Queendsland Native Police - 1859 to 1901 Paul Dillon

This edition was revised and updated to reflect several years of research on the Queensland Native Police, a unique, local law enforcement agency on the frontier of Queensland’s white settler expansion. There was probably as much support for the force as there was against it. To some, it stood as a force in the eradication of Aboriginals from Queensland’s landscape. To others, it was a force for good, protecting the white settlers who pioneered the settlement and opening of the Queensland wilderness to trade and occupation. The Native Police pointed their guns at armed myall blacks to get them to drop their weapons and to stop killing livestock and white men.

The Native Police seem to have eluded any sensible critique of its role because of the inability of commentators to put aside their own prejudices in attempting to define exactly what the purpose, procedure and results of the Native Police were. Many commentators have raged over the organisation that, at any one time, really only managed to put on the frontier an operational force of about 150 mounted troopers armed with a single-shot breech-loading rifle. Given the size of its jurisdiction, 1,727,000 square kilometres and its limited resources, you could be forgiven for thinking they were the most unlikely bunch of sepoys ever to sit a horse. To add to the farce, it was said of their target, the myall blacks, that their wandering from place to place in unknown and, therefore, inaccessible scrubs was so great that it rendered all attempts to surprise them ineffectual. However, the native trooper was the dead equal of any myall black. Therein lay their usefulness, their utility, for wherever a myall could go, so could a trooper just as surely.