At first glance, this picture appears to show the law is equally metered out to those who break it. Black man kills white man, black man dies and vice-versa. However, it also depicts the law being dispensed by the white man which can only be considered an arrogant assumption for the newly arrived white men.
The board pictured above is one of only a handful of examples of Proclamation Boards that have survived from the 1830s. It comes from the collection of George Augustus Robinson, who Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur of ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ (Tasmania) selected to conciliate Aboriginal Tasmanians, and it is believed he carried the boards for that specific purpose. (1)
Sadly, there is evidence the distribution of justice was anything but equal.
Judge Roger Therry, resident Judge Port Phillip 1844, wrote, regarding Aboriginal people, “the courts of justice have added many victims to the scaffold in cases of well-established proof of guilt. Indeed, they may be said to suffer loss of life for offences for which the white man only suffers man transportation or hard labour on the roads.” (2)
EM Curr wrote in his book, ‘Recollections of Squatting in Victoria,’ about a conversation with a policeman concerning the report he had written after Aboriginal people had been shot at on the Murray River near Tongala for stealing sheep,
“There were, however, some points concerning the matter in which we did not completely agree, truth requires me to confess, as he omitted some incidents which I thought should have been mentioned.”
Curr is referring to the report stating that police had fired upon the Aboriginal people and that one may have been shot but it was impossible to know who had fired the shot.
Curr had been present at the event and tried to correct the officer but was told, “persons unconnected with the public service know nothing of reports,” and “civilians are ill-fitted to describe collisions of the sort being apt to blurt out statements more properly held in reserve.” (3)
(1) Museum Victoria Propaganda Poster
(2) Page 282 Australian Dictionary of Biography Judge R Therry
(3) page 199 Recollections of Squatting in Victoria Edward Micklethwaite Curr
