Know Their Names by Lesley Synge

This is a work of engaged history with over 60 illustrations, including historic photographs and location maps. It concerns itself with the erasure of Aboriginal people from Australian history and examines the Queensland Government's Rewan Police Horse Breeding Station in the Central Highlands as a case study of erasure. Part I is an overview of the unique pastoral station founded in 1909 when the Queensland government decided that, instead of buying horses to provide transport for its network of police stations, it would breed them on a property on Bidjara Country near Carnarvon Gorge Nature Reserve, Central Queensland. It put Queensland Police in charge of the stud, called its white workers constables and its Aboriginal workers 'Trackers' and appointed policeman John Campbell in charge. The government soon increased its Aboriginal workforce markedly to bred horses and also to run cattle to supply beef to state butcheries. Police archives generally fail to name the trackers but other sources, including a memoir penned by a horse-breaker constable of the early 1920s, build the picture. By the late 1920s, the government favoured motor transport over horse transport. In 1933, Campbell was caught defrauding the Taxation Department and charged, convicted, and dismissed. In 1934 the government dramatically closed Rewan Station after 25 years of operation, and auctioned the horses. Part II presents biographical sketches of the Aboriginal workers and honours their lives and contributions to the stud. Four - Rob, Prince Albert, Boolboora-Leo Freeman and Splinter - were key, with drovers from Woorabinda Settlement central in 1934. By delving into their backstories, we can 'know their names'. In Part III, the narrator turns her focus to the colonial mindset of government ministers and officials in the Executive/Treasury Building in Brisbane. She urges Queenslanders to come to terms with the state's past and to repurpose the Treasury Building.

Format: Paperback