Queensland had the the largest proportion of the Aboriginal of the Australian British Colonies. So some methods were used that are being re-evaluated in the period since this stamp. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The stamp issue decided to show the Parliament House in Brisbane along with the delightful second color of the flowers. The communicates two things. The proposition that it was the settlers that brought civilization and in a Parliament House it was showing that despite the Queensland name, this was a group that was going to govern themselves. Not modern by any stretch but I find it a convincing argument from such a small piece of gummed paper.
Todays stamp is issue A116, a four penny stamp issued by Australia on June 5th, 1959. It was a single stamp remembering when the Queensland territory was broken off from the New South Wales Colony. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. I think the top edge of my copy comes from being at the top row of the stamp sheet.
The first British permanent settlement was yes a penal colony set up in 1823 in what is now the business district of Brisbane. The first ship full of immigrants arrived in 1848. Before the Europeans about 40% of the aboriginal residents of Australia were in Queensland. Soon the widely spead out European outposts, many of the “British” were actually Irish, were getting attacked. A female lead station was attacked and massacred in 1857. The horror was addressed by petitioning to Queen Victoria that Queensland be governed more directly.
Queen Victoria granted the request and George Bowen was named first Governor. He was Irish and also had colonial stints also in New Zealand, Victoria, Mauritius, and Hong Kong. He recruited a mounted, British lead, but Aboriginal staffed police force. Where Aboriginals massed for a raid on an outpost the horse mounted force would hopefully arrive to disperse them.
In the modern telling of this, the force would randomly start killing aboriginals. The numbers cited are always rising and at last imagined count, are up to 40,000 killed. This is course to dwarf and marginalize the deaths of the 1500 British in these, remember, Aboriginal started raids.
The most interesting aspect of all this is to blame the alleged indiscriminate killing on the remember Aboriginal staffed police force. That way you can blame the Europeans for poor management that people may believe while having the actual barbarism not committed by great, great Grandpa, something that people won’t yet believe. All to make the Aboriginal wonder why it was not them who brought civilization. I know, they were more at one with Mother Earth.
To put meat of the bone of these stories you need a villain. The moderns have found one in Irish officer with the nefarious name John O Connell Bligh. There was an enquiry in period as to why no prisoners were ever taken by Bligh’s unit. He said they were shot trying to escape. After he was cleared, the town of Maryborough awarded him a ceremonial sword to thank him for his help. What a perfect story to say Europeans bad.
Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting