AustLit

Resistance fighter Dundalli is captured in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, and tried for the murders of two settlers.

Victorian Central Board is appointed to watch over the interests of Aboriginal people. In 1869 it is replaced by the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines, soon commonly referred to as the Protection Board. The Protection Board (existed nationally) had the power to remove any child from station families to be housed in dormitories. From 1886, the Board is empowered to apprentice Koori children when they reach 13. Children require permission to visit their families on the stations. The Protection Board is replaced by the Welfare Board in 1957 and abolished in 1967.

Keyword search: Protection Board

British administrative control of the Torres Strait begins, with John Jardine appointed as police magistrate in the Torres Straits. He takes up residence initially on Albany Island, but later settles on Somerset Island.

Labourers from the Pacific Islands are introduced to Queensland. 

Keyword search: Blackbirders & blackbirding

One hundred and fifty Jaburara people are killed in the Kimberleys, Western Australia. What is known as the Flying Foam Massacre was a series of attacks between February and May, around the Flying Foam Passage on Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula).

The first Australian overseas cricket tour leaves Sydney, New South Wales, for England. The team is all Aboriginal.

Search: all works about the 1868 cricket tour

See also: Johnny Mullagh (team member)

Missionary Reverend Samuel MacFarlane arrives in the Torres Straits. 1 July is celebrated annually by Torres Strait Islander people as the Coming of the Light (Keriba Lagaw Buiya), signifying the coming of Christianity. Many aspects of Christianity are incorporated into the Islanders' existing religious and spiritual ceremonies, and communities across the Torres Strait Islands hold celebrations, gatherings and church services. The re-enactment of the missionaries' landing takes place on Erub (Darnley Island).

Setting search: Erub (Darnley Island)

Queensland annexes the Torres Strait Islands up to sixty miles from the coast of Cape York. The remaining islands (largely in the north and east) are annexed in 1879.

Truganini, the daughter of Mangerner, Elder of the Recherche Bay people in Tasmania, dies.

Protector of Aborigines is appointed in New South Wales.

A parliamentary inquiry, following on from a Royal Commission on the Aborigines (1877), looks into the ‘problem’ of the six Aboriginal reserves in Victoria: Coranderrk, Lake Condah, Lake Tyers, Framlingham, Ramahyuck, and Ebenezer. The inquiry is the subject of Andrea James and Giordano Nanni’s play Coranderrk: We Will Show the Country.

Administrative control of the Torres Strait is formalised, with John Douglas (formerly Premier of Queensland) appointed as Government Resident and Police Magistrate. He is based on Thursday Island.

The Aborigines Protection Act 1886 is enacted in Victoria. It allows the removal of so-called ‘half-caste’ [terminology used at the time] residents under the age of 35 from the various reserves. Activist William Barak and others from Coranderrk send a petition to the Victorian Government, asking for the authority to move freely instead of increased restrictions.

                See the Coranderrk Petition at Melbourne Museum (external link)

                See all works about Coranderrk Mission

A similar act (Aborigines Protection Act) is also enacted in Western Australia. The two highly restrictive acts become the model for future legislation, including Queensland’s Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, NSW’s Aboriginal Protection Act 1909, the Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910, South Australia’s Aborigines Act 1911, and Tasmania’s Cape Barren Island Reserve Act 1912.

New South Wales' Aborigines Protection Board established. In 1915, the Board is empowered to remove and apprentice Koori children without a court hearing. This power is repealed in 1940. The board is renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board, and later abolished in 1969.

The phrase 'White Australia' appears in William Lane's Boomerang in Brisbane, Queensland.

Keyword search: BlackWords works on the White Australia policy

Jandamarra (also called Pigeon), a Bunuba resistance fighter, begins resistance activities that prevent the settlement of the West Kimberley for six years.

Bonus search: works about Jandamarra by Bunaba authors

The Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act (Qld) is passed in Queensland: the first instrument of separate legal control over Aboriginal people, it is also more restrictive than any other contemporary legislation. The Chief Protector is able to move Murri people on to and between reserves and hold their children in dormitories. The Act is amended in 1899, 1901, 1928, and 1934, before being repealed in 1939, and replaced by the Aboriginal Preservation and Protection Act. Torres Strait Islander people initially remain under the administrative control of the Government Resident, but are brought under the Act in 1904, after the death of Government Resident John Douglas.

View the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act (Qld) at the Museum of Australian Democracy (external link)

1 April: Resistance leader Jandamarra of the Bunuba people is killed in Western Australia.

Under the guidance of Horace Watson, Fanny Cochrane Smith makes five wax cylinder recordings of songs, the only contemporary audio recordings of Tasmanian languages in existence. By 1949, only four cylinders remained intact. They were inducted into the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register in 2017.