A Part of Buderim's History

Where Did they Go? The Story of Buderim’s Indigenous Residents
Part Five

Ray Kerkhove

1900s - 1920s: The predicament of Buderim's Aboriginal population grew more dismal with the introduction of the 1897 Aboriginals Protection & Restriction of Sale of Opium Act. State and local governments were being pressured to permanently remove or deport non-Anglo-Saxons from town and country alike, complying with community vision of an all-white Australia. Now Aboriginals could be removed everywhere in Queensland and permanently contained in prison-like Reserves or similar forms of incarceration such as hospitals, leper colonies, nursing homes and prisons. Their only reprieve was to be employed in work contracts at specified homesteads, but even this often meant being moved anywhere around Queensland, and years of absence from family and loved ones (Donovan 2002: 259). 

To add to these difficulties, by 1910, almost all Reserves of the South-east Queensland were closed and their lands opened to settlement. Gubbi Gubbi people from Buderim and elsewhere who had been living not too far away in these Reserves were now dumped much further afield - usually at Taroom Reserve or Cherbourg (near Murgon) or even Palm Island in North Queensland.  The reserves forbade Indigenous custom and language and effectively cut people off from their families. 

Some of the Buderim Chillis were sent to Taroom Reserve, and despite their efforts to return, individuals like Henry Chilli ended their days there. In 1920, Charlie Brown – an Aboriginal working in Buderim – was removed after complaints about his affiliation with non-Aboriginal women (CPA Correspondence 40/744). That same year, Alice – a Gubbi Gubbi woman - was removed to Deebing Creek, simply for having married Jack Sandwich (a Kanaka). Their child was left in Jack’s custody.

Local Sunshine Coast farmers became unexpected allies to the Indigenous community in these difficult times. They pestering the authorities to permit the Chillis, Muckans and others to return to live and work in Buderim under their employ (HOMJ2150-370). Others hid their Aboriginal workers whenever ‘authorities’ turned up to remove them.  A good instance of this was the ten or so Aborigines and Aboriginal-Kanaks (some from Buderim) who managed to keep working and living near the Lows in Yandina during the 1900s – 1910s (Blyth 1994: 13, 32).  Thus "removal" - despite its finality - was a slow and at times ineffective process, with individuals and families escaping the system in fits and starts right up to its demise in the 1960s.

Ironically, the Act also brought ‘fresh blood’ (non-Gubbi Gubbi Aborigines) into Buderim and neighbouring areas during the 1910s-1920s.  Farmers of the district requested the services of Aborigines from the Reserves as farmhands and domestics. At Mooloolah, Aboriginal youth were employed to clear lantana and peach (for instance, at Paget's and Smith's) (HOM J2150-370), whilst the Buderim Aboriginal community saw new members such as Jimmy Blackboy ('Blackie'). Evidently he was hardly alone, as reports speak of his fights with “other coloured men" at Buderim (JUS/n619/16/609).