page_title: Australian native police
section_title: Operations from 1890 to 1905
hierarchical_section_title: Australian native police / New South Wales and Queensland / Operations from 1890 to 1905
caption_attribution_description: English: Native Police detachment at Turn Off Lagoon barracks 1898
context_page_description: Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal troopers under the command usually of a single white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentieth centuries. The Native Police were utilised as a cost-effective and brutal paramilitary instrument in the expansion and protection of the British colonial frontier in Australia. Mounted Aboriginal troopers of the Native Police, armed with rifles, carbines and swords, escorted surveying groups, pastoralists and prospectors into frontier areas. They would usually then establish base camps and patrol these areas to enforce warrants, conduct punitive missions against resisting local Aboriginal groups, and fulfil various other duties.
  The Aboriginal men within the Native Police were routinely recruited from areas that were very distant from the frontier places in which they were deployed. As the troopers were Aboriginal, this benefited the colonists by minimising both the wages of the police and the potential for Aboriginal revenge attacks against white people.
context_section_description: Despite many Native Police troopers in this period being decommissioned or redeployed as unarmed trackers working with normal police squads and, in addition, a considerable number of mission stations being turned into feeding stations for the local Aboriginal population.
  In 1893, a very large group consisting of 20 Native Police troopers led by sub-Inspector Charles Savage, together were sent to investigate the murders of Charles Bruce and Captain Rowe near the Ducie River in the far north. Aboriginal people in this area had murdered at least eight men. When the Native police encountered about 300 attacking Aboriginal people, a sharp engagement occurred, killing five troopers. In 1894, the Aboriginal head man responsible for the murder of Bill Baird was captured. After the murder of Donald MacKenzie at Lakefield station in 1896, the Native Police found many of the local tribe dead from arsenic poisoning when they mistook the poison for baking powder.
  Toward the border with the Northern Territory in the Gulf Country, the last operational barracks in this region was at Turn Off Lagoon near to where the modern-day community of Doomadgee is now located. In 1896 after the murder of Cresswell Downs manager, Thomas Perry, this unit shot a large number of Aboriginal people in that region. Indiscriminate dispersals also followed the spearing of Harry Shadforth at Wollogorang Station in 1897. Constables Richard Alford and Timothy Lyne were in charge of these troopers at this time. An Aboriginal boy named Oscar who was kidnapped from the Cooktown area by Native Police and brought to work at Rocklands station near Camooweal, made some unique recordings of the operations of the Native Police based at Turn Off Lagoon. From 1895 to 1899, Oscar produced a number of drawings depicting Native Police troopers shooting tribal Aboriginal people either as they were running away or as they were tied to trees.
  While travelling near the Wenlock River, Reverend Gilbert White and anthropologist Walter Roth were shown the remains of four local Aboriginal men shot dead by Native Police in a surprise attack. Reports reached Commissioner William Parry-Okeden and a large investigation ensued. The officer in charge, constable John Hoole was acquitted of any wrongdoing but was transferred and soon after forced into retirement.
  By 1909, the only functional Native Police barracks remaining was at Coen but this was manned by only several veteran troopers. This barracks finally closed in 1929. Native police still officially had a role in Queensland until at least the 1960s with unarmed troopers being assigned to maintain control in Aboriginal isolation and detention facilities such as the Palm Island facility. Eddie Mabo gave a description of these native police on his visit to Palm Island in 1957.
caption: Native Police detachment at Turn Off Lagoon barracks 1898
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