torres

Darnley Island or Erub in the native language, is an island formed by volcanic action and situated in the eastern section of the Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia The island was named by Captain William Bligh in 1792 during his second breadfruit voyage to the Pacific, after his distant relative, the Earl of Darnley. Christianity was first introduced to Darnley and the Torres Strait region by the London Missionary Society on 1 July 1871. Before this, pearlers and beche-de-mer gatherers visited the island. Over many years, these industries attracted an influx of seamen from the Pacific Islands, the Philippines and Malaya, many of whom married local women and settled on the island. Early in the twentieth century, the Queensland Government started installing various facilities such as a school, medical aid, post office and an Island Industries Board store. Darnley people have been at the forefront of the movement for adequate recognition of Torres Strait Islanders' rights, with George Mye among the most prominent advocates of Islander interests from the 1960s to the 90s and Carlemo Wacando among the first to challenge the legal notion of terra nullius. Source: kids.kiddle.co/Darnley_Island_(Queensland)

In 1891, the Presbyterian Church established a mission station on the western side of Cape York Peninsula. They named the station Mapoon. Over the next 72 years, hundreds of children of mixed descent and Aboriginal families came to the mission by force or by choice. One of the reasons Aboriginal people chose to come to Mapoon was the decreasing availability of bush food and the conflict with pastoralists when they tried to hunt, gather and fish on their country. The first missionaries at Mapoon used food as an assimilation strategy. Through the distribution of rations, the establishment of gardens maintained by Aboriginal people, and the introduction of set meal times, they radically altered the traditional Aboriginal diet and way of life. Food was the fuel that made the Mapoon mission run. It provided work for the Aboriginal ‘inmates’ and the missionaries sold surplus crops, cattle and seafoods to raise funds for the mission. One of the other ways the Presbyterian Church supported the Mapoon mission was through the sale of its ever-popular Women’s Missionary Union cookery book. A poem on the title page encouraged cooks ‘as they work its dainties up, [to] remember far Mapoon’. Christianising and ‘civilising’ Aboriginal people involved curtailing their mobility, revolutionising their diet and teaching them European ways to produce, prepare, distribute and consume food. Source; www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue9/Wishart.pdf

Some Aboriginal people work for the settlers. They are dressed in European clothes, fed European food, and live in camps near the homestead. They play a vital role in the development of the Queensland pastoral industry. The owners of Booubyjan had a good relationship with the Aboriginal people who lived and worked on the station. They commissioned FW Whitehouse to paint the portrait of Cobbo, which was hung on the homestead. Source: cherbourgmemory.org/booubyja-cobbo-at-booubyjan-station-1...