (Cairns: Cairns Post, 1976), 103, 88, 144.
The letters quoted are held by the James Cook Museum: drafts of business letters by E.A.C. Olive, in his own hand, were pasted into a foolscap ledger by Stanley H. Boyd in 1962; the condition of the letters is poor due to water damage and acidity.
Browne, Spencer, 51.
The Colony of New South Wales Directory (Sydney: Government Printers Office, 1887). In the Directory, E.A.C. Olive is prominent in the various lists of trades and professions (as an accountant, auctioneer, insurance, customs and land agent, and produce dealer).
Loos, Invasion and Resistance, 131; see also 118–159.
‘Minutes of the First Meeting of the newly constituted Shire of Cook,’ typescript by Nancy Keable, Cooktown, from the original manuscript. Olive's appointment was for 12 months, but by October 1919 he had stepped down from the position, probably following the death of his wife in June 1919. See also Cooktown Burial Register to 1920 and Monumental Inscriptions to 1986 (Cairns: Cairns and District Family Historical Society, ca 1989), np.
Bolton, G.C., A Thousand Miles Away: A History of North Queensland to 1920 (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1963), 170.
Letter from a clergyman to the Anti-Slavery Society, 1883, quoted in Henry Reynolds, Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 105.
Garnet Agnew's watercolour painting of the view from Mt Olive is reproduced on the front cover of this issue of Queensland Review.
‘Mount Olive: Peninsula Parklands’, unidentified newspaper clipping, September [1951].
Murdoch, Cec, interviewed by Rosemary McKay, Cooktown, 23 Jun. 1990. Royce Lee, interviewed Cooktown, 23 Jul. 1995, recalled that Herbert L. Olive experimented with growing fruit such as oranges, mandarins, pomelos and coconuts on his farm near the Annan River.
Interviews with Bob Cook, Cooktown, 1995 and 1997; Cec Murdoch; Royce Lee. Some of the original terraces remain, despite damage caused by bottle collectors after Herbert L. Olive left Cooktown due to ill health; some of the original plantings also survive.
Interview with Neil Hope, Sydney, 25 Sep. 1992.
Pike, Glenville, Queen of the North: A Pictorial History of Cooktown and Cape York Peninsula (Mareeba: Glenville Pike, 1979), 107. Spencer Browne, 46, describes ‘regatta’ shirts and white drill slacks as fairly typical day wear for men in Cooktown's early years; Olive's attire, even for this formal photograph, was of a plain but distinctive design, somewhat resembling the informal dress of Chinese merchants in Cooktown (see, for example, the photograph of ‘King’ Shan in Pike, Queen of the North, 50).
Grace (Olive) Worrall, interviewed by Rosemary McKay, Cooktown, 18 Jun. 1990; Duncan Jackson, interview with Eileen Kendall, ‘An Oral History of Cape York Peninsula’, typescript (Cooktown: Cook Shire Council, 1989), C-165 R-117, 4. Neil Hope, interviewed in Sydney on 25 Sep. 1992, said that his grandparents imposed strict rules about whom his daughters could speak to and dance with.
Jackson, Duncan, interview with Rene Hallam, ‘An Oral History of Cape York Peninsula’, C-168. R-117, 1. After Carlton C. Olive's death in 1958, Hans Looser discovered that tourists were stealing carvings from the empty Olive warehouse, and removed them for safekeeping. A reconstruction of the Joss House, containing many of the items salvaged by Carlton C. Olive, is now housed in the James Cook Museum, which was established in 1970. See also Barbara Toy, Columbus Was Right! Rover Around the World (London: John Murray, 1958), 191.
Idriess, Ion L., The Tin Scratchers (1959; London: Angus and Robertson, 1980), 36.
The Queenslander, 1 May 1880. The case of the so-called ‘Normanby woman’ reveals colonial attitudes to whites living with Aborigines (the situation of ‘Nellie Olive’ in reverse): in 1887 an elderly ‘white’ woman (probably albino) was ‘rescued’ with violence and against her will from the Aboriginal tribe with which she lived on the Normanby River, and she died soon after from injuries sustained in the process.
Interview with Leffie Buhmann, Cooktown, 19 Jul. 1995. According to Buhmann, Sammy Olive's education protected him from being cheated of his wages when he worked as a tracker for the police.
Interview with Guinevere Sacre, Sydney, 24 Sep. 1992; Leffie Buhmann; Neil Hope; Royce Lee; interview with Shirley McNamara, Sydney, Sep. 1992. Billy Olive's birth date is unknown; photographic evidence suggests that Sammy Olive was born in the early 1900s.
Murdoch, Cec, interviewed by Rosemary McKay, Cooktown, 23 Jun. 1990. Cec Murdoch arrived in Cooktown as a cane cutter in 1932; his account of life at Mt Olive is based largely on what he was told by his employer, Herbert L. Olive.
McKay, Rosemary, ms notes of conversations with Dorothy (Norbury) Adams.
Aunt, Neil Hope's, Grace (Olive) Norbury, told him that E.A.C. Olive's thwarted the removal of Billy and Sammy Olive (Neil Hope, telephone interview, 16 Jul. 1995).
Kidd, Rosalind, The Way We Civilize (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1997), 355 n. 1.
Hope, Neil, 16 Jul. 1995, recalled that in the 1930s the camp was at the foot of Mt Olive. Aboriginal elder, Jack Harrigan, indicated the same spot to Pauline Grey, commenting that the Mt Olive camp was out of sight of the road and therefore could be ignored by white townspeople. Neil Hope's recollections suggest that this camp was a ceremonial centre, which Henry Reynolds has claimed was not uncommon for town camps: see ‘Townspeople and Fringe-Dwellers’, Race Relations in North Queensland, ed. Reynolds, Henry (Townsville: History Department, James Cook University, 1978), 169.
Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 10.69 (1900): xliv.
Robinson, Herbert C. and Laverock, W.S., with field-notes by Olive, E., ‘The Birds of North Queensland’, The Ibis: A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology, Seventh Series, 6 (1900): 618.
Telephone interview with Guinevere Sacre, 12 Aug. 1992.
Jack, vol. 2, 403–404.
Olive, E.A.C. to Echlin [probably Gawne Echlin], 29 Sep. 1882 (held James Cook Museum). The official name for Queensland's floral emblem is Dendrobium bigibbum var. phalaenopsis, but there is debate over the correct botanical name of the Cooktown Orchid. Dendrobium phalaenopsis (Fitzgerald, 1880) is sometimes identified with Dendrobium bigibbum (Lindley, 1850), but the Australian National Botanic Gardens considers them to be separate species, with Dendrobium phalaenopsis occuring naturally between Johnston River and Iron Range, and Dendrobium bigibbum further north.
North, Alfred J., Nests and Eggs of Birds Found Breeding in Australia and Tasmania, Special Catalogue No. 1, Part II, 2nd edn (Sydney: Australian Museum, 1902), 57. According to his grandson, Neil Hope, Olive – as a point of honour – shot only birds ‘on the wing’. The Eastern Bower-Bird (Chlamydodera orientalis) was distinguished by Gould from the Great Bower-Bird (Chlamydodera nuchalis) in 1879 due to some small differences: the former is now regarded as a variation of the latter. In the nineteenth century, the desire to discover new species led to a plethora of classifications which have since been reduced.
North, 117.
North, 65. See also Graham Pizzey, The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 1997), 478.
Gymnodactylus olivii Garman, 1901 is a junior synonym of Cyrtodactylus louisiadensis (De Vis, 1892). See Samuel Garman, ‘Some Reptiles and Batrachians from Australasia’, Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard College, 39 (1901): 1–14: E.A.C. Olive donated ‘a large number of specimens’ of reptiles to Garman.
Turnix olivii was classified by Herbert C. Robinson: see Bulletin of the British Ornithologists Club, 10.69 (1900): xliii-xliv. For a period, it was regarded as a junior synonym of Turnix castanota (Gould, 1840) but has been reinstated as a separate species. Lloyd Nielsen recently investigated the present status of this rare bird with a grant from the Queensland Ornithological Society. Nielsen, in a telephone interview on 11 Aug. 2000, stated that Turnix olivii is certainly a distinct species, and that it is even rarer than previously thought. On the basis of Nielsen's project, Turnix olivii is considered an endangered species.
Robinson, and Laverock, , 617–649. Edmund Olive and his father are sometimes confused in museum collections, and also in Hubert Massey Whittell, The Literature of Australian Birds: A History and a Bibliography of Australian Ornithology (Perth: Paterson Brokensha, 1954), 568. I am grateful to Jeanette Covacevich of the Queensland Museum for drawing my attention to Whittell's incorrect entry, which is headed E.A.C. Olive, but describes the activities of Edmund Olive.
The Australian Museum holds specimens obtained directly from the Olives, as well indirectly via other collections. According to Walter Boles of the Division of Vertebrate Zoology (Birds) at the Australian Museum, the latter includes ornithological specimens obtained through the collections of Thomas Austin, William Macgillivray and the Bettington family-Lindsey Hyem. Carlton C. Olive's assistance is acknowledged by L.J. Brass, leader of the 1948 Archbold Expedition to Cape York: L.J. Brass, ‘Results of the Archbold Expeditions. No. 68: Summary of the Cape York (Australia) Expedition’, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 102, Article 2 (1953): 142.
