1961
Scarcely any record of how the aborigines regarded the invasion and desecration of their country survives because they found their grief impossible to express in the English tongue. Yet, though they died their voices still sound in native place names: Condah, Konongwootong, the Wannon – the soft syllables are a memory of the people who loved the country and lived in harmony with it before the white men came. Even if far more forbearance and kindness had been shown them, the end would have been the same. The avowed purpose of the squatters was to establish themselves in the new country. Nothing could be allowed to stand in its way.
Niel Black is an example of a settler who sometimes questioned the standards of his time. But, determined to succeed, he conformed to colonial practice. Though he might doubt, in time he convinced himself of his own righteousness. These Presbyterians honestly believed themselves God’s chosen and that unshakeable belief was one of the factors making for their success. It was not long before worldly prosperity, the symbol of virtue, became of over-mastering importance. Black illustrates how Calvinist doctrines could be accommodated to capitalist practice. In one of his letters he told his much-instructed nephew:
The extent of your usefulness will be the exact measure of friendship bestowed upon you. If your success surpasses that of others in the same proportion will the friendship of those benefiting by it be increased towards you. This will ultimately be the test by which you will be tried and I hope you will obtain a good price for the fat Cattle this year . . .
These instructions are reminiscent of those given by John Hull, greatest Boston merchant of the mid-seventeenth century, to his ship captains:
‘Leave no debts behind you wherever you goe . . . but indeed it is hard to forsee what will be and therefore it is best to be willing to submit to the great governing hand of the great Governor of all the greater and lesser revolutions that wee the poor sons of men are involved in by the invoyce you see the whole amounteth to £405-16-3.’
But there is a difference. John Hull, a son of his century, was still much concerned with ‘the great Governor’. Niel Black, a son of his, was concerned with the world’s judgment.
Nevertheless there were a very few who cared much less for worldly success and maintained their first integrity in this raw world. John Robertson was a man of outstanding honesty and humanity. He had no compelling desire to reap rich profits or control a squatting empire. From the beginning he intended simply to make a home for himself. Though the records are incomplete, the indications are that Samuel Winter also was not less considerate of his fellow colonists than he was of the Wannon blacks. And there are others, Lauchlan MacKinnon amongst them, who set principle clearly above profit. But the exceptions serve only to underline the prevailing mode of behaviour.
The standard of conduct of this time was established by both masters and men, and it was to be faithfully followed throughout the lifetimes of the first settlers. Lacking capital and usually lacking the strength to succeed, the station hands were not concerned with the pursuit of profit. Their corporate spirit developed partly because they were alone in the bush, partly because of the lack of women, but probably even more as a defence against their masters. It was fostered by the jealous dislike and suspicion of those not of their class which was felt by nearly all who lived in the small colonial world. Yet the spirit of mateship being created at this time had in it nobility as well as class intolerance. And though many of the men were cowardly there were a few as courageous as some of their masters. The bullock drivers, the sawyers and splitters, the ruffianly shearers of independent spirit had the courage rightly regarded as the chief pioneer virtue.
It is this dogged courage which often transfigures the story of these years; the stubborn fortitude of those who led the way in settlement, deliberately choosing a life of hardship in hope of future fortune. They were men of their time and of their environment. To-day we may judge their purpose selfish but, right or wrong, those who succeeded pursued it with a tenacity which commands admiration. Their success was never accidental. Luck sometimes favoured them but the men of capital who established themselves had the intelligence, many of them the ruthlessness, all the courage, which were the basic qualities necessary for the frontier environment.
Men of Yesterday, A Social History of the Western District of Victoria, 1834–1890,
Melbourne University Press, 1961