A review by tasmanian_bibliophile
Killing for Country by David Marr

4.5

 

‘We will never know how many died at the hands of the Native Police.’ 

Some years ago, David Marr learned that his great-great-grandfather Reginald Charles Uhr (1844-1888) had served as an officer with the Native Police Force, as had his younger brother Wentworth D’Arcy Uhr (1845-1907). Given that the role of the Native Police Force was to hunt and kill Aboriginal people in 19th and early 20th century Australia, Mr Marr was shocked. He wrote: 

‘It embarrasses me now to have been reporting race and politics in this country for so long without it ever crossing my mind that my family might have played a part in the frontier wars. My blindness was so Australian.’ 

My own Australian blindness feels worse. Until I read this book, I had no understanding of who the Native Police were and what their role was. The Australian history I was taught (in Tasmania in the 1960s and early 1970s) focussed on European settlement and achievements. There were, we were taught, no longer any Tasmanian Aborigines. And, given this absolute (albeit incorrect) statement, we were taught nothing about either pre-European history or any significant detail about the impact of European settlement. 

But I have digressed. Mr Marr decided to investigate this aspect of his family history. He begins with the life of Richard Jones (1786-1852) who arrived in Sydney in 1809. Mr Jones became a successful merchant and grazier and encouraged his wife’s relatives to come to Sydney. Edmund Uhr (1815-1874) migrated to Sydney during the 1830s. Reg and D’Arcy were two of his sons. 

Through the lives of these four men, we see how Australia was transformed during the 19th century. And as Australia transformed, as European settlers expanded their businesses and landholdings, Aboriginal people were dispossessed and killed. Having set the scene in the first part of the book, Mr Marr provides uncomfortable detail of how the Native Police Forces were established in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, and of more than 70 episodes of killing Aboriginal people. 

‘The Native Police survived so long because they did their job so well. ‘ 

This is not an easy book to read. I wonder how many of us reading this book also had family members who were part of the Native Police Forces. Every governor who arrived in Australia was given instructions to protect the native people. The leases given to squatters included clauses to enable Aboriginal people to hunt, fish and maintain their traditional ways on their lands. But far as the squatters were concerned, Aboriginal people were in the way. They competed with sheep for land and water, and generally the ‘protections’ were worthless. 

‘Despite the lives ruined and blood spilt, slavery and kidnapping were everywhere and officially tolerated in Queensland.’ 

We Australians don’t like acknowledging these aspects of the past. Many of us either pretend that they didn’t happen (or are exaggerated) or that the actions taken by our ancestors were (somehow) justified. 

As Mr Marr writes: ‘We can be proud of our families for things done generations ago. We can also be ashamed. I feel no guilt for what Reg did.’ 

I think this is the key. Feeling ashamed is not the same as feeling guilty. Feeling ashamed can enable us to focus on change whereas feeling guilty often leads to a kind of belligerent defensiveness. We cannot ignore our history (although we seem to have tried hard to do just that), but we should be capable of learning from it. 

‘The maths is indisputable: we each have sixteen great-grandparents. Reg Uhr was one of mine.’ 

A confronting and uncomfortable look at the past. We should all read it. 

Jennifer Cameron-Smith