Close to Home: Colonial Violence and Family Histories || Newcastle Writers Festival 2025 x HCNSW

Now, more than ever before, we seem more willing to acknowledge difficult histories in our family trees. At the same time, historians are increasingly writing about colonial violence and challenging long-held myths. 

What impact is this having on how we see Australia’s past, as well as our own? 

John Maynard, Mark Dunn, Stephen Gapps, and Kate Grenville speak with Julie McIntyre about their experiences of encountering dark moments in their research and how they've dealt with them in their work.

The History Council of New South Wales is supported by the NSW Government via a grant from Create NSW.

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Music credit: 'Only Ashes Remain' by Blackout Memories (Epidemic Sound), licensed through Canva.

Chapters

• 0:05 Introduction to History Council Session
• 2:37 John Maynard on Aboriginal Political Activism
• 12:55 Family Records and Colonial Trauma
• 22:11 Kate Grenville's Pilgrimage of Understanding
• 35:00 Australian Wars and Historical Responsibility
• 40:02 Mark Dunn on Hunter Valley's Colonial Past
• 48:57 Sites of Commemoration and Truth-Telling
• 54:40 Audience Questions and Discussion

Transcript

Close to Home: Colonial Violence and Family Histories

Newcastle Writers’ Festival, 5TH April 2025.

Julie McIntyre  00:05

Welcome to another History Council of New South Wales, 'History Talks' podcast. This is a recording of a session held on the fifth of April 2025 as part of the Newcastle Writers' Festival. Welcome to the session 'Close to Home: Colonial Violence and Family Histories. The Newcastle Writers' Festival acknowledges that we are meeting on the unceded land of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and continuing relationship with the land, waters and community, we pay our respects to elders past and present, and welcome First Nations People who have joined us today. Wontakalowa, greetings in Awabakal language. I'm Julie McIntyre. I'm a settler descendant historian from the University of Newcastle, and I'm a member of the executive committee of the History Council of New South Wales, which supports this session. introducing our panellists. John Maynard is a proud Worimi man, as he says, from across the river, and he is one of Australia's most important Aboriginal historians and a prolific author, most recently this year of 'Golf Dreaming: an Aboriginal social, political, cultural and historical perspective of golf.' Brand new out -- very recently. Kate Grenville is a settler descendant and much decorated author of some of the nation's best loved novels, and today, we're discussing her new book, very brand new too out in the last couple of days: 'Unsettled: a journey through time and place.' Stephen Gapps: give a wave. Stephen is a settler descendant and award-winning historian whose books are deepening knowledge of Aboriginal resistance in the Australian wars. His latest publication is 'Uprising: War in the Colony of New South Wales, 1838 to 1844.' and Mark Dunn is a historian whose 'Convict Valley: the bloody struggle on Australia's early frontier', changed our understanding of this region's colonial past and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's award for Australian history in 2021 So I'm going to speak individually to each of the authors. They may jump in at some stage through that discussion as well, and we're going to try and leave about 15 minutes for questions at the end. So first to you, John.

Julie McIntyre  02:41

Family history boomed in the 1970s when white people were interested to find a convict in their ancestry. And now there's a resurgence in family history as Indigenous people search out members of the Stolen Generations and evidence for Native Title, and non Indigenous People wonder whether their ancestors committed violence against Aboriginal people on the colonial frontier. Now, John, your ancestors are at the heart of the many histories you've researched, starting with your father and grandfather.

What was it that got you started in the first place? 

John Maynard  03:16

Yeah, Julie, well it was actually my father. I mean, I don't have any fond memories of school. I came through the school system in the 1950s and 1960s when we as Aboriginal people were not in the school text or the history books, except of in the in the sense that we belong to the stone age and we were a dying race. I switched off school from the time I got there until I left in year nine, the day I turned 15, I was out the gate, and I spent the next 25 years in a whole variety of jobs, none even remotely related to education or academia. And it wasn't till I was just shy of 40, and at the time I was out of work, I'd come out of a marriage, and I landed back at my parents place, who were somewhat shocked to see my return, I have to say. And my father basically, to give me a kick up the bum, he said, Look, why don't you do a family history for us on the old man, which was my grandfather, Fred Maynard, today, recognised as a legendary early Aboriginal political activist 100 years ago, who formed the first United all Aboriginal political organisation in Sydney in 1924 that's 101 years ago, and the platform that organisation put up was demanding enough land for each And every Aboriginal family in the country, protecting Aboriginal families from the children being taken away, defending a distinct Aboriginal cultural identity and demanding that all the protection boards the state run protection boards be abolished and be replaced by an all Aboriginal board to sit under the common. Government that was a voice to Parliament 100 years before the referendum we've just had and seemed defeated, sadly, but yeah, that was the ignition point for me. I guess in that sense, family history. It went on to be a PhD and a book, which has come out in the second edition only last year to coincide with the 100 year anniversary of the AAPA. So that was my journey. And I mean, I've spent over 30 years in academia now, and I headed Walatuka, the Aboriginal education centre. And, you know, 16 books, I think I've even lost count, 16 books now that I've that I've written. So the reality is that came from my father, just saying, get in and do this.

Julie McIntyre  05:48

I love it. An idea is one thing. The slog of doing the research, of finding those stories, is another. How did you go finding out about your grandfather? 

John Maynard  05:58

Yeah, it was. It was amazing, because with our family, we had oral memories, of course, certainly from my father, my grandfather died eight years before I was born, so I never had the opportunity of meeting this remarkable man. So I had the oral memories of my father, my uncles, my aunties and to pass on down. But we also had letters that he had written to the state and federal governments. There was newspaper accounts. We had a small number of those and a few photographs, but I certainly I had no greater vision than doing this in a nice exercise book and sticking in the letters and the photos and the newspaper accounts, and then presenting it to the family. When I'd finished, I had no idea that it would go on to be a PhD, you know, I didn't even know what a bloody PhD was at that point, and and then a book. But when I waded into, you know, the archives and the libraries, and then travelling around, interviewing people that I found were connected with my grandfather's movement, that was the part of that I really enjoyed. And I actually love the archives and the libraries and digging through this stuff, and the amount of material that I found on my grandfather and all of these other early Aboriginal activists, Sid Ridgway, Dick Johnson, Tom Lacy, Jane Duren, these are people that had been missed to history and really courageous, brave people standing up to face the government. They held rallies, they held four conferences, and faced incredible police intimidation and harassment. And you know that was one part of that. They fought a five year bidder campaign against the New South Wales aborigines Protection Board and the state government over its policy. But the at the time the protection boards, the chairperson of the New South Wales Aboriginal Protection Board was also the police commissioner. So you can understand the impact, because they were being exposed in the government and embarrassed of the conditions that Aboriginal people were living under and the impact of the policies, the tearing away of the kids, the tearing away of people don't even realise independent farms that Aboriginal people had regained land on and had prospered for five decades, until 1910 When all of that land began to be torn away. Our memories go back to the probably the 1930s of the more heavily congested reserves that all Aboriginal people were lobbed on, where which were useless waste lands where you couldn't grow anything, and you were given clothes, an inferior diet, your health deteriorated. You weren't able to move off this. Well, it was, you know, in essence, of a prison environment, and that's what the AAPA fought against and embarrassed the government over and were eventually harassed and handed out of existence by the police. I think you've touched on this, but I'd like to invite you to talk a little bit more about how it felt. This is close to home. Was it? Was it difficult to find yourself telling stories that were that were about the bitterness, the hardship. Oh, look, this, this, you know, all Aboriginal people, I say, right across this continent, have stories that need to go into the giant jigsaw puzzle that is Aboriginal people's history, where most of the pieces aren't in the puzzle, and we all carry trauma from our family's experiences. It's critically important that Aboriginal people are encouraged into that space. We all have these stories of survival and courage, and it's really important, certainly for myself, going into some of those records, I said I just loved it in the material order that I unearthed. But there's also some very traumatic things that you can come across as a result of that. And even with Stephen Gapps work on frontier war and the violence inflicted upon Aboriginal people. The other side of the river is Worimi country, the centre of the universe, I have to say.

John Maynard  10:05

But there was incredible violence inflicted onto our people on the other side of that river, you know, the AA company. Robert Dawson, the first head of the AA company, was a remarkable man. And he actually, you know, really took a shine to Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people were working men and women. They had a school established, and Aboriginal kids went to that school. In our family records, there's Mary, my great, great grandmother, who's recorded as an Aboriginal woman from Port Stevens, who can read and write, and we're talking here about nine to 1830s she had to have gone to that school that the AA company set up. But subsequently, after Dawson, who had a real, strong sense of real How could you say admired Aboriginal culture, the ones that followed parry and certainly Gregson didn't carry the same empathy for Aboriginal people, we had violence inflicted by the timber gators and also by the AA company itself, and it was a matter of survival up there. So, you know, wherever you go in this country, we've suffered through massacres, poisonings and the whole trauma of the impact of those events onto our communities. And it must be difficult for Aboriginal people when they research their family histories to come across this trauma. What's your advice to Aboriginal people if they ask you about writing family history? Look, it's it's in the sense, yes, you may receive great shocks, and you have to take that. But the reality is, in the end, it's an empowering experience to say we're still here. And again, I've in the last 10 years, at times, when you go back into the records of what happened on the other side of the river, I pinch me so that I'm still here because of the violence and the loss of life of Aboriginal people in Worimi country is staggering, so that my family survived, and other families you know, survived is a testament to Aboriginal people, but it also involves constantly moving. My family moved from Port Stevens, then to the mountains around Dungog and then eventually to hidden near Maitland, and my grandfather and his brother finished up in Sydney working as wolf labourers on the docks, and where he stayed from about 1900 to his death in 1946 in Sydney. So it was that movement. So yeah, I mean, it was, I really encourage Aboriginal people to get in and start the journey, and I certainly encourage every, everyone I can that I meet to take up that that journey.

Julie McIntyre  12:45

And speaking of journeys, Kate Grenville’s book Unsettled is I notice you call it Kate, a pilgrimage to understand your white ancestors role in dispossessing Aboriginal people in the early colour in early colonial New South Wales, and your way to undertake this, this journey, was to visit the places themselves. I get the sense from reading the book that the pilgrimage was informed by family memories and also documented research. But what led you to want to visit the places to go to the places. 

Kate Grenville  13:24

Yes, pardon me, sorry, I've just recovered from COVID, and I'm not quite all here -

Julie McIntyre  13:30

and the microphone?

Kate Grenville  13:31

Oh, sorry, I need the microphone. You see what I mean? Yeah. Okay, yes. My family goes back four or five generations in this country, and they were, you know, among the first white colonists. And on each for each generation, they moved out on the frontier. They were, you know, sort of illiterate sheep farmers. So anytime there was the chance of a new bit of land, they would push out. So they were on the edge of the frontier through those several generations. And my mother was a historian. She made sure that I knew all the family stories. There were few stories about each generation. Now, I hung onto those stories, not being terribly interested, I thought, until the year 2000 when I joined the reconciliation walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And that unsettled me. From then on, I realised that there was kind of unfinished business, and I started to do some research, which resulted in the Secret River, which the main character is, you know, somewhat based on my original convict ancestor. So I've been circling, and in the course of writing, actually, many books about Australian the Australian past, I went to many of the places where the story happened, and I kept thinking, there must be something I can do with this beyond writing fiction about it. But it seemed too hard. I wanted to examine, what does it mean to be a non Indigenous person in Australia? You know, should we feel guilty because my great, great grandfather. I, you know, took land. Should I feel guilty? After all, I didn't do it. It was a long time ago, but actually, I am left with a very unsettled feeling. And then, you know, the work of incredible historians, among them, John, all the people I'm on this platform with distinguished historians, all we now know what happened. We can't pretend we didn't know. So what do we do with that knowledge? Do we, you know, beat ourselves up about it and put the black armband on, or is there something more useful we can do? So for 25 years, I've been thinking it was too hard to approach that directly, so I wrote novels about it, kind of circling the idea. But then when the referendum was defeated so roundly and with such dishonest I think strategizing on the other side, I found in myself a kind of white hot rage to actually go into this problem and think about it. Instead of putting those questions off at a distance. What does it mean to be a white Australian actually go in there for me going through I was lucky to have that connection to those places. And I thought if I do a little pilgrimage through those places, it may become apparent, if I go there with an open mind and an open heart, which I think is what a pilgrimage is, it may be that something will shift in those otherwise sort of unanswerable questions.

Julie McIntyre  16:27

And we, I think, can learn to from your sense of how you undertook that journey, the Where did you choose to go first? 

Kate Grenville  16:37

Look, it was made easy for me by the chronology of the stories happened to follow fairly closely a geographical line. So my oldest ancestor, Solomon Wiseman, started Wiseman's ferry just down the road there on the Hawkesbury so I started there, and then his sons would have herded their sheep up up along the Mogo Creek, through Bucha to the wall, and by Valley Wallam, the valley of the wall and by Brook. Another ancestor then settled just north of that on the hunter at near, not far from Jerry's plains, just south of Ravensworth, so and and then up to Coronavirus, which is, you know, up in the Liverpool Plains, Tamworth, Gunnedah, Guyra and I also took a few side trips to places that seemed relevant. So I had all that circling and 25 years of taking notes that I couldn't see how they would ever amount to anything, I suddenly realised that the literal structure of the journey would give me a literal structure, structure to follow those threads. I can only say I'm totally lucky to have those family stories. And any of you who have those stories write them down so that you're -- I so agree with John there. All of us need to record that stuff.

Julie McIntyre  18:00

One of the places that you visited, and I very much enjoyed reading your perspective on this, was the Myall Creek Massacre site near in Burrell. Could I ask you to just speak for a minute about your impressions of that place? Where did it fit into your journey?

Kate Grenville  18:16

When I embarked on the journey, I didn't, I didn't plan to go there, so I did this long journey through very all those different places, thinking thoughts and having a lot of feelings of different kinds. I allowed myself to be very open ended, unplanned, unstructured about the whole thing. The only thing structured was the actual, you know, the highway I was travelling on. I took all sorts of digressions, and at the end of it, I ended up in Guyra, where my uncle had some land. And I was disappointed I'd got to the end of my journey. And somehow, although I had gone into it without any great expectation, I was disappointed that there was no sense of having arrived. Most pilgrimages have a kind of end point. You bathe yourself in the river or whatever. I didn't. But as I left Guyra, as it happened the first time I saw Guyra, it was to go to the opening of the Anzac Memorial there, and something about that chimed with my feeling of still feeling unfinished, no closure had come from this journey, and at that point, I remembered that I was not that far from the memorial to the Mile Creek Massacre. Now, my family, as far as I know, had absolutely nothing to do with it, but it was, you know, as far as the distances in that part of New South Wales go, it wasn't that far. So I went, and it was the best thing I ever did. I really recommend it. It's a memorial that takes the form of a path with rocks that explain what happened in this appalling this appalling event in 1838 and at the end of it, you've read the story, you've experienced the beauty of the place. You've walked on the actual dirt to get there, and you stand looking out over the valley where this massacre happened. And look, I'm actually feeling myself shivery as I remember what it's like to stand there. It's nothing that can perhaps be put into words. Well, some of the words spring to mind, sorrow, shame, horror, all those, but also a sense that the memorial itself is opens the way to a way forward, because it was put up by the descendants of the perpetrators and the descendants of the victims. They came together over somebody's kitchen table and devised this that I think is the way forward for all of us.

Julie McIntyre  20:35

I'd like to take that moment to open up, back to John and to the other panellists, Kate, because I think what you've spoken to, and we'll come back to your book, but I think what you've spoken to there gives us something to think about that resonates around that idea of conducting a pilgrimage, and where might the journey come to how do we land something like that? John, I'm wondering what your sense of what? 

John Maynard  21:02

Kate, yeah, I have to say. Like Kate, I mean, I was invited to be the speaker at the Mile Creek Memorial gathering in 2015 was on with Anzac, and it is the most moving experience and walk. And I certainly encourage people to attend at some point, some year, but and it is a coming together of non Indigenous and Aboriginal people, in a sense, to try and heal from the past. It's a remarkable space to be in, but certainly for me as a historian, it's also important to we know that the perpetrators, not all of them, were hung in relation to the incredible massacre that happened there. But it's also important that tied to that is major nuns military expedition onto Waterloo Creek, which was earlier where over 300 Aboriginal people were slaughtered, was then covered up in the sense of then giving all the attention to Mile Creek. That is really one critical part of this, and I think people should really examine that bit of history. So, yeah,

Julie McIntyre  22:12

I'm going to ask Stephen and Mark to comment too. Thank you both, because these, each of these very eloquent people, I think, can bring us to some understanding about the fact that when we talk about this history as close to home, close to home for the nation, does relate to these Memorial sites? Stephen, I understand you've been involved in memorialisation of the Appin massacre. So I'm asking that question only knowing from a conversation with John and Kate in the green room before our session about that. So what? What was involved in that?

Stephen Gapps  22:50

Yeah, I'm hope, I hope that everyone knows Appin happened in 1816, Governor Macquarie's campaign across southwest Sydney, Western Sydney,

23:01

ended up in a massacre. At least 14 people were killed.

Stephen Gapps  23:07

It's, it's, it's difficult to think about memorialization. I totally agree with, with John and Kate about Myall creek. It's, it's, in some ways, it's almost a perfect way to commemorate these events. It's not a statue of a soldier, it's a place that speaks to the history. So in terms of Yeah, memorialization at Appin, unfortunately, there is a small plaque. There is an amazing event that happens every April. But there's a small plaque. It has now had some heritage listing around it, but it's going to be the site of a major suburban development. It's going to be 1000s, 10s of 1000s of houses around it. There's little strips of land that have been kept and I think the power of Myall Creek is that you like it's an 1840s landscape. Still, it's so evocative. And at the moment, Apipn is an 1810s landscape. If anyone wants to try and stop it, please be my guest. 

Julie McIntyre 24:17

Stephen, can you remind us where it is?

Stephen Gapps  24:20

So Campbelltown, you're heading towards the coast towards the Illawarra, so it's on Dharawal land. What's the nearest, biggest town? I can't think Campbelltown, Picton, around that way, but that, that, that's that way of commemoration, I think is, is a way forward on a journey, on a national journey, a way forward away from commemorating, which every single town in this country has an Anzac statue as our national commemoration form.

Julie McIntyre  24:58

And Mark. I know this is. Question without notice. So I also know you're able to think very quickly on your feet, but I feel as though this is where the conversation so far has led us. Before we come back to the individual books. Do we have anything in the Hunter Valley? So thinking about your expertise, particularly about the region, but do we have anything in the Hunter Valley that does recognise frontier violence from an Aboriginal perspective?

Speaker 4  25:29

No, but we have plenty of examples of it, including right in this very city. And just to run off Stephen’s Appin experience, as anyone -- I'm assuming quite a few of you are from Newcastle, or at least the Hunter Valley -- the perpetrator (one of) James Wallace, who led one of the armed forces in Appin and was responsible for the massacre itself, was congratulated and promoted with an appointment to be commandant of the Newcastle penal station. So as a direct result of Appin, is much of the colonial development, including Christchurch Cathedral. That was James Wallace's sort of legacy here, but he was here because of Appin. So maybe, in fact, the whole city is a memorial to Appin. But no, there are none that I am aware of. We, as you know, we've worked together at least on one site where a prominent Aboriginal man, Burigon, was murdered in the streets here in 1820 so that's also, weirdly next door to Christchurch Cathedral, just starting to get a bit of a theme. But in terms of a memorial, no, there's none.

Julie McIntyre  26:47

it's terrific to bring that conversation back very close to home. And just before we move away from that topic, I was learning prior to our session about some other sites, and John was mentioning there's a massacre sign Fremantle, and so is that the Are there others?

John Maynard  27:08

As far as I'm aware, there are a number around the country now, and that's, you know, that's the way maybe things are moving. You know that people are recognising what happened in their locations. And certainly, yeah, for sure.

Kate Grenville  27:21

But really, I mean, Henry Reynolds makes the case very strongly that the war memorial in Canberra should make much more of you know, Anzac is fine, but there was a war that happened right here on our own country, and we forget that, 

Julie McIntyre  27:39

Kate, back to your experience of the pilgrimage in national settings, the sort of history of Aboriginal dispossession that you retraced is called difficult for very good reasons. What was one very difficult thing for you on that journey that you would be prepared to share with us? 

Kate Grenville  27:58

Yes, I've shared it in the book, so I should be prepared to share it in person too. I had always thought that my great, great grandfather, John Martin Davis, was a publican. He started the pub at a little tiny place called Coronavirus, not far from Tamworth. And I always felt kind of good about that. As I learned more about what happened on the front here, I thought, thank goodness he was a publican taking up just a little modest footprint, at least, he wasn't a squatter. I remember actually almost articulating that aloud to myself. One of the things I discovered on this journey, although it had been staring me in the face for my whole life, because it is actually embedded in the family story I had just not heard that bit, is that, in fact, John Martin Davis was a squatter. He was a publican, but he was also a squatter near Coronavirus, and there is and the family story about that says a woman was never left alone in the hut without a gun. Now that's all the family story says, but if I had been listening to that for the last How old am I? 74 years, I would have realised that there was something there to be picked away at. Now the family story says, No more than that, and I haven't been able to find out, not being a historian and a proper researcher, what else happened? But that was a very shocking moment. And when I went to the place where He squatted, a very beautiful piece of land near Currabubula, I actually burst into tears. I stood beside a hillside of trees of that kind of struggling. It's very steep, dry country, and I thought each one of those has landed as a seed. It's put down its roots, and it has somehow grown, and now I'm surrounded by this kind of living landscape. I suddenly felt that I was in the middle of a of a great, accepting creature. That sounds a bit mystical, but that is how it felt. And I burst into tears, which at the. Time, oddly enough, I was puzzled. Now I think, yes, what a very appropriate response.

Julie McIntyre  30:07

And the book is full of those, those sorts of realisations that you speak about in a way that that I think that readers are going to find is interesting. Should they undertake the same journeys? Stephen, you've worked with Rachel Perkins, who has collaborated with Henry Reynolds, who's already come up in our conversation to change the name of what we've been calling for about a generation, the frontier wars of colonial violence and massacres involving Aboriginal people to the Australian wars, despite not having any white ancestors implicated in the Australian wars, you write about those wars in different times and places, so so readably to each of the each of the books that these authors worked on are just astonishingly beautifully written, and you write about them in a way that that this has such sympathy, you've taken such care, they're very readable. Does not having an ancestor involved make it more or less difficult to write about those events?

Stephen Gapps  31:15

If I can circle back to that question, and perhaps begin firstly, just briefly, if I can about the Frontier Wars, you mentioned that we're working to kind of suggest a different way of looking at these wars. I think when the term was conceived, I think in the 1970s Henry Reynolds, I think, was one of the historians it served its purpose. It was trying to reflect that this was a war that continued as settlement moved. Now, I don't think an Aboriginal person was invited or asked about what we should call these wars as part of that process, it was historians who decided, and Aboriginal people I've talked to don't have much, you know, interest in calling it Frontier Wars. You know, I've called, I've heard it called the war in defence of homelands, or some other sort of war that isn't about empire and frontier on the edge of empire. It's about defending, looking at it from the other side as well. You know, there's got to be some. And I think Rachel's idea to change what was a series, which I hope you've all seen on SBS On Demand, the Australian wars, into a book which we're working on right now to she was going to be called first battles, and she went, No, let's call it the Australian wars, because that's what it is. We have the New Zealand Wars. We now should have the Australian was not the Frontier Wars, what is? What does that term even mean to most people? You know? But if you say the Australian Wars, people are going to have to deal with that if they don't know what you're talking about. And some people will go, what Australian War? Of course they will.

So the next part of your question was about…

Julie McIntyre  32:59

is it more or less difficult to write about the Australian Wars if you don't have a white ancestor implicated.

Stephen Gapps  33:07

So my ancestors came out in the 1850s gold rushes, as a butcher there's still a butcher shop in western New South Wales in Parkes, Gapps Butchery, still there… I escaped. And, you know, you think, you know I didn't have much to do with it, isn't that good. Often with the last few books I've done, I get a lot of people come up to me and say, Oh, thank god My name wasn't in your book, right? Oh, thank god. I'm so relieved, right? Or, Oh, my name was in your book. I'm so glad you know, to find out that I was involved, that my ancestors were involved. One recently sticks with me in that someone said, Oh, look about the Bathurst wars. Was the Miller in, you know, in your book, the name Miller, that's my surname. You know, they came out to Bathurst, and I said, “Miller? the Butcher of Bathurst?” and she went “Ah!” I said, “It’s alright - different Millers. It's okay. It's okay.”

Stephen Gapps  34:15

She didn't realise she shouldn't have messed with Stephen Gapps. 

Stephen Gapps 34:17

They came out in the gold rush. It's okay. It's okay. But also, what I really wanted to say to her was, but you know what? It doesn't matter. Like you're now relieved. Your ancestors, what did they do in the 1850s when they saw Aboriginal people in the township or being pushed to the edge of townships? Your ancestors, what did they see in the 1880s when kids were being taken away? What did they do when they saw that? Or did they turn a blind eye? What did they do in the 1890s when you know, people were hidden, people were stolen. What did they do? So in the 1910s What did all our ancestors do? Not just in the violence of massacres and frontier and Australian wars, but in the other colonial violence that occurred, they didn't do anything. So that's really what I wanted to say to her. It's not just you know, just because he wasn't involved in a massacre doesn't mean you know your ancestors aren't complicit in what has gone on. So that's, I guess that kind of relates to how I feel about it as an author, that, yeah, I don't care. That doesn't, it doesn't make a difference to me whether they were or weren't involved. I think, I think it's part of my responsibility as an historian. 

John Maynard  35:42

I think that's an important point to touch on as well. We know that thrill kill here with biriba, in putting together the language and the culture and the history, people did non Indigenous people did stand up at various times. I mentioned my grandfather's movement. In the 1920s there were two people, Elizabeth Mackenzie Hatton, who was a white missionary, incredibly brave and courageous woman, who stood up alongside Aboriginal people, and for that was also under attack by the police with surveillance and intimidation, and John J Maloney, who had a newspaper here in Newcastle, the voice of the North. Maloney was an incredible person and spokesman and supporter of the Aboriginal political movement, and gave them incredible coverage in the newspaper, in the press, and spoke up in Sydney on their behalf as well. And I go on, I mean, people like Charlie Perkins and the Freedom Ride, a whole bunch of white students were on that bus from the University of Sydney. These are the big moments in the history when we have made an impact. The Gurindji Walk off at wave Hill in 1966 the trade union support the 1967 represent referendum nearly 92% of the population voted in support, and the 1972 tent embassy, Gary Foley will tell you there are a whole bunch of non Indigenous students from ANU. They're protesting at the same time. So we really need to encourage people into that space and support us. I mean, we sadly lost that middle ground in the recent referendum, and people were quickly stampeded by, you know, the Dutton and vote no if you don't know campaign, it doesn't take much to stampede people, you know, with that sort of message. But when it has happened, when people have been prepared, is exactly what Stephens being saying to stand up and support us, we've made a real impact, and let's hope there's more of that in the future. 

Julie McIntyre  37:53

Hear, hear. And John as a voice for shared history, that's -- your points are so well made. Stephen, you have an opportunity in speaking with Aboriginal people whose family members experienced the Australian Wars. They participated. How has that been for you in interviewing the people who are informants for your books?

Speaker 3  38:16

I'm glad you used the Australian Wars then Julie, well done. Thank you. How's it been? Oh, gosh, it's varied, you know? So I think of one example of talking to descendants in the central west of a girl who was three, who survived, who was a survivor of a massacre, the only survivor of that whole family group of a massacre, but has descendants today. You know what -- What was severed? What stories? You know I'm asking about Frontier Wars, history, they can't tell me who did it, where, when and why. Exactly. You know that such severance of the past is incredible, but these people are trying to work with that, and are establishing new community, new engagements with their country. It's just, you know, simultaneously devastating and inspiring, often talking to people, yeah.

Julie McIntyre  39:22

Mark Dunn you wrote the first deeply researched scholarship on colonial violence in the Hunter Valley, putting Aboriginal people into that history, along with the better-known convicts and masters of the era. Were you worried as you were doing that work that you'd find that your ancestors participated in frontier violence against Aboriginal people?

Mark Dunn 39:46

Was I worried? No, but as a historian, I was curious how it might play out and how it might actually affect me. But having said that, as it went, as I got further into it. My objectivity slipped slightly, as I -- a bit like Stephen, but with my own ancestors -- looking through records, thinking, I hope they don't turn up next. Because we were here at the right time, OR the wrong time depending. So I'm descended from convicts, so we were sent here ‘with the lash at our back’, as we used to say, and straight up to Singleton, where my family are still living. So we were up there in 1822, which is exactly when the land is opened up to free settlement and the Newcastle penal station is done with. And he was on a life sentence, and he's there right through the whole time.

40:37

So the violence in the Hunter Valley is sort of an interesting period because it's extremely well documented, which is unusual for a lot of it, because one, it's pre Myall Creek before they realised they shouldn't be writing stuff down. And there was a massacre here as well, not far off from Ravensworth. And it wasn't the massacre that was the cause of concern for anyone. It was the fact that the mount of, the Mounted Police were taking in Aboriginal prisoners and then executing them while they were bound, and including at Maitland at the police station, unfortunately for them, they were there were witnesses to that who happened to be convicts, of course. So there was a large inquiry, and most people involved and named so none of my known ancestors or descendants were named in that at the time. He was probably still working hard on the farm at Singleton, so he didn't have much of an opportunity to get out. But I have … in looking around this week, actually at stuff, have been looking at this particular convict. There's a few of them around, but this one in particular, he got his freedom in the early 1830s and worked as a bush Constable, which was, of course, on in the bush. And they were often at the spearhead for want of a better word. And when I was looking at that work, which was part of the PhD, I was quite concerned that I thought he would turn up in something that wasn't that was past the, you know, the Hunter violence, but still going. He was, he wasn't, as it turns out. But in the thing that I've discovered this week, there's he was based out of Invermain, which is now Scone, and after he'd become a bush Constable, he was then sort of be made the lock up, He was in charge of the lock up there in the early and mid 1830s now the police sergeant Denny Day was based at Invermain, who was the one who went off and arrested and bought in the men from MyallCreek. And I'm still trying to actually determine this, but I think my convict, Thomas Dunn, was the lock up keeper at Invermain When Danny Day was there. So just still got to confirm that, but it's an interesting kind of end point. He was still under sentence at that point, so it's sort of thrown up a new idea of what's going on with these people.

Julie McIntyre  43:04

And I think that's a terrific reminder of the fact that you thinking now about that particular part of the region's history is very different to how a generation ago, a family member of yours might have been looking at that particular time in history. So it sounds to me as though you you have looked quite hard to understand how to centre Aboriginal people in parts of the story that that we it's been easy to write them out of that's that sounds like what you're saying. 

Mark Dunn  43:42

Yeah, well, I've been the funny thing is, when I did all this work, it was, I was all about class. That's what I was interested in. I was interested in in the class system. But it became very obvious, and John helped me with this as well. But you couldn't tell a convict story of the Hunter Valley without Aboriginal people. And it was pointless, because it was so interconnected on all levels, from violence to connections and friendships, that none of it made any sense unless you knew everything or both sides of that story. So the weird thing is, you know, with our family, had always known about our convict past, because it was my mother's grandfather was one of them. He only died in 1902, so there was a family story that we had, but the Aboriginal story of Singleton, where I grew up, was unknown. I'm ashamed to say I've got photos of me as a seven year old out at by Baiame Cave -- it didn't even occur to me that that was a site that should be… I mean, I was there in a pair of stubbies!

Julie McIntyre  44:41

Could you just explain Baiame Cave, for those who don’t know it?

Mark Dunn  44:38

Oh, yes, So by Baiame Cave is a major art site outside Singleton, just sort of into the mountains at Boulder. And Baiame is one of the -- John probably should be saying this rather than me – 

Julie McIntyre  44:54

Would you like John to explain it? 

Mark Dunn  44:55

Yeah, I think I would like John to explain it.

John Maynard  44:55

It's out by Broke. It's a wonderful rock art painting, which is there. And Baiame with his arms outstretched and really overseeing the valley. So a really important spiritual figure for the country and area still there, suffering under mining dust at the moment, yeh but magnificent. 

Mark Dunn  44:55

And it's on a, I mean, again, back to that interaction with people. It's on a, it's on private property, a white farming family who have looked after it and and been custodians for generations, yeah, and have had it open. You can go and see it, but they take very good care, and they are, you know, allies in the cause. And if you haven't been there, it's extraordinary, 

John Maynard  45:40

Yeah, it is. 

Julie McIntyre  45:41

Actually, just to finish the conversation, thinking about journeys and being close to home and what is our shared history broadly. Is that a site that John you think that people in the Hunter Valley could go to out of a sense of respect for First Nations here? 

John Maynard  46:00

Yeah, definitely. It is a remarkable, you know, space. And a lot of people do go, I mean, there's probably the greater amount of people don't know it exists. But the reality is, it should be promoted, but, but by the same token, you don't want some fools going out there and damaging the place, which has happened in so many, you know, important sites. It is a critically important site, and the more people that get to see it and can appreciate it, yes, well and good, but you've also got to be guarded against somebody coming out and, you know, destroying it. Remember, what's his name? Ludwig Leichhardt came to Newcastle. It was in the 1820s or something like that. And Biraban took him through the coastline here and to Glenrock and Leichhardt said that they took him to the most incredible Aboriginal rock art cave, he said, the most spectacular cave I've ever seen. Now that cave was destroyed through mines. I mean, it just comes into your mind, what was he describing? And Leichhardt travelled a lot and saw a lot of spaces. To say it was the most magnificent rock art cave that he'd ever seen, and it was then later completely demolished so 

Julie McIntyre 44:55

And on that powerful reminder about transformations, I'd like to invite questions. So we have just over 10 minutes for questions, so I'm hoping that that we will hear from you and do we need a microphone to come around? 

Audience Member  47:49

Should I stand? Mark, thank you for a nice Singleton story, given how appallingly they voted in the referendum. And seeing you finished on Mines just very quickly. Back in 197-.. early life, I was a teacher, and I taught in western New South Wales, about two hours west of where you're from, Stephen, and my closest friend then and now was up at a town just near Murrin Bridge mission, and he became friends with many of the families on there. And he rang me to say, look, we I'll pick you up back because we were coming back to Newcastle for a rugby game from our old club. And he picked, I'm bringing with an extra passenger, and to tell you how long ago it was, he just bought a brand new 180 B Datsun. 

Julie McIntyre 48:38

And I'm sorry, I don't understand what that means. Okay, but it sounds like a lot of other people in the room do, yes. 

Audience Member  48”43

So he picked me up, and with him, he had a student from year eight, which imagine, I mean, that opens up all sorts of things now. So he picked me up, and we ended up going to this game, ironically, at Dangar Park. And you would know the history of Henry Dangar, and I've thought about him many times since, because he would have been about 13. And I was wondering, in times past, you probably have seen the video of Lang Hancock being interviewed back in 1984 on 7:30 report, I think it was saying the solution to the “Aboriginal problem” was to poison the water so that they become sterile. Now I'm sure that everybody remembers the America's Cup in 83 like it was yesterday. So this is after that. And when you talk about trauma, intergenerational trauma, I've sort of got a more benign thought to pose that wherever that boy has ended up, he was probably 18 in 1984 and you couldn't watch something like that at 18 and [not] think “we're screwed”. And I thought it's interesting looking at family histories and mining, of course, I'm sure everyone knows that who's Lang Hancock's daughter is, but at that time and this idea that we're separated -- I'm finishing now -- and It's separate. His media advisor was Clive Palmer. So these people aren't separate and past, and it's still here, still here, yeah, and so much, everything is an excuse. 

John Maynard  50:14

And it's interesting you touch on Dangar Park because he was connected with Myall Creek. And also Gregson, you know Jesse Gregson. We've got Gregson Park and He massacred Aboriginal people. We've got these places named after perpetrators of major crimes. 

Muffled Audience Member  50:29

Yes, but Henry Danger didn't have anything to do with it, he was…

Julie McIntyre  50:35

Excuse me, we've got another question over here.

Audience Member  50:40

Oh, great. Thanks, everyone. I guess I was just picking up on this, and John, you were starting to talk about was that idea of moving beyond family history to talk about commemorative namings, and what role that perhaps can play in addressing, like addressing commemorative names and using that as a to open up a discussion, a conversation in truth telling about an area. 

John Maynard  51:07

Now, in this area, we're pretty lucky with a lot of Aboriginal words because of someone like Threlkeld, that are still here, you know. So that a name. I mean, we've got, you know, Molubinba is down there on the on the harbour, which recognises the name of Newcastle, this place of seafoods, you know. So there's all of that sort of stuff, which is critically important. And I think that goes against names like Murdering Gully or Poison Water Holde Creek. And I mean, these places litter this country. When you go through places and you see these, these signs, I mean, straight away, you know what's happened here. So it's, it's really important that Aboriginal names are recognised in different spaces. 

Stephen Gapps 51:51

Can I, can I just quickly say about Henry Dangar? It goes back to my original point that, yes, you're right. He, he wasn't directly involved, right? But he established and was part of the society or group association that wanted to get -- that wanted to get these murderers off the death penalty. So he's associated with a group which you'd call some kind of anti Black Lives Matter, group or like to them, Black Lives did not matter. They were not equal with white so he's got, you know, it's those associations, not necessarily being complicit in the violence. It's the other kind of violence, yeah. 

Julie McIntyre 52:34

And I know this is a topic where we have a few different points crossing over. And I thank you all for your really passionate interest. I would like to come back to the question here and ask Kate a follow up around: How do you think your book might speak to the notion of truth telling Kate? 

Kate Grenville  52:56

Well, (cough) look great way to start an answer, isn't it? (cough) Sorry. For me, this was a kind of DIY truth telling. It was particularly germane. You know, when Queensland changed government, instantly you get rid of the truth telling. It seems to me what we can do. It's a bit like as consumers. We can't go and do something with Elon Musk, but we can not buy Teslas. We do have power as individuals to investigate kind of by ourselves. So different people would do this journey differently. People with, you know, colonist ancestors like me might do this kind of journey, but someone who came more recently and who has nothing to do with it. Can think of a different way of just it's a question of just opening your mind to the thought of, what does it mean that I'm here in this country, that all the politicians tell us it's the best country in the world. It probably is, and we are so lucky to be here on somebody else's land. So what do we do about that? So for example, I've thought about, in fact, I will -- when my next project will be. I own a little tiny bit of land in Melbourne where my house is. I'm going to investigate the detailed history of that particular little bit of stolen land that I now am privileged enough to enjoy. So I think we can all do a kind of homemade truth telling which will take us... I don't quite know where it will take us, but it's got to be in the right direction.

Julie McIntyre  54:34

Do we have other questions from the floor? Terrific.

Audience Member  54:40

Oh, hi everyone. Thanks so much for your presentations. Very thought provoking, and it's a lot of meditation and reflection on what that means for me and all of us, I think, our own histories and backgrounds. I think my question was in relation to as white fellas. How we I think going to Kate's point around truth telling, around how challenging it might be for white fellas to really dig deep into our own family stories and what might be found there, and yeah, confronting the story or the knowledge of our own ancestors and what may have happened. And then thinking about that at a collective level, how there may be some sort of, as white fellas in Australia, some sort of collective numbing, or our own collective trauma response, which is an a numbing or a shutdown we don't want to know, or we can't know, or it's too dangerous to know what really happened, and so therefore we're not willing to face the truth of our own backgrounds, and then linking that potentially to how people responded to the referendum collectively, because it's actually too dangerous for white fellas to really go and do that deep work. To find the truth and what may be found there. Thank you. 

Kate Grenville  56:04

Yeah, if I could just jump in there what I found as the descendant of people who may or may not have been perpetrators, but who cares, we were complicit, it is incredibly, in a way, freeing to look at that stuff. It's like any dark, nasty thing that you don't want to look at in your own personal history or your national history. It's like a wound that's been just scabbed over, but underneath there, you know the puss is pussing away, but when you open it up and look at it, and that's what the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial does, they got it out and looked at it, and that in a that opens the door gives you the way forward. It may be confronting, but actually it's good on the other side.

Audience Member  56:47

Thank you for all of the reminding us of the importance of the sort of personal, family and local, both histories and memorialization. But Stephen, I wonder if you could sort of update us on what's happening on a national level, given something like the Australian War Memorial, which is a place that can be such a great site for research, all sorts of innovative things happen. But more and more It's become -- it's become this other type of memorial is there. I mean, what's it doing in terms of acknowledging something like the Australian Wars, what's happening on the national, big picture level.

Stephen Gapps  57:28

I can't talk about the inner workings of what goes on in those men's minds, too much, but people are probably aware. And you may have seen the Four Corners recent episode. But essentially, I think that the memorial thinks that the things that we're doing with the Australian Wars, the arguments that Henry and Rachel and others are making, that this should be a national commemoration of wars, and wars in this country included, is a threat to the sacredness of the Anzac legend. It's seen as a threat. I don't think it should be seen as a threat. I think in a simple way, I was talking to a veteran who runs a magazine for veterans, and he was very interested in the idea of he was like, yeah, the War Memorial, they're stuffed, you know, like, I hate them. And this is a veteran, and he was very interested in the idea of having two national warrior traditions side by side. And I thought, good on you, mate.

Stephen Gapps  58:36

That's for coming from someone who should have taken on board the whole Anzac thing, but I think  -- I hope -- that it this, this, there's a token effort to put some recognition of Frontier Wars in there, but there's so much that needs to be done in that memorial. I think that I agree with Rachel. I was kind of like, maybe it needs to be elsewhere. Maybe we need a national, separate Museum. But I think you know what? Just own it. Own it front and centre at the Australian War Memorial, and then we can do other things. So I think that needs to happen. 

Julie McIntyre  59:17

We have time for one more question. 

Audience Member  59:18

And I just wanted to say, as a black fella, and Hello, John, how are you? I teach Aboriginal Cultural Studies in prisons across New South Wales, and the more we learn about people standing up and talking about their family history and their version of events, in a way, it's devastating -- I'm nearly crying -- For my students to hear the stories, but it also is weirdly healing, because the story is told. So thank you for telling the stories. 

John Maynard  59:55

I'll just close with a point too, which is really important. I've been involved with in the past with interviews and with Stolen Generations members and those people have locked down what happened to them as kids in institutions and been deprived throughout their life of reconnecting with their families. And when you sit down with them and they're encouraged, it's like a pressure valve that's been jammed down, and when it's released, you know, I've had people say to me, my family don't know this story, you know, and it's just that moment of what comes gushing out. And I tell you, it's some of those stories can be horrific, but they've had to suppress that and keep that pressure down. So yeah.

Julie McIntyre  1:00:37

Please join me in thanking John Maynard, Kate Grenville, Steven Gapps and Mark Dunn.

John Maynard  1:00:51

And thanks, Julie!

Amanda Wells  1:01:06

Thanks for tuning in. The History Council of New South Wales would like to thank the session speakers, and our cultural partners: the University of Newcastle, School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences; the City of Sydney; Macquarie University Faculty of Arts; Museums of History New South Wales; the National Archives of Australia; Placemaking New South Wales; the Reserve Bank of Australia; the State Library of New South Wales; the University of New England, School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; the University of New South Wales, School of History and Philosophy; and the UTS Australian Centre for Public History. The History Council of New South Wales is supported by the New South Wales Government through Create New South Wales. To find out more about the History Council of New South Wales, or to become a member, please visit us online at historycouncilnsw.org.au.