John By Durnford Marlow (10 April 1827 –27 February 1903) was an officer in the paramilitary Native Police force in the British colony of Queensland. He served in this corps for fourteen years and was stationed at frontier sites such as the Maranoa Region, Port Denison and on the Burdekin River. Marlow, by leading armed escorts of troopers, was also intrinsically involved in the expeditions which led to the establishment of the towns of Cardwell and Townsville.
John Marlow was born at Montreal, Lower Canada in 1827. [1] His father was William Biddlecomb Marlow, a captain in the Royal Engineers. His grandfather was an admiral in the Royal Navy. After some initial schooling in the Scottish Highlands, Marlow travelled with his family to the colony of New South Wales, where his father's regiment had been posted. At the age of thirteen, he arrived in Sydney on 14 February 1842 on board the Sir Edward Paget. Ludwig Leichhardt was also a passenger on this ship and the Marlows remained close friends with the explorer, Leichhardt later naming a river in their honour. [2] Marlow remained in Australia while his father was sent to serve in the Flagstaff War in New Zealand against the Māori. [3] After this war concluded in 1846, Marlow returned to England with his parents. [4]
While in England, Marlow married Martha Bonter, the daughter of a clergyman and returned with her to New South Wales in the mid 1850s. He took up a position as a manager on a pastoral station at Furracabad station where he became close friends with a future Premier of Queensland in Arthur Palmer. [5]
In 1860, Marlow was appointed to the Native Police as a second lieutenant. The Native Police was a mounted paramilitary force utilised at this time by the Government of Queensland to subdue Aboriginal resistance to British colonisation. The mode of operation of this force was indiscriminate massacre, usually described euphemistically as "dispersal". [6]
By 1861, Marlow was promoted to full Lieutenant and was stationed at the Bungil Creek barracks near Roma. He and his troopers were soon ordered to disperse a group of Aboriginals who were spearing stock to the south along the Balonne River near Tootherang pastoral station. Once there, Marlow found a large group from whom he confiscated their spears and utensils, using the group's Aboriginal women to carry them. His troopers later burnt these. The remaining Aboriginal men were joined by another group and left. Marlow decided to follow them up and disperse them. In a month long "warlike operation", Marlow and his troopers tracked the group toward the Warrego River where they made a stand and showed fight, but after a "smart action", they were dispersed. [7]
Later that year, Marlow was ordered to set up a new Native Police barracks on the Maranoa River to the west. This he proceeded to do, and while his troopers were constructing the housing, they were approached by local Aboriginals intent on a corroboree, which was refused. An Aboriginal man then tried to wrestle Marlows rifle from him and then another hit him with a waddy. The troopers then rushed out and fired on the assailants, killing and wounding thirteen people. A message was sent back to the Bungil Creek barracks for assistance. [8]
In 1863, Marlow was transferred to Bowen in the Port Denison region of Queensland, where he replaced fellow Native Police officer Walter Powell. [9] Not long after he arrived, his two-year old daughter died of diphtheria. [10] In 1864, Marlow was dispatched, with three troopers under his command to McLellan's station near the Burdekin River after two shepherds were killed, with the aim of clearing the Aboriginal people from the property. [11]
Marlow was commissioned in January 1864 to provide the armed escort for George Elphinstone Dalrymple's expedition to Rockingham Bay to establish a settlement there, which was later named Cardwell. The local Aboriginal people were advised to "clear out" and some were "set upon [...] and rather cut up" by the expeditionary force. [12] In April of the same year, Marlow with Acting Sub-Inspector Kennedy and 8 troopers, provided the armed escort for Andrew Ball's initial expedition to survey the future town of Townsville.
Marlow's detachment was later augmented to twenty troopers which were utilised in scattering a number of Aboriginal people with "hostile demonstrations" near the Inkerman Downs and Jarvisfield pastoral stations under the ownership of Robert Towns. [13] [14] Marlow dispatched sub-Inspectors John Bacey Isley and Ferdinand Macquarie Tompson to the south of Bowen which resulted in dispersals at Strathdon station, Proserpine, Goorganga, Bloomsbury, St Helens and in the mountainous region behind the coastal plains. [15] [16] Marlow's zeal in performing his duties was rewarded by the Government of Queensland with a promotion to a chief-inspector, but he declined the position and stayed with the Native Police detachment at Bowen. [17]
In 1867, Marlow was involved in an extensive search mission of coastal areas for several shipwreck survivors. Reports indicated that the castaways were living with Aboriginals and as a consequence Marlow in conjunction with Inspector John Murray of the native police based at Cardwell conducted searches of every Aboriginal camp they could find between Townsville and Hinchinbrook Island. The mission was unsuccessful in finding the shipwrecked sailors. [18] [19]
With the opening of the Cape River goldfields in 1868 the authorities decided to move the Native Police barracks from Bowen to the new settlement of Dalrymple about 80 km west of Townsville. Marlow was placed in charge of this new barracks and accompanied by his troopers and Queensland Police Commissioner, David Thompson Seymour, he provided the first Gold Escort from the goldfields to Townsville. [20]
However, with the removal of the barracks from Bowen, Aboriginal attacks in this region re-intensified, exemplified by prominent pastoralist Sidney Yeates having to abandon his sheep station. Both the Police Commissioner and Marlow advised that they were no longer able to provide adequate protection from the Dalrymple base. Marlow suggested collecting all the coastal Aborigines from Port Mackay to Townsville and confining them on an island off the coast where they could be ‘taught to be useful’. The Colonial Secretary was ‘unable to entertain’ Marlow’s proposition. [21] Pastoralists in the Bowen region were unhappy with the lack of protection, with some seeking to embarrass Marlow publicly with complaints of inappropriate interactions between Aboriginal women and his troopers. [22] Further misfortune followed Marlow with an immense flood of the Burdekin River destroying the town of Dalrymple, Marlow's house and the police barracks being washed away. [23]
For the remainder of his placement at Dalrymple, Marlow took on a more administrative role managing the gold escort duties of the native police and investigating cases of murder, missing persons and riotous behaviour on the goldfields. [24] He retired from the native police in 1873.
From 1874 to 1876, Marlow returned to Bowen as a resident, where his house was damaged during an intense storm. [25] In 1876, he moved to the Brisbane suburb of Kangaroo Point where, in quite a large departure from his previous career, he became chief inspector for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. [26] He remained in this position until 1885, when he became employed as a health inspector. [27] Marlow continued in various posts for the Board of Health until his death in 1903.
Bowen is a coastal town and locality in the Whitsunday Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, the locality of Bowen had a population of 10,377 people.
The Burdekin River is a river in North and Far North Queensland, Australia. The river rises on the northern slopes of Boulder Mountain at Valley of Lagoons, part of the western slope of the Seaview Range, and flows into the Coral Sea at Upstart Bay over 200 kilometres (124 mi) to the southeast of the source, with a catchment area of approximately 130,000 square kilometres (50,000 sq mi). The Burdekin River is Australia's largest river by (peak) discharge volume.
Ayr is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Burdekin, Queensland, Australia. It is the centre of a sugarcane-growing region and the administrative centre for the Burdekin Shire Council. In the 2016 census, the locality of Ayr had a population of 8,738 people.
Cardwell is a coastal town and rural locality in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, the locality of Cardwell had a population of 1,309 people.
Whitsunday Island is the largest island in the Whitsunday group of islands located off the coast of Central Queensland, Australia.
Australian native police were specialised mounted military units consisting of detachments of Aboriginal troopers under the command of White officers appointed by colonial governments. These units existed in various forms in colonial Australia during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. From temporary base camps and barracks, Native Police were primarily used to patrol the often vast geographical areas along the colonial frontier in order to conduct indiscriminate raids and punitive expeditions against Aboriginal people. The Native Police proved to be a brutally destructive instrument in the disintegration and dispossession of Indigenous Australians. Armed with rifles, carbines and swords, they were also deployed to escort surveying groups, gold convoys and groups of pastoralists and prospectors.
The Hornet Bank massacre was the killing of eleven settlers and one Aboriginal station-hand, by a group of Iman Aboriginal Australians. The massacre occurred at about one or two o'clock in the morning of 27 October 1857 at Hornet Bank station on the upper Dawson River near Eurombah in central Queensland, Australia. It has been moderately estimated that 150 Aboriginal people succumbed in subsequent punitive missions conducted by Native Police, private settler militias, and by William Fraser in or around Eurombah district. Indiscriminate shootings of "over 300" Aboriginal men, women, and children, however, were reportedly conducted by private punitive expedition some 400 kilometres eastward at various stations in the Wide Bay district alone. The result was the believed extermination of the entire Iman tribe and language group by 1858; this claim was disputed, however, and descendants of this group have recently been recognised by the High Court of Australia to be the original custodians of the land surrounding the town of Taroom.
This article is about the Indigenous Australian outlaw, for the Luxembourgian footballer see Joé Flick.
Frederic Charles Urquhart was a Native Police officer, Queensland Police Commissioner and Administrator of the Northern Territory.
George Augustus Frederick Elphinstone Dalrymple was a colonist, explorer, public servant and politician, member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. He founded the towns of Bowen and Cardwell, and pioneered the opening up of the Herbert, Burdekin, Johnstone and Daintree River regions to British colonisation. During this time he was responsible for many killings of Aboriginal people who lived in the area.
Alexander Douglas Douglas was a naval officer, an inspector in the Native Police and a chief inspector of police in Queensland.
Wentworth D'Arcy Uhr was an officer in the paramilitary Native Police in the British colony of Queensland. After being demoted for poor conduct, he resigned from this force and became a drover, leading the first herds of cattle into the region now known as the Northern Territory. He later became, amongst other vocations, a gold prospector, butcher and hotelier. Throughout his life, Uhr actively engaged in multiple incidents of frontier violence including several massacres of Aboriginals. He was also the subject of numerous court cases defending charges which ranged from murder and assault to race-fixing and fraud. In later life he moved to Western Australia and became a business partner with Charles Kidman, brother of the famous pastoralist, Sidney Kidman.
John Graham MacDonald (1834–1918) was an explorer and pioneer in Queensland, Australia.
John O'Connell Bligh was a Native Police officer in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He achieved the rank of Commandant of this colonial paramilitary force from 1861 to 1864. Bligh is probably best known for an incident in Maryborough, where he shot a number of Aboriginal Australians along the main street and into the adjoining Mary River. After retiring from the Native Police, Bligh became a police magistrate in the towns of Gayndah and Gympie.
Edric Norfolk Vaux Morisset was a high-ranking officer in both the paramilitary and civilian police forces of the New South Wales and Queensland colonies of the British Empire. He was Commandant of the paramilitary Native Police from 1857 to 1861 and concurrently became the first Inspector General of Police in Queensland in 1860. Morisset afterwards was appointed Superintendent of Police at Bathurst and then later on at Maitland. From 1883 until his death in 1887, Morisset was Superintendent of the Southern Districts and Deputy Inspector General of Police in New South Wales.
Walter David Taylor Powell was an English mariner and paramilitary Native Police officer in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He played a significant part in the practical implementation of British colonial rule in the coastal areas of Queensland. His role as an officer in the Native Police was central in a number of important moments in colonial Queensland history including that of the brutal crushing of localised Aboriginal resistance after the Hornet Bank massacre, the foundation of Rockhampton and the creation of the Bowen settlement. He also had major contributions in the founding of Cardwell, the coastal and South Seas trade, and the British colonisation of the Torres Strait.
John Murray was a Scottish officer in the Australian native police in the British colonies of New South Wales and Queensland. He was an integral part of this paramilitary force for nearly twenty years, supporting European colonisation in south-eastern, central and northern Queensland. He also had an important role in recruiting troopers for the Native Police from the Riverina District in New South Wales.
George Poultney Malcolm Murray or simply G.P.M. Murray was a British-born senior officer in both the paramilitary Native Police and civilian Queensland Police Force.
Robert Arthur Johnstone was an officer in the Native Police paramilitary force which operated in the British colony of Queensland. He was stationed at various locations in central and northern Queensland between 1867 and 1880 conducting regular punitive expeditions against clans of Indigenous Australians who resisted colonisation. He also participated in several surveying expeditions in Far North Queensland, including those under the leadership of George Elphinstone Dalrymple.
William Edington Armit was a soldier, sailor, Native Police officer in the British colony of Queensland, explorer, naturalist and colonial administrator in British New Guinea. Armit is regarded as one of the most violent officers of the paramilitary Native Police force.