Aboriginal Workers who Bred Horses for the QLD Police: 1909-1935. Yesterday, on 9th October 2024, Lesley Synge gave a ‘lunchtime lecture’ or, more accurately, a presentation: “Know Their Names: Rewan Police Horse Breeding Station” at the Royal Historical Society of Queensland in William Street North Quay in Magan-djin (Brisbane).
I listened to Lesley Synge tell an attentive audience how the Queensland government employed Aboriginal workers at Rewan station and introduced a system that exploited them by paying low wages and providing poor accommodation.
The author quoted Aboriginal poet Kath Walker: “Let no one say the past is dead. The past is all about us and within.” The author acknowledged Tom Mahon, a sprightly 90 year old in the audience, who contributed to Lesley’s book. One of Tom’s forebears was a young constable and horse handler at Rewan. Station.
Know Their Names is available in the state library book shop and sells for $40.
The author says: “I hope somehow you (the Aboriginal descendants of Rewan) come across this book and observe a little truth telling and a little progress towards dismantling the Great Australian Silence.”
Colonial police employed Aboriginal people in their Frontier Wars against First Nations people in Australia. Here, they were known as Queensland Native Mounted police. There is strong Aboriginal resistance that continues to this day.
Yet the silence persists about that resistance in the boardrooms, in government administration, in parliaments, in the National broadcaster ABC, and on the streets.
I will read Lesley Synge’s book with great interest about “the story of the Aboriginal Stockmen who bred the horses that carried the state of Queensland.”
My interest in this book arose because my family grew horses in Far North Queensland using Aboriginal labour. Yet squatters like them complained to the Queensland Government when it attempted to impose a minimum wage for aboriginal workers on Aboriginal land.
At the launch of her book, Lesley Synge beseeched us to know the names of the Aboriginal workers at Rewan Station. She asked that the police museum pay tribute to Aboriginal workers in the pastoral industry and, in particular the workers at Rewan station. In this truth telling Lesley Synge challenges the Great Australian Silence.
Ian Curr
10 October 2024