“Australians
are renowned for their love of travel. But when it comes to Rottnest Island,
this comes at the cost of ignoring the violence Aboriginal people have endured”
Celeste
Liddle The Guardian 15 October 2014
It takes a
unique country to name a century-long former internment camp as its favourite
holiday destination. Such a country would either have to be one with rather macabre
fascinations or a genuine interest in acknowledging historical injustices as a
way of moving towards a better future. Or it could just be Australia.
In a poll
conducted by travel provider Experience Oz, Rottnest Island took the top spot
when it came to favourite Australian holiday destinations. It’s not surprising
that the natural beauty and unique wildlife were mentioned as to why Rottnest
was number one. The hundreds of Aboriginal men buried in unmarked graves
probably aren’t an island drawcard for most tourists. If tourists indeed know
that this what they’re walking over when exploring the island.
When
Aboriginal people speak of our history in this country, these stories are often
dismissed. Every Australia Day, this national dismissal of Aboriginal
experience is paraded in public for all to see. Aboriginal people are
continually accused of focussing only on negatives; of promoting “black armband
history” at the cost of celebrating alleged national positives. When it comes
to the history of Rottnest though, to try and argue that there are positives to
celebrate is impossible.
The proper
acknowledgement of the gruesome history of Rottnest has been called for for a
very long time. Only two weeks ago, Murdoch University academic and
Minang-Wadjari man Glen Stasiuk was quoted calling for the closure of Rottnest
Lodge Accommodation and asking that it be turned into a museum and appropriate
memorial.
Rottnest
Lodge claims as part of its lodgings “The Quod” – an octagonal building housing
the Aboriginal prison which was in operation from 1838 to 1931. Each luxury
hotel room encompasses three of the old cells in which at least seven prisoners
were crammed. The Quod grounds where five men were hung on gallows serve as a
grassy area for hotel guests to sun themselves and relax. At least 10% of the
prisoners there died; of malnutrition, of illnesses, of brutality. Stasiuk
believes nine out of 10 people who stay at The Quod don’t know this history.
Certainly,
Rottnest Lodge doesn’t go out of its way to advertise it to potential guests
either. The Quod rooms are described as being “rich in history”, which I guess
is one way to put it. Additionally the Lodge itself is noted as once being the
Summer residence for the governor of WA, yet the website neglects to state much
else about the other buildings.
Much of
what else stands in Rottnest today was built of Aboriginal suffering. Michael
Sinclair-Jones describes the island buildings and sea retainer walls that were
built from Aboriginal prisoner labour, as well as the former campground which
sat on top of what is the largest deaths in custody gravesite in this country.
At best it seems this is glossed over with local and governmental arguments
consistently being it would cost too much to acknowledge these sites. At worst,
it is the denial of violent practices enacted against Aboriginal people to keep
others feeling comfortable when visiting such places.
Gerry
Georgatos states that the rate of imprisonment in Western Australia of
Aboriginal men today is nine times the rate of imprisonment of black men in
apartheid South Africa. Perhaps the horrors of Rottnest are not as deeply
buried in the past as most would pretend. Certainly though, it is difficult to think
of anywhere else in the world where a horrific internment camp has been swept
so easily under the national carpet.
Australians
are renowned for their love of travel and holidays. When it comes to Rottnest
Island though, this travel comes at the cost of ignoring one of the most
horrific examples of displacement, violence and death that Aboriginal people in
Western Australia have endured. It is well overdue that Rottnest’s history is
acknowledged and its victims commemorated. Until then, the best holiday
destination in Australia continues to be built upon a lie.
Aboriginal
prisoners in The Quod - hundreds died of disease, malnutrition or were beaten
to death by guards
1. One in
10 prisoners who slept here died of disease, malnourishment or bashed to death
by the prison guards. Others were flogged with lead-weighted whips or chained
across a raised iron bar for punishment. Prisoners were lined up in the central
courtyard and collapsed in shock when forced to watch five condemned men
hanged, their bodies carted to a nearby dump and buried in unmarked graves. 2.
Beach holding cell where Aboriginal prisoners started years of brutal
captivity, then death. 3. Inside the windowless holding cell. Terrified
Aboriginal prisoners were held here after being chained together by the neck
and ankle and transported from Fremantle in a treacherous voyage that took up
to nine hours in an open longboat.
Wadjemup –
Sleeping among the dead – “They will not be forgotten”
Gerry
Georgatos The Stringer 15 October 2014
Friday
17th October, 2014, the First People of the western region of this continent
who were imprisoned on Wadjemup, between 1841 to 1903, will be remembered by
their descendants. Their ancestors were incarcerated for the crimelessness of
refusing to hand over their Country to the colonialist invaders who history
often immorally describes as “settlers”. The remembrance is being led by
Nyungah Land and Culture worker, Iva Hayward-Jackson. Mr Hayward-Jackson said,
“They will not be forgotten.” Mr Hayward-Jackson said that the remembrance will
become an annual event.
Wadjemup,
known to most as Rottnest Island, one of WA’s best known tourist hotspots, 19km
off the Perth coast, was once a penal colony for the First Peoples of what is
now called Western Australia. Young boys and men were transported to Wadjemup
from all over the western part of this continent by the colonial invaders –
many never to return. For the majority, their only ‘crime’ was to refuse to
budge from their respective Country, the homelands that they had taken care of
all their lives, and who their ancestors going back up to one hundred thousand
years ago took care of. One hundred thousand years of relative peaceful living
had come to an abrupt end.
Wadjemup
is a place where mums and dads take their families to relax and unwind,
enjoying the many beaches and pristine waters. The worst that can happen is a
child falling off a bike and grazing a knee. However, a brutal colonial history
languishes forever over Wadjemup – ‘a place across the waters’ and of ‘spirits
across the sea’ according to Noongar/Nyoongah/Nyungah/Nyungar/Bibbelmun lore.
On this little island is recorded an unsettling past, the largest number of
Aboriginal deaths in custody. The Quod building was built by forced labour, by
the Aboriginal prisoners, and it is where they were to be incarcerated and
where many of them would die.
The
horrific conditions were more than just horrific, they were inhumane – squalid,
cramped, dank and dark.
I arrived
in Western Australia in 1994, and it now appears WA is where my bones one day
may well be laid to rest. A couple months after making WA my new home I was
invited for a week to Rottnest Island, not knowing any of its dark history, and
I stayed at the Quod.
Within
days, I learned of the Quod’s history, piecing together anecdotes and short
paragraphs found in the island’s pamphlet literature, and I was jarred by the
notion of sleeping where so many of the crimeless First People of this part of
the world were let to suffer, to drown in their anguish, where so many died. It
didn’t just feel wrong, it was wrong. With the Quod’s history in my
contemplations, I couldn’t get to sleep on the third night, seeing imaginary
faces around me, imagining the narrative and the questions of those past. I sat
outside the Quod for quite some time, while five companions were able to find
their sleep. They were sleeping among the dead. I finished up sleeping off that
night on a nearby beach, and waking up at the crack of dawn to walk into the
crisp pristine waters for a swim and to remember once again unnecessary human
suffering, voices long gone hollering from the past.
For the
rest of my stay on Wadjemup I would sleep in other swiftly arranged
accommodation.
The Quod
was built in 1838 and the cells were 3 metres by 1.7, each sleeping seven
prisoners. There were no beds, no windows, no toilet buckets. The Quod’s 21
units are actually larger than the prison cells, having been doubled in size to
accommodate in relative comfort the needs of holiday makers. There were between
21 to 29 prison cells built over time. It is known that these cells held up to
167 prisoners at any one time.
The Quod
building is the site of the most extensive deaths in custody numbers in Australia.
The building, for many decades, had been used as accommodation on the Rottnest
Island resort, much to the despair of Nyungah Elders and communities. Protests
occurred on the island. In 2001 a significant Nyungah led protest captured the
attention of media, with many protestors carrying Aboriginal flags walking
through and around the grounds of the Quod, and as a result highlighting to
many West Australians a dark chapter in the State’s history.
The Quod
site is where at least 370 First People died in critically austere dank and
dark miserable conditions. Perth historian Neville Green estimates that at
least 287 First People died on the island prison but other estimates have it at
370 with others believing it could be up to 700 deaths.
Near one
of the island’s most popular swimming areas, the Basin, which is near the
tourist hub of the island, the Settlement, lie the bodies of thereabouts one
hundred boys and men. Elders from all over the State remain frustrated that
Australia’s largest unmarked burial site remains neglected and trodden over by
tourists. There is a history of tourists finding skulls and bones.
In 1970,
sewerage works to extend the golf course unearthed 12 skeletons in a grove of
pine trees, right near the Quod. It was not till 1985 that the Aboriginal Sites
Government department recorded the approximate location of the burial
ground(s). Following 1988 protests on the island, ground penetrating radar was
used by the Government to estimate the extensiveness of the burial grounds. In
1992, the State Aboriginal Authority budgeted $400,000 to contribute to a
commemorative centre and memorial right nearby the burial ground. However the
project lapsed and never happened.
In 1994,
then WA Premier Richard Court acknowledged at a meeting with Nyungah Elders
that the island was the site of the largest deaths in custody burial ground but
still no memorial eventuated.
Many of
the island’s buildings, built by forced labour, now sleep tens of thousands of
tourists each year. The buildings built by the sweat and blood of First People
are now adored by the tourists and are considered ‘heritage landmarks’. First
People built the island’s Government House, which has been converted to
Rottnest’s biggest hotel, and they built the Hay Store, which has been
converted to the museum, and they built the church, and the Salt Store, and
they built the myriad scatter of waterfront cottages that so many tourists have
to book months in advance in order to have a chance to secure their
accommodation, and they built the Quod, an eight sided prison, which only a few
decades after the prison was closed down became the island’s signature piece
tourist accommodation.
Prisoners
were flogged with lead weighted whips, and were chained across a raised iron
bar for punishment. There are many archived accounts of horror, brutality,
tragedy, inhumanity – Rottnest was a vacuum of inhumanity. On one occasion,
prisoners were lined up in the central courtyard and some collapsed in shock
when forced to watch five condemned inmates hanged – their bodies carted to a
nearby dump and buried unmarked.
One of the
Nyungah people’s senior Elders, Richard Wilkes, said that “the 370 Aboriginal
prisoners were quickly buried, most of them wrapped in filthy blankets.”
“They
should have been buried facing east to greet the rising sun over the land of
their ancestors.”
Except for
a few attributions in some of the deaths in various literature, no records were
kept about the manner and cause of death of the first 203 Aboriginal prisoners
to die on the island.
The island
prison’s first superintendent was Henry Vincent, someone who colonial history
textbooks have talked up and after whom shires and streets are named after
throughout Western Australia, and of whom statues and portraits abound. He was
a ruthless and harsh superintendent and according to official records was
barely literate, and according to historians and authors was a
‘disciplinarian’. He had served in the Napoleonic Wars and had lost an eye in
the Battle of Waterloo.
In 1846,
the colony’s Governor John Hutt ordered an inquiry and in testimony provided to
the inquiry, British soldier Samuel Mottram alleged under oath the hearsay from
overseer Joseph Morris that Superintendent Vincent killed two Aboriginal
prisoners and without having it recorded had them buried.
Another
soldier, Private John Williams also took the oath and described having seen
part of an Aboriginal prisoner’s ear on the ground.
Private
Thomas Longworth said he saw Supt Vincent “pull the ear rather severely, and
then shaking his fingers, as if to throw something away off his hands, wipe his
fingers on his trousers.” He saw the Aboriginal prisoner “with the gristly part
of one ear wanting.”
In a
documented incident, Government archived, a 60-year-old prisoner, who claimed
to be sick and too unwell to move, was bashed twice in the face with a bunch of
keys while on his knees pleading that he was not well. After being hit the
second time he fell over, and was allegedly kicked. He was found to be
unconscious and died later than night in his prison cell. There is controversy
as to who struck the prisoner. An autopsy of the prisoner produced an
inexplicable ‘finding’ that the man died of ‘lung disease’.
One of the
assistant superintendents was Henry Vincent’s son, William. According to
accounts from the time, however hearsay, many islanders believe that it was
Henry Vincent who hit the prisoner, but William is alleged to have taken the blame
to shield his father from scrutiny. Surprisingly, William Vincent was convicted
of assault and sentenced to three months hard labour in the police stables.
This is the only time there has been a conviction of someone for their hand in
an unnatural hand in a death in custody.
WA’s
Battye Library records the savage brutality sustained upon the 3,760 First
Peoples prisoners between 1841 to 1903. The prisoners were as young as 8 years
old and others in their seventies. They were often shackled in heavy iron
chains, around their necks and ankles and marched scores of kilometres on the
mainland while in transit to Rottnest Island. They came from all parts of
Western Australia, and from vastly different Country and cultures to each
other, with different languages, dialects and customs.
The Battye
Library records, “Prisoners lay cold and wet surrounded by excrement on damp
stone floors as deadly influenza raged through their draughty cells.”
“Aboriginal
men from as far as the Gascoyne, Fitzroy River and the Kimberley arrived up to
twenty at a time, shivering in chains in an open boat, cold, wet and sea sick,
clad only in thin blankets.”
“Many
suffered pneumonia, scurvy, eczema and dysentery as they lay wet and shivering
in threadbare blankets on cold stone floors, constantly damp in winter from
being flushed out daily with buckets of cold water to remove overnight faeces
and urine. “
The stench
from the prison’s open cesspit was so nauseating to Chief Warder Adam Oliver
that he complained to an 1884 Government inquiry chaired by Surveyor-General
John Forrest, later to be Premier. He complained that ‘offensive air’ was
permeating his quarters and ‘ruining the health of his wife and four children.’
But, he described to the ‘inquiry’ that the treatment of prisoners was ‘humane
and kind.’
Despite
Henry Vincent’s brutality he is remembered kindly by history, and in his time
he owned a venerated reputation as a pioneer, and for coordinating the
development of many of the buildings on the island.
Perth
historian, Neville Green, said that the site should be respected, “It is
comparable to transforming Auschwitz concentration camp into holiday cottages.”
At least
one in ten of the First Peoples incarcerated and subjected to slave labour on
Wadjemup died from disease, malnutrition, maltreatment and abuse. Indeed, the
fact remains that at least 370 First People lay in unmarked graves – walked
over, camped on, holidayed on. The memorial centre cannot come quick enough,
and a history with a full suite of displays needs to be incorporated in such a
centre and in the island’s museum.
More:
http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/rottnest-island-internment-camp-turned-favourite-holiday-destination-without-debate
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