THE SQUATTERS' GRAB

Millions of Australians who voted in the October 2023 referendum have little knowledge of the history of our relations with the traditional owners. The Squatters’ Grab confronts the great Australian silence about the history of our relations with the traditional owners, the cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale described by Bill Stanner in his 1968 Boyer Lecture. More than fifty years later there was still no comprehensive account of the failures of governments and their administrations that gave rise to the murder and dispossession of the Indigenous Australians. The Squatters’ Grab bridges this gap, examining laws enacted in London by King, Queen, Parliament and Secretaries of State for the Colonies, relating to Indigenous Australians. Detailing how the law failed Aboriginal Australians so drastically, and for so long; failing to acknowledge they had rights in their own country, denying them access to their land and sources of food and water; denying them the right to appear in Court, to bring a charge or to defend themselves; treating them as enemy aliens, not citizens entitled to the rule of law. The Squatters’ Grab records the voices and experience of explorers, settlers and Aboriginals as the frontiers of settlement pushed rapidly out from Sydney, west then northward across the country. We meet those who recognised, respected and supported Indigenous people, as well as the perpetrators of violence. Wal Walker considers whether settlement could have progressed cooperatively, without the extensive loss of Indigenous lives. The Squatters’ Grab examines the British experiment in Queensland, a new colony with a small white population, with inadequate finance, little expertise and growing violence, given its own Parliament at separation; how its foundation document, the Order in Council signed by Queen Victoria, was disobeyed, overwhelmed from the first by the squatters interests in collusion with the Governor and his Premier. The Squatters’ Grab considers the failure of governors, governments and administrations in the establishment of the Colony of Queensland. How its Native Police force, given relatively unfettered powers to “disperse” Indigenous Australians, entrenched a culture of mutual fear, mistrust and dispossession. We are told that Queensland Native Police protected the squatters, not how they were placed at their disposal to disperse and massacre Indigenous people, ensuring squatters could take over Aboriginal country without being held responsible for the violence and murder. The Squatters’ Grab deals honestly with our past, it provides a history of the laws and administrations that failed Indigenous Australians. It is a book for the majority of Australian who have never found a clear and informative answer to what went wrong between the settlers and the First Australians. It is a resource for teachers and students across the country who are finally being given a curriculum that deals honestly with our past. The Squatters’ Grab attempts to unravel why and how it all went so wrong!

Sutherland Shire Historical Society - Author talk 20 July 2024, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm Sutherland, 3A Stapleton Ave, Sutherland NSW 2232, Australia