Alternate Names: Corn Fields Raids; Battle of Moongalba; Stradbroke Island skirmishes.

Aboriginal people: Yaggara (Turrbal), Quandamooka/ Nunukul, Ningy Ningy.

Named Aboriginal people: King Billy, Eulope (Black Napoleon/ Boney), Duke of York (Dakki Yakki).

Colonial Forces: 17th regiment, 57th regiment, 40th regiment, convict overseers, whalers.

Notable Colonists: Captain Patrick Logan, Chief Constable MacIntosh, William Reardon, Andy (convict guard), James Clunie.

Audio/visual: 

Life in Irons: stories of Brisbane's Aboriginal people and convicts - ABC listen

Stradbroke & Moreton 1832-3 - Google My Maps

Narrative:

The establishment of military/ penal outposts at Redcliffe (1824) and ‘Moreton Bay Colony’ (Brisbane and Dunwich/ Amity Point - 1825) provoked conflict when soldiers, convict overseers and convicts cleared large areas of forest and rainforest (former resource areas), would not share items, ousted First Nations groups from particular areas, and tried to elicit and kidnap native women. 

The first skirmish occurred in December 1824 over the theft of an axe when convicts were cutting timber near Yebri Creek (Petrie). This was 16km west of the Redcliffe penal outpost - an area of several base camps, a bora (ceremonial) ground and pockets of rainforest. Some convicts and warriors were killed.

Due partly to the poor suitability of Redcliffe for farming, but also on account of this hostility, and probably also the growing presence of Aboriginal visitors arriving for the annual mullet run (fishing festival) at Clontarf (just 4km south of the penal outpost), the decision was made to abandon Redcliffe.

The settlement moved to what is now Brisbane CBD in 1825 and established outstations at Amity and Dunwich (1825-1827) – the latter being flagged as the potential permanent site for the penal colony. For a couple of years after this move, the two communities avoided contact with each other, but the ousting of Quandamooka from their Gompie (Dunwich) base camp, and a similar ax-stealing incident, this time involving a Quandamooka warrior-leader, Eulope (Black Napoleon), rekindled hostilities.

Eulope was exiled to St Helena Island. He escaped, and over the next five years there were various small raids, skirmishes, executions and punitive expeditions on Stradbroke and Moreton Islands – mostly sparked by the kidnapping and killing of a major elder (Choorong) by William Reardon of the pilot station (Amity Point), after Choorong had opposed the soldiers’ requests for Indigenous women. These skirmishes occurred at Yerrol Point (Dunwich), Adder Rock (Point Lookout), Polka Point (Dunwich) and other sites. A turning point was the soldiers’ massacre of some 40-50 Ngugi and Quandamooka people during a dawn raid on the camp at Reeders Point (Kooringal), Moreton Island. After this, the Ngugi temporarily abandoned the island, and permanent Indigenous residency remained fleeting for a few decades.

Meanwhile on the mainland in 1827-1828, the Quandamooka’s allies, the Turrbal and Coorpoorin clans, tried to starve out the colony through repeated raids of up to 80 warriors. These sacked and burned the colony’s corn fields at Kangaroo Point, New Farm, South Brisbane and the northeastern CBD. King Billy, father of Mulbrobin, was the probable leader of these activities.

In response, Captain Patrick Logan sent a punitive expedition of 8 (two constables, three soldiers and three convict overseers) to the nearest base camp (probably Woolloongabba) which shot and killed at least one warrior.

Subsequently, Logan installed ‘crow minders’ – armed sentries in treehouse guard boxes – to watch over each field and shoot any Indigenous intruders. In at least one case they skinned and stuffed one of the intruders to serve as a scarecrow. However, crow-minders were also speared or killed. Hostilities around the corn fields continued up till 1830.

Whites who ventured along the Queensland coast in this area at this time, such as the whaler Joseph Bradley, found themselves harassed and prevented from making landfalls during this time. Bradley was chased down the coast for hundreds of kilometres.

Hostilities across Moreton Bay culminated in a key event c.1831-1832: a pitched battle that ended in an Aboriginal victory at Aranarawai Creek just north of Dunwich. The skirmish involved somewhere between 10-20 soldiers and convict overseers, and perhaps 80-150 warriors luring the soldiers into swampland from which the warriors leapt out and hurled weapons. As the soldiers had no success after a whole day (oral accounts say weeks) of fighting, the soldiers ‘made signs of peace’ and were invited by the Quandamooka to a banquet and corroboree.

Except for a follow-up raid by soldiers at southern Stradbroke/ Russell Island roughly a year later, the truce effectively ended conflict between the settlers and the Quandamooka and Turrbal. The latter groups henceforth mostly sided with the settlers in upcoming conflicts against other groups (see: Southern Queensland War). They also gained work in fishing, boating, ferrying and assisting at the colony’s pilot stations on the islands.

Contributor: Ray Kerkhove

Sources

‘Affray with Natives at Moreton Bay,’ The Australian, 25 July 1827, p. 3. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/37072390

‘Moreton Bay,’ The Australian, 22 December 1838, p. 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36859622

‘Romance of Real Life in Australia,’ Colonial Times (Hobart), 24 May 1850, p.4 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8767224

Bradley, Joseph (Mervyn Cobcroft, ed.), 1988, Adventures of a Native of Australia When Astray from his Ship, the Barque ‘Lynx’ (a Whaler) and his Consequent Cruise in a Boat on the Ocean: A True Narrative, Brisbane: Amphion Press.

CSIL 33/678 (Colonial Secretary’s Letters)

JOL (John Oxley Library) George Watkins, Notes on the aboriginals of Stradbroke and Moreton Islands (Brisbane: Royal Society of Queensland, 1891) https://collections.slq.qld.gov.au/viewer/IE3539295

Knight, J. J., ‘In the Early Days,’ The Brisbane Courier, 11 January 1892, p. 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3535680

Petrie, CC., 1904, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland, Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson & Co. https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks20/2000451h.html

Welsby, Thomas, 1922, Memories of Amity, Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson & Co.

Colonial Violence. Links to sources may contain racist language and attitudes of the time.