Part 1 – Chpt 17

“That would have been the time,” says my father, “if some one had taken Davis in hand, to write the history of his life among the blacks; it could have been got easily from him then, before he got back into white’ ways. After- wards he and Wandi’ would say nothing about their former life. It was a great pity some one did not do it, for such would have been worth reading. However, in those days men were more for fun and devilment than for writing peoples’ lives.

“To show you how stubborn Davis was later on, I said to him some time after his return, ‘Davis, you ought to get some one to write your life among the blacks–you could make a lot of money.’

“I don’t want to make money. I get enough now to keep me. If any one wants to know about the blacks, let them go and live with them as I did. I’ll tell you a thing that happened the other day. A swell who lives in this town. brought another swell with him to me, and said, “Mr. Davis, allow me to introduce Mr. So-and-so to you, from Sydney; he has come all the way to see you, and to get some information about the blacks.” Do you know what I said to him? I said, “Do you see the door there? Well, the sooner you get out of my shop the better, and if you want any information about the blacks, take your clothes off and go and live with them as I did.” And off they went with their tails between their legs, and I saw nothing more of them. No one will get anything from me about the blacks.’ “

This was quite true, according to my father, and you might just as well have tried to pump the river dry as get anything from Davis in those days. He would never allow anyone to take his photo. (there were no snap-shots then), and I am informed that the well-known printing of him by Mr. Oscar Friström, of Brisbane, was painted not without a great deal of trouble, after the man had died. I am indebted to that artist for my illustration, and to him belongs the honour of bringing into existence, the original from which all others have been taken.

Duramboi was a blacksmith by trade, and after Mr. Andrew Petrie brought him back with “Wandi,” the pair were not put with the other prisoners, but each got a “ticket of leave.” Therefore they were free to work for others or for themselves, so long as they did not leave the country. “Wandi” was signed over to Dr. Simpson at Goodna (called Red Bank in those days), and he was killed some time afterwards through a limb of a tree falling on him. Davis was started with a black- smith’s shop at Kangaroo Point, and he got on well, and made money. After some time he married, and later bought a piece of ground on the north side in George Street, next to Gray’s boot shop, and there he put up a black- smith’s shop and started afresh. He prospered, and made a lot of money, so bought property in Burnet Lane, where he and his wife went to live. After this he built a small brick store alongside his smithy, and went in for selling crockery, giving up the other business.

So things went on till Mrs. Davis took ill and died. The old man lived in single blessedness for some time, then, as is the way of man, although his married life had not been smooth, he “longed to be married again,” with the result that he wedded a widow with one daughter, and this wife outlived him.

I have already spoken of the ornamental marks Davis had on his body. He had also spear and other marks gained through fighting. “Tom” saw all of these-Davis showed them to him when he was first brought back from the bush. “A few months after his return, though,” Father says, “I don’t think he would have shown his marks even to the King.”

In the early days the Rev. W. Ridley came to Brisbane to learn what he could about the Queensland aborigines, and he sought out my father, who was quite a lad at the time, to get information from him. He seemed very clever, and as fast as the boy could speak the language he was able to write it down. He took a part of the Bible and read out verse after verse, and the lad followed in the black’s tongue. After- wards reading out the aboriginal version for his young companion’s approval, it was almost as though a black fellow spoke.

This was after the return of Davis to civilization, and Mr. Ridley wished an interview with this man of unusual experience, and asked Father to manage it for him. He was about to journey to the Dawson River to see the blacks there, and wanted some words of the language that Davis knew. So Father went to “Duramboi,” and asked him to come to Mr. Ridley, but the man flatly refused, saying, “If he wants to know about the blacks let him take his clothes off, and go among them and live with them, as I did.” Father tried to coax and get round him, but he would not move.

However, nothing daunted, the young fellow went again next day, and at last “Duramboi” gave in, and said he would go, “as your father and mother were so kind to me; but he (meaning Mr. Ridley) will do no good with the blacks.” So the pair of them went to the reverend gentleman, and the latter started to read a verse of the Bible to Davis, who, however, would not follow, but said he would give names of animals and things like that, which he did, Mr. Ridley taking them down.

On Mr. Ridley’s return from his trip he told Father that nearly all the blacks he came across understood what he (Father) had told him, but on the contrary, he only met two who understood the words from Davis. This was because he had gone too far inland, for of course Davis thoroughly knew the language and all else about the tribe he had lived with.

At this time there was very little communication between Sydney and Moreton Bay-as Brisbane was then called. Only about once a month or two a vessel would arrive with stores for the settlement. Some few days after Mr. Ridley’s return from the Dawson, and on the night before, a boat was to leave for Sydney, that gentleman, accompanied by a Rev. Mr. Hausmann, turned up at my grandfather’s house at about eight o’clock, with the object of getting Father to go with them out to a blacks’ camp. Mr. Ridley said he had heard there was a great gathering of natives at ” Buyuba,” or as the whites called it, “Three Miles Scrub” (now known as Enoggera Crossing), and as he was obliged to leave for Sydney next morning he would like to talk to the blacks that night. Father said it was too late to look up a horse to accompany them (they both had horses), and his father (Andrew Petrie) thought so too. However, Mr. Ridley in the end persuaded the Scotchman to allow his son to go. “He is a young lad, and it is only three miles to walk, it won’t hurt him,” he said. So off they went, the boy tramping alongside as they rode.

When the scrub on the creek at the crossing was reached it was very dark, and they could see nothing, though the blacks were heard talking in the distance. The road ran through the scrub, and when the two riders got about half-way through they dismounted, and the boy thought to himself, “At last they are going to give me a spell on horseback.” But no, down on their knees they went, and he watched them as they prayed. When they had finished, they warned the boy not to call out, as that would frighten the blacks and make them run away, but “Tom” thought he knew one better, and said the best way would be for him to cooey, as they would know who it was then, otherwise none would remain to be interviewed-they would all make off, thinking some one was after them. His companions agreed to this, and they both mounted again.

It tickles one’s sense of humour to imagine the feeling of half amusement and disgust with which the boy saw them do this. No doubt his young legs had not been idle all day, and he would like to have rested them. Boys, I am sure, often think their elders do not consider their feelings sufficiently, though this boy did not complain of the incident. Still, they have feelings, of course, and one would not lose by remem- being it; rather the opposite, for a right-minded boy would never take advantage of kindly consideration. Most likely “Tom” would have refused if he had been asked to ride more than just a little way. However, no doubt, Mr. Ridley’s mind was much preoccupied, and he did not, of course, think of such a thing as a youngster’s tired legs.

When this party of three had got through to the other side of the scrub, Father cooeyed (at that time he could cooey as well as any blackfellow), and the natives knew his call and answered, and some of them came forward to meet their visitors. Arriving at the camp, the boy told them what his white friends had come for, and they all clustered round, men and women, and, squatting down, prepared to listen. Mr. Ridley brought out his notebook, and, opening it, proceeded to read out something of what Father had previously given him; then he talked to them for about half-an-hour, and sang a hymn he had made from the aboriginal words. During all this the blacks looked at one another, and the knowing ones pointed at the white boy, and made signs as though to say, “We know who told him all this.” At length they began to tire, being kept at it too long, and one by one got up and walked away till at last almost all had gone off to their different huts. So the white men bade them good- night, and returned to Brisbane, and the boy was not sorry when the end of his walk came, as it was late. “I was glad to get to my bed,” he tells me.

Next day some of the young blackfellows turned up at the Petries’ home, and they said to Father they knew who had told that man all his rubbish, and picking up a piece of paper started mimicking Mr. Ridley. Then they asked, “Where that fellow stop?” “Oh, he has gone away in a big ship to Sydney.” When he come back?” and so on. That night at Enoggera, there were some two hundred blacks in camp, and Mr. Ridley and Mr. Hausmann seemed pleased they had seen so many all together, and were able to speak to them.

Another gentleman, long since dead, whom my father remembers meeting when a boy, was the explorer, Leichhardt. He also visited my grandfather Petrie, and got “Tom” one day to accompany him through the bush and help collect plants and seeds.

Here I may mention an incident already spoken of by Mr. Knight in his work, “In the Early Days.” In 1849, when Father was a boy of about seventeen, a man named Humby was brickmaking in York’s Hollow, just about where the show-ring of the Exhibition now is. One night, between ten and eleven o’clock, this man came to the Petries’ house in a great state of fear, and said that a blackboy employed by Grandfather had told him that the blacks had run a bullock into the swamp at a place the natives called “Barrambin ” (where Mr. P. M. Campbell’s house now stands), and that they had hamstrung it and intended to roast and eat it. Father’s eldest brother, John, who was a young man then (some dozen years older than “Tom”), came and woke him up and told him Humby’s story. Father said he didn’t believe a word of it, the blacks wouldn’t touch anything belonging to the Petries. “Never mind,” said John, “you must come and see if it is the case. Humby has gone to inform the police, and we must get out there before they arrive.”

So they went off, accompanied by two men in Grandfather’s employment-John Brydon and William Ballentine-and reaching the camp at Bowen Hills, Father, who was the only one who could speak the native’s tongue, told the blacks the story of the bullock. They said it was all lies, that the blackboy had invented the story out of revenge because an old gin had beaten him. Finding the boy, who turned out to be one of his playmates called “Wamgul,” Father asked whatever made him tell such a story. The boy owned to his fault, saying that the gin had beaten him so soundly that he declared he would go and tell Humby, the brickmaker, a story about a bullock being killed, and then she would get punished along with the rest. Hearing that this was how it stood, John Petrie asked his young brother to get two natives to accompany them to the swamp that the bullock was supposed to have been driven into, but hardly had they got down the hill on the way there, when bang! bang! sounded behind them at the camp they had just quitted. Turning, they all started to run back again up the hill, meeting as they ran the poor darkies rushing frantically pell-mell down to jump into the creek, bullets whistling overhead. John Petrie called out “stop firing,” and then he sought Lieutenant Cameron, who was in charge, and explained to him that it was all stories about the bullock. So the lieutenant called his men together and gave the order,” Right about face, quick march!” and off they went to Brisbane.

It seems that when Humby went for the police, Chief Constable Fitzpatrick was in bed, and did not think it worth while getting up, so he got a man under him to tell Dr. Ballow (a magistrate) about the affair. The latter in his turn was not sure how he should act, so he asked Lieutenant Cameron of the military, to take it over. The lieutenant divided his men into two, and it was the half who were not under his immediate supervision who so thoughtlessly and cruelly fired on the blacks.

The next day Grandfather sent his son out to the camp to see if anything serious had happened. On the way the boy met a number of natives coming in, three of them wounded -one had been shot on the thigh, another on the arm, and the third had a flesh wound on his forehead, where a ball had grazed. They all said to Father, “What for the diamonds (soldiers) shoot us? We did nothing.” Their friend ex- plained how it had all happened, and they were quite satisfied, and told him to go to camp and he would find “Wamgul ” lying there wounded, unable to rise; and also if he went to the swamp, he would see for himself that no bullock had been there. “Tom” went, and found “Wamgul” in great pain, and then going to the swamp, he saw that the natives were quite correct. So when he got home again, he told his father and his brother John, of the wounded men and the boy, and that there were no traces of the bullock. “Wamgul” was then brought into the hospital, and it was not very long before he recovered. About three years afterwards this boy joined the black police, and was sent up country. He remained in the force till his death.

An inquiry was held on this affair, and Father was sent for to interpret for the blacks. Only two soldiers were found guilty, as bullets were missing from their pouches, while the others had theirs full. These two were sentenced to six months’ imprisonement, and Chief Constable Fitzpatrick lost his billet through appreciating his bed somewhat too highly.

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