From the earliest days of European settlement in the Port Phillip
District of New South Wales (now Victoria), Aboriginal people were
employed in 1838 as trackers on the Revenue Cutter Ranger and as a
cavalry-style unit, the Native Police Corps (1837-1853). During the early 1860s,
Thomas Bungalene served in the war steamer HMCSS Victoria,
during the epic mission to the Gulf of Carpentaria to rescue lostexplorers Burke and Wills, and up to 1864 when the ship began to be involved
in MarineSurveys of the coasts of Victoria. It is possible and even
likely that others may have servedin the colonial volunteer forces . .
NATIVE POLICE 1837-1853
A Native Police Corps was established at Port Phillip in September 1837,
with a South African, Christian De Villiers as Officer in Charge. Allegations of
misconduct led to his resignation in December. His place was taken temporarily
by missionary George Langhorne, perhaps the first and only time such a unit was
'commanded' by a missionary. The unsuitability of this arrangement led to the
reappointment of De Villiers in September 1838. Further complaints against him,
principally by a local publican, led to his second and final resignation in
The force was re-established in October 1839, this time under the
direction of the newly formed Aboriginal Protectorate Department. Three of the
Assistant Protectors of Aborigines were allocated five Native Police each. One,
Pinter-giller, was appointed as a sergeant. The men were issued with muskets.
This second attempt to form a Native Police Corps again failed.
The third attempt began in 1842 under Captain H. E. P. Dana, lasting only
a short while after his death (from pneumonia) in 1852. The Corps was equipped
and drilled as a cavalry unit.
Black troopers of the Port Phillip (later Victorian)
Native Police Corps
in 1851. From sketches by William Strutt. Reproduced
permission from the Victorian Parliamentary Library.
was a smart drab green with red stripes and oppossum
A recommendation against ever forming Aboriginal Police had been made by a
British House of Commons Select Committee in 1837. The likelihood was for them
to repay old tribal scores. Certainly, at Port Phillip (Victoria by 1851), many
Aboriginal people were killed by the Native Police especially in the Western
District and in Gippsland. Several reports of pitched battles between Aboriginal
warriors and the Native Police exist. Later, as Aboriginal resistance to
European settlement diminished, the Corps was used to guard goldfields, hunt
bushrangers and parade on ceremonial occasions.
Some European Officers and NCOs were reputed to be heavy drinkers and,
worse, to sometimes drink with the men. Several of the Aboriginal troopers were
'unreclaimable drunkards' by the time they left, writes historian Michael
Christie. A scandal occurred in 1851 when a European sergeant named Walsh shot
and wounded Subaltern William Dana (brother of the Commandant) in a fit of
jealousy when Dana helped Walsh's wife dismount from her horse.
For the most part, the Native Police Corps had its headquarters at Narre
Warren and Dandenong. When disbanded, some of the Aboriginal native police were
absorbed as trackers into the Victoria Police.
A Mounted Police and a Border Police also existed. The Border Police were
expected to live off the land. As with the Native Police Corps, both these units
were also involved in actions against Aboriginal war parties and others.
Christie, M. F.Aborigines in Colonial
Victoria 1835-1886, Sydney University Press, 1979.
Myrna and Ian MacFarlane: My Heart Is
Breaking: A Joint Guide to Records about
Aboriginal People in the Public Record Office of Victoria and the Australian
Archives, Victorian Regional Office: 1993: in three
editions: 206pp, ISBN 0 644 32498 8.
Fels, Marie H. : Good Men and True: The Aboriginal Police of
the Port Phillip District 1837-1853: Melbourne Universiry Press:
Historical Records of Victoria, Volumes 2A and 2B, Chapters 9 &
18, Victorian Government Printer, 1982 & 1983.
Monie, Joanna: Victorian History and Politics, Vol 2, La Trobe
about the Victorian Native Police Corps
Public Record Office (Victoria): VPRS 90: Day Book of the
Native Police Corps: 1845-1853: A journal of the activities of the force
including daily occurrences, duties, drills, names of troopers and their horses,
and occasional mention of hard-drinking habits of the European NCOs and
PROV: VPRS 4466: Native Police - Unregistered
papers. One such letter (dated 17.3.1849) describes the plight of a small party
of Native Police guarding the Daisy Hills goldfield -- two years before the
official discovery of gold. Their leader, a European sergeant,
wrote that he was 'half-naked' and his men were 'much in need of
Port Phillip Aboriginal trackers
in the 1840s
With their high reputation as trackers, the Native Police were usually
called in when white children lost themselves in the bush-or, worse still, were
thought to have been abducted by "cannibal blacks".
In July 1842 Mrs Nathaniel Simpson, wife of the ploughman at Narre Warren
Aboriginal Station, took her two small children for a walk and became lost in
the bush for nine days. The Native Police immediately turned out, and despite
heavy rain, tracked them to the nearby hills. They arrived just after James
Dobie, the pioneer of Monbulk, found mother and children alive, although almost
comatose from exhaustion.
In April 1846 the five-year-old son of squatter James Willoughby was
allegedly taken away by Mornington Peninsula blacks near Arthur's Seat. The body
was later found near a native camp-fire, but showed no marks of violence.
Protector Thomas believed the boy had died of starvation, and strenuously
defended native constable Nunuptune against rumours that he was implicated in a
Later in 1846 a child of T. M. Atkinson, pound-keeper at South Yarra,
wandered from home. Native Police and Protector Thomas spent thirty-five days on
horseback and twenty days on foot searching for the child, apparently without
At the end of December 1847, Mrs Ellen Riley, wife of a stockholder at
Dandenong, temporarily left her three children with Mr and Mrs John Jones on a
neighbouring property. The youngest child, Catherine Riley, just over two years
old, wandered away from the homestead. She was missed within a few minutes.
Searching began immediately, but without success. Even Henry Dana and his black
troopers could not trace her.
Eventually, after five weeks, the
child's remains were found on open ground under a tree, on a neighbour's
property only a mile or so away. No explanation of this strange circumstance
could be produced at the inquest.
In January 1849 the young son of rate collector James Ballingall
disappeared. The Native Police were again called in. They searched closely at
Brighton, where many blacks had camped, but eventually the boy was found drowned
in the Yarra.
SOURCE: Cannon, Michael: Who
Killed the Koories: William Heinemann Australia: Melbourne: 1990: pp.
YOU CAN VISIT AN ON-LINE EXHIBITION
ABOUT THE NATIVE POLICE CORPS