Carl Feilberg

Carl Adolph Feilberg

Carl Feilberg about 1884 (photo: Albert Lomer, Queen Street, Brisbane)
Born (1844-08-21)21 August 1844
1 Bredgade, Copenhagen
Died 25 October 1887(1887-10-25) (aged 43)
"Claraville", Cordelia Street, South Brisbane
Cause of death Cardiac syncope, asthenia, emphysema and dropsy (heart failure caused by abnormal bodily feebleness, a chronic irreversible disease of the lungs and abnormal accumulation of fluid) following three months of illness.
Resting place Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane
Other names Old Harry, Carolus, C.F. (Carl Feilberg's mid name 'Adolph' was at times spelled as 'Adolf')
Occupation Journalist, newspaper proprietor, editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Courier and Queenslander
Years active 1870–1887
Employer Brisbane Newspaper Co
Political party independent liberal-oriented
Religion Christian (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican)
Spouse(s) Clara Smith (1854–1932)
Children Walter Christian Feilberg (1873–1940), Adelaide Clara Feilberg (1874–1956), Alice Isabel Feilberg (1877–1955), Reginald Carl Feilberg (1879–1946), Winnifred Hilda Feilberg (1885–1948)
Signature

Carl Adolph Feilberg (21 August 1844 – 25 October 1887) was a Danish-born Australian journalist, newspaper editor, general political commentator and human rights activist.[1]

Biography

Life

Carl Feilberg was born on 21 August 1844 in a small apartment at 1 Bredgade in Copenhagen, Denmark.[2] As the first born and only son of Danish Royal Navy lieutenant, Christen Schifter Feilberg and Louise Adelaide Feilberg. Louise Feilberg was the daughter of a planter on the island of St. Croix in the then Danish West Indies. Feilberg's second name was spelled Adolph in his birth record and on most contemporary publications for public use, but he frequently used Adolf with 'f' as his personal signature.[3] Following the early death of both parents Feilberg was placed in foster care with Danish relatives, his aunt Louise Stegman and her husband graingrocer Conrad Stegmann at the time living in Edinburgh, Scotland. Thus Feilberg came to receive his formal education in Scotland, England finalising with a year at a college in France. Following his graduation he was employed by a shipping insurance broker of the Lloyds-group in London.[4]

Suffering from a serious case of tuberculosis Fielberg was advised to migrate to Australia where time spent in the dry interior might mitigate some of the symptoms and provide a chance for survival.[5] He arrived in Sydney from London by the Aberdeen vessel Sir John Lawrence on 18 June 1867 travelling onto Rockhampton carrying a 'letter of introduction' to the Scottish squatter Archibald Berdmore Buchanan. He then gained 'colonial experience' working as a shepherd, store and book keeper predominantly at Buchanan's properties. The first six months at Cardbeign station in Springsure district, the remaining time in the Barcoo district on Greendale and possibly other stations in the central west.[6] The knowledge he gained in the outback including his experiences with the Native Police and the darker sides of the colony's frontier policies, would later influence his work as a journalist, political commentator, author.[7]

Naturalised at Rockhampton Court House 21 June 1870 Feilberg chose to settle in Maryborough where in August he commenced a career in journalism. Initially assisting Ebenezer Thorne on his newly launched three-weekly Wide Bay and Burnett News.[8] In November 1870 after a series of libel cases and family issues Thorne sold his share in the journal to Carl Feilberg who became the sole editor and proprietor.[9] Feilberg's as editor supported the struggle for manhood suffrage, his success in breaking the press monopoly of William Henry Walsh.[10] On 15 May 1872 he married Tasmanian born, Clara Smith at the Presbyterian Church in Maryborough.[11] She was the daughter of the engineer and proprietor of Kilkivan Mine, Walter Smith and Clara Susannah Smith. After leaving Maryborough he was employed by the Brisbane Courier as a political commentator, leader writer as the editor of its weekly, The Queenslander, from January 1879 to December 1880.[12]

The personal and political fallout following the below mentioned campaign of the Queenslander in 1880 subsequently caused Feilberg to accept a position as sub-editor on the then leading Victorian journal the Argus in June 1882.[13] It was cautiously noted in the contemporary Press that Feilberg 'has had very definite political opinions, and, in labouring unremittingly to impress them upon the public mind, has suffered at various times from the misrepresentation and obloquy which every active politician is fated to encounter'.[14] The background was a change in the proprietorship of the Brisbane Newspaper Company in late December 1880 which caused Feilberg to endure a year of being gradually relegated to steadily more subordinate positions on the journal. Later commenting privately on this experience he was naturally more upfront. Thus on 23 September 1882, in a private letter in reply to Sir Arthur Gordon, the former Governor and High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, Feilberg wrote: 'I despair of doing much good for the blacks, and I have incurred enough personal ill will myself by writing on their behalf during my residence in Queensland.'[15] Indeed, it may be fairly said that he was politically exiled or finally decided to exile himself from Queensland at that point in time. Yet he ‘was never physically a robust man’, as one obituary stated.[16] The illness that brought him to Australia in the first place remained dormant and the move to Melbourne proved fatal for him. The ‘climate’ of Melbourne ‘did not suit him’, it was later said,[17] what started out as a cold was to revive his old ailment and his days were numbered by mid-1883. He gave in to an offer and returned to Brisbane in July to subsequently take on the position of editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Newspaper Company (Brisbane Courier and its weekly The Queenslander, now The Courier-Mail) in September same year. He remained fully active in this position until a few weeks before his death at his home 'Claraville' in Cordelia Street South Brisbane on 25 October 1887.

Rather paradoxically for a person who has been almost totally forgotten by posterity, the announcement of Feilberg's death triggered a quite unprecedented reaction in the contemporary press.[18] His passing thus resulted in obituaries and memorial notices throughout Queensland and in all leading journals in Australia, hinting at the controversies he had once triggered and honouring his compassionate nature in glowing words and phrases.[19] Indeed, the coverage and wording of these articles by far exceeds those honouring the passing of any of his contemporary and in many cases more famous colleagues.[20] His funeral at Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery was similarly attended by a wide range of friends, journalists and several high-ranking politicians from both sides of Queensland politics including the former Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith.[21] A eulogy was authored by poet Francis Adams.[22]

Career

Feilberg commenced his career in journalism as the owner-editor of the Wide Bay and Burnett News from November 1870 to about 1875, free-lance correspondent and occasional editorial writer for the Brisbane Courier and Queenslander and other journals, editor of the Cooktown Courier from September 1876 to June 1877, Hansard shorthand writer from July to October 1877, part proprietor and editor of the Queensland Patriot/Daily News from March 1878 to early January 1879. From there on he became the key political commentator and leader writer for the Brisbane Courier and editor of the Queenslander from January 1879 to December 1880, sub-editor on the Melbourne Argus from June 1882 to June 1883, editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander from September 1883 to October 1887. Feilberg additionally wrote many short stories and sketches reflecting the life and dreams of many of his fellow colonists. His journalism covered a wide range of subjects amongst which parliamentary business, railway and settlement policy, finance and economic policy and indigenous rights, took a prominent position. Beyond being additionally a harsh critic of the Kanaka trade (see below), he was an eager advocate for settlements in the interior and railway schemes supporting this, he questioned the uncontrolled Chinese immigration (during the great mining rush in the far north), and he was a strong advocate of laws to combat the threat to the environment of uncontrolled logging and deforestation and securing a policy of sustainable foresting. The Liberal Premier John Douglas (Queensland politician) appointed him as government envoy for New Guinea during the New Guinea gold-rush in early 1878, and New Guinea was later a frequent subject for his numerous editorials.

It should be noted that Carl Feilberg severed several terms as President for Brisbane's famed literary Johnsonian Club. Other chairmen over time was noted Queenslander's such as Samuel Griffith, John Douglas (Queensland politician) and James Brunton Stephens, William Senior (journalist) the Principal Short Hand Writer also known as 'Red Spinner' (the latter three, in particular, were known to be close friends of Feilberg). More information and a description of this club can be found here.

Human rights and Aboriginal people

Carl Feilberg was the hitherto anonymous journalist, editor and author behind the Queenslander's newspaper campaign and pamphlet The Way We Civilise; Black and White; The Native Police (published in Brisbane, December 1880) characterised by Henry Reynolds as "...one of the most influential political tracts in Australian history..."[23]

Beyond his other work, Feilberg thus notably authored a great number of articles on the issue of human rights abuses towards islanders and indigenous people in Queensland. The issue of the so-called Kanaka trade or Blackbirding – the use of Melanesian labour on Queensland sugar plantations – was high on his agenda from the late 1870 onwards; he and his journal were thus instrumental in bringing about the conviction of the Captain of the recruiting schooner "Jason" in 1871.

Feilberg's contribution to the history of colonial Queensland included editorials written for the Brisbane Courier from 1874 to 1878 and later in the Cooktown Courier during January to March 1877, and two newspaper campaigns strongly critical of Queensland's frontier indigenous policies. The first of these campaigns was conducted in the independent liberal journal the Queensland Patriot prior to the police estimates for 1879 being tabled in the Legislative Assembly. The move was daring but ultimately unsuccessful although it triggered a parliamentary debate on 10 July 1878. Yet the blue-print for this small campaign was then reused, commissioned by the managing editor of the Brisbane Newspaper Company, Gresley Lukin (1840–1916), on a much larger scale in the leading Queensland journal the Brisbane Courier (now The Courier-Mail) two years later. In the nine months from during March to December 1880 Feilberg utilised its weekly, the Queenslander, as a platform to launch a series of powerfully worded editorials and articles demanding a Royal Commission and a change of policy. Yet again unsuccessful, he nonetheless managed to trigger two large parliamentary debates and the biggest public debate of its kind ever conducted by an Australian newspaper, on this subject.

It was parts of the latter debate which were reissued as a pamphlet in December 1880.

Feilberg outlined some of his deeper feelings in an editorial printed in the Queenslander on 19 January 1878, saying amongst other things that the

...complacent blindness which induces the natives of Europe to regard their own customs and institutions as excellent above compare, and their adoption as a certain remedy and advantageous substitute for all other manners of living, even to the most simple and Arcadian, has served as excuse for enormities at the contemplation of which humanity revolts...[24]

His opening lines to the campaign of the Queenslander on 1 May 1880, in his best known and most frequently cited editorial headed The Way We Civilise, it famously outlined Queensland's policy towards Aboriginal people in the following manner:

This, in plain language, is how we deal with the aborigines: On occupying new territory the aboriginal inhabitants are treated exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there. Their lives and their property, the nets, canoes, and weapons which represent as much labour to them as the stock and buildings of the white settler, are held by the Europeans as being at their absolute disposal. Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women carried away, entirely at the caprice of the white men. The least show of resistance is answered by a rifle bullet; in fact, the first introduction between blacks and whites is often marked by the unprovoked murder of some of the former – in order to make a commencement of the work of ‘civilising’ them.[25]

The memory of this crucial part of Feilberg's writings, however, was to remain victim to the 'veil of silence' which covered all issues related to the treatment of indigenous people in the colonial era for the most part of a century. To the extent Feilberg's name was remembered at all, it was for his advocacy of some restrictions being put on Chinese immigration and for him being an early opponent of the Kanaka labour-trade; issues which were clearly viewed as more acceptable by early nineteenth-century Australian historians and record keepers. Yet Feilberg's commitment to human rights was hinted at in various ways by some of his obituary writers and close friends.

Legacy of a pamphlet

The original front page of Carl Feilberg's pamphlet The Way We Civilise from 1880

Carl Feilberg's 1880 pamphlet played a crucial behind the scene role in the British Government move to nullify Queensland's unilateral annexation of New Guinea in April 1883. It was actively used by Sir Arthur Gordon (Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore 1829–1912), the Aborigines Protection Society and others, as evidence to persuade the British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) and his Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Derby, that Queensland was utterly unfit for the task of ruling New Guinea.[26] Carl Feilberg's writings and opponents of the same are now frequently cited in a great number of books and documentaries. Lengthy quotes can be found in books dealing generally with Queensland's colonial history, such as Ross Fitzgerald's From the Dreaming to 1915 (1982) and Wm. Ross Johnston's A Documentary History of Queensland (1988). Similar quotes and references can be found in a number of books dealing generally with race relations in colonial Australia, such as Henry Reynolds' famous study, The Other Side of the Frontier (1981), Sharman Stone's documentary on Aborigines in White Australia (1974), and in a variety of studies, books and articles similarly dealing with this subject. It is used as a reference in more popular outlines such as Bruce Elder's Blood on the Wattle (1988), and quotes appear in virtually all TV documentaries on the subject. And, it is naturally well represented in studies dealing specifically with Queensland's race relations' history such as Raymond Evans in Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination (Brisbane 1975), the Reynolds edited Race Relations in North Queensland (1978), Noel Loos' Invasion and Resistance (1982) and Pamela Lukin Watson's Frontier Lands & Pioneer Legends (1998). It was cited in Judith Wright's The Cry for the Dead (1981) and more recently in Roslyn Poignant's Professional Savages (2004). Gordon Reid's That Unhappy Race, (Melbourne 2006), p. 115-16, 125–127, 230, The satirical title The Way We Civilise was eventually re-used in 1997 as a title for Rosalind Kidd's study on Queensland's institutionalised policy towards Aboriginal people onwards from the 1880s to more recent times. Feilberg's pamphlet is equally cited in the highly profiled Bringing Them Home or 'stolen generation report' (1997), about Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families to be brought up in institutions during the twentieth century, and in Ben Kiernan's Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination (2008).[27]

Those who knew him

William Henry Traill, journalist and Feilberg's predecessor as editor of the Queenslander, who was later the editor of the Sydney Mail, owner-editor of the famed weekly magazine The Bulletin and a NSW politician, was the only one of Feilberg's friends who dared to mention Feilberg's feelings on the question of indigenous rights (possibly because Traill was living in Sydney at the time), saying:

I knew him well during the time he was for a while a journalistic free-lance, before he went on to the staff of the Courier or Argus, and if ever a man lived to falsify the popular idea of a ‘bohemian,’ he was the man. So far as bohemianism is supposed to comprehend a spirit of universal charity, of hatred of tyranny and cant, and of a most intense love for his profession, he was a thorough ‘bohemian’; but of the other side of the character, the reckless improvidence, dissipation, and contempt of respectability, he was as free as that great type, the ‘British Merchant of the old school.’ As a journalist he was an untiring worker, few newspapers in Australia have not been benefited by his pen, and few writers on all subjects were more appreciated by the public, he never wrote himself out, and his style was always fresh and free from any touch of respective sameness...Poor Feilberg! There were two subjects on which one could always rouse his righteous indignation – the treatment of the blacks, and the seizure of the Danish fleet by Nelson; his love of fair play was too strongly appealed to in both...[28]

Somewhat a political opponent, yet nonetheless a close personal friend, Walter John Morley (1848–1937) then the editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Evening Observer wrote about Feilberg that he was "...a man whom it was impossible to regard with indifference." Adding further that Feilberg, 'in his working days', was

... one of the most voluminous and valued of Australian writers … There is hardly a newspaper of note in the Southern hemisphere for which he has not written … As a Press writer Mr. Feilberg was without a rival in the colony, and had few equals on the continent. His style was clear, crisp, and trenchant, and withal somewhat cynical; he could detect at once the weak spot of an argument, and understood thoroughly the worth of ridicule and the power of satire. His writings exhibit a perfect knowledge of the country, and of country life, and betray a sympathy with human nature for which those who saw only his other writings would never credit him. … His views were naturally extreme, for he was intense, as such men always are, and this extremeness, with the vigour of his enunciation, caused him to make many and bitter enemies. Probably there were few men in the colony more bitterly hated by political and social opponents, yet there was certainly no man more beloved by those whose privilege it was to know him intimately. For underneath all his cynicism and his apparent vindictiveness beat a heart that overflowed with all that makes humanity noble and good. He never saw distress without wishing to relieve it...[29]

Francis Adams (writer) poet and journalist, wrote in connection with Feilberg's funeral at Toowong cemetery in Brisbane in October 1887:

He was a soldier in the army of Letters and of light of whom his comrades can be proud. He fixed his eyes on the abiding truth of human life – on justice and on mercy, on trust and on love – and clung to them. He felt, as so many of us feel, that the old symbols see no new ones in the world of thought and feeling of his time. All honour to the brave heart that hopeless of the proof of justification, hopeless of the old support in life and of the old hope of reward in death, bated not one jot of belief in the beauty and necessity of the good, the noble, and true!...Not with sorrow only do we think of this man, of our dear dead comrade: no, but with the love for what he was, and with the pride for what he did, that rob death of its victory and make him that was brought low as one that is raised up.[30]

'Bobby' Byrne, or John Edgar Byrne (1842–1906), a Londoner turned bushman and pioneer during the Gulf country rush in the 1860s, later journalist and owner-editor of the Queensland Figaro and Punch, simply stated, in the plain and rather understated style of a nineteenth-century Australian bushman (take note that he used first-name, highly unusual for this period):

Carl was a mate of mine of some 16 years' standing. The Brisbane dailies supply full particulars of his life, and it is not for me to gush about his virtues. He was my mate, and I always found him 'white.'(*) I first met him in Maryborough, when he had just come back from the Barcoo, where he had been jackarooing. Some of the best yarns that ever appeared in Punch and Figaro I learned from Carl Feilberg...[31]

(*) For an Australian 'bushman' to call another man 'white' was the greatest honour in those days, equivalent of saying that he was something like a plain, genuine and upright man of the highest personal integrity. It was used even on black people at times, one example is the black Danish West Indian, turned Australian heavy weight boxer, Peter Jackson (boxer) (1861–1901) who was called a 'real whiteman'.[32]

Journalism, fiction and other literary contributions

Carl Feilberg's main strength was his work as a political commentator and leader-writer for amongst others the Wide Bay and Burnett News (c. October 1870 to 1875, unfortunately no issues available from this period), Cooktown Courier (from September 1876 to June 1877), the Queensland Patriot (from February 1878 to January 1879), The Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander (sporadically in the period 1875 – February 1878, intensively from January 1879– January 1881 & July 1883– September 1887) and Melbourne Argus (Brisbane correspondent from 1880–1882, sub-editor on amongst others the subject of Queensland & New Guinea from July 1882 – June 1883). He was the author behind the parliamentary column of the 'Political Froth' by 'the Abstainer' and the column 'Specialities' in the Queenslander from January 1879 – to May 1882. Yet next to this and in his spare time he wrote several sketches and some often surprisingly naive and romantic short stories, and also a small adventure novel (A Strange Exploring Trip) which some contemporaries viewed as having a curious resemblance with Henry Rider Haggard's later King Solomon's Mines (from 1885), while it was probably inspired by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (from 1726). He naturally used personal experiences in several of his stories from the outer Barcoo and early Rockhampton in the late 1860s, and from Cooktown and the Palmer gold field in the 1870s. His short-stories were exceedingly popular in his own time. The Illustrated Sydney News of December 1886 thus announced him as 'Mr Carl Feilberg, the inimitable story-teller of Queensland'. Some of these sketches and stories were signed 'CF' but several were not signed at all (his authorship was revealed in the writings by various contemporaries). Below is a representative sample:

A few stories, in some cases half finished, were later sold from Feilberg's estate and printed after his death in the radical journal the Queensland Boomerang, they were:

Legacy

Carl Feilberg was arguably the most prominent political commentator and newspaper editor in Queensland in his time, but he was certainly equally well known in the other Australian colonies. His death in October 1887 was received with an amount of strongly worded obituaries and expressions of grief, which was to remain extraordinary as well as unprecedented for any Queensland journalist of his era.[33]

Yet it so happened that his most lasting legacy became the numerous articles he wrote dealing with the most painful issue of all – Queensland's frontier indigenous policy, Native Police system, and what he continually argued was an urgent need for the government to reform and move to protect the fundamental rights of indigenous people. An issue which was to remain unsolved, contested and a painful legacy that even his closest friends would prefer to forget rather than to remember.[34]

Indeed, Carl Feilberg is beyond question the most outstanding and one of the most frequently cited advocate of indigenous human rights in the history of colonial Queensland, and he certainly belongs in the ranks of the most notable of his kind in the history of colonial Australia.[35] Almost all indigenous policy critical articles, editorial comments and editorials printed in the Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander between 1874 and 1886 were authored by Carl Feilberg. Additionally he conducted two lengthy campaigns, one in the Queensland Patriot in 1878[36] and the other and most notable in the Queenslander in 1880.,[37] both of them (but the latter, in particular), triggering significant public and parliamentary debates centred around the issue of the colony's Native Police Force and frontier indigenous policy. Yet still, there are very few people whose writings and the response created that are more frequently cited today, yet there is probably no one whose name and personal history has been more thoroughly forgotten. It is almost as if someone set out to illustrate the wording of late Professor Bill Stanner (1905–1981) about 'the great Australian silence' and 'the cult of disremembering'.[38]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Reynolds, Henry: This Whispering In Our Hearts, Sydney 1998, chapter 6, The Crusade of the Queenslander; Ørsted-Jensen, R.; The Right to Live: The Politics of Race and the Troubled Conscience of an Australian Journalist, main reference (being the only full biographical account); see also Rusden, G.W.: History of Australia, vol 1–3, second edition Melbourne 1897, Vol 3 pp.146–56 & 235.
  2. ↑ Minister book Holmens Kirke, Copenhagen 13 December 1844
  3. ↑ See signature on this page and compare with his printed records (ph and f, v and w, ch and k, etc were (and to some degree still is) regarded as synonymous in many Germanic languages in this period). Besides in general people were not all that particular about the spelling of names in the period prior to the 1890s. Names were spoken more so than written and only rarely seen on print.
  4. ↑ Evening Observer (Brisbane) 25 October 1887, Obituary (by ed.in-chief Walter John Morley);Brisbane Courier 26 October 1887, page 5a, Obituary (propr. & managing ed. Charles Hardie Buzacott)
  5. ↑ Queenslander 22 November 1879, p652d-653a 'Life in the Bush' by 'CF';Wide Bay News 27 October 1887
  6. ↑ North Queensland Telegraph (Townsville) 26 October 1887; Brisbane Courier 22 June 1926, p.2
  7. ↑ The Way We Civilise; Black and White, The Native Police/articles from the Brisbane Courier/Queenslander March–Sept 1880, Brisbane 1880; see also bibliography below
  8. ↑ Queenslander 11 June 1870, p.2&p.325; Queenslander 10 June 1870, p10c (Wide Bay News was Launched on 2 July 1870); See more in Feilberg's obituaties and BC 21 January 1871 (Public meeting at M'boro's Oddfellows Hall Wednesday evening 11 January 1971).
  9. ↑ Maryborough Chronicle 9 March 1871, p2g (Feilberg testify in a libel case against the previous proprietor); other libel cases see:Libel against the Editor of the Wide Bay News: Maryborough Chronicle 10 September 1870 (Walsh allegedly defamed); Brisbane Courier 13 October 1870 (Libel), p.3e; Brisbane Courier 20 October 1870, p2c; Maryborough Chronicle 29 October 1870; Maryborough Chronicle 1 November 1870, p5f-g.; Brisbane Courier 5 November 1870, p5f.
  10. ↑ Denis Cryle: The Press in Colonial Queensland, chapter 6 & 8, and p.124-27
  11. ↑ Qld BDM 1872/C365
  12. ↑ Browne, R.S.: A journalist's Memories (1927), p.57, 71,77, 167, 184, 259, 277, 283. Browne explains the period during which firstly Traill, then Feilberg and himself, functioned as 'The Abstainer' the anonymous writer of the political satirical column 'Political Froth'
  13. ↑ Rockhampton Bulletin 30 May 1882, p2d;Brisbane Courier 5 June 1882, p2f; South Australian Advertiser 5 June 1882, p5f.
  14. ↑ Queenslander 10 June 1882. p712 (reprint from Brisbane Courier Mon. 5 June 1882, p2g)
  15. ↑ Anti-Slavery Society Papers S22, C135/107; See also Henry Reynolds This Whispering in our Hearts (Sydney 1998) p.260, 108–158
  16. ↑ Wide Bay News 27 October 1887
  17. ↑ Queenslander, Vol XXXII.-No. 630, Brisbane Saturday, 29 October 1887
  18. ↑ Notes, memorials and Obituaries: Brisbane Courier 26 October 1887, p.5a; Sydney Morning Herald 26 October 1887, p.10a; Argus (Melbourne) 26 October 1887, p7g&8e; Age (Melbourne) 26 October 1887 p6; Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) 29 October 1887, p3e-f; South Australian Advertiser 26 October 1887, p5a; Evening Observer (Brisbane) 25 October 1887; Boomerang 19 November 1887, p.13 (Eulogy by Francis Adams); Boomerang 3 December 1887 (drawing/portrait); Sydney Quarterly Magazine Vol IV, No 4, 1887, p379-80; Brisbane Telegraph 25 October 1887, p.5b.; Queenslander 29 October 1887; Wide Bay News 27 October 1887; Gympie Times 27 October 1887, p3c (John Flood); North Queensland Telegraph (Townsville) 26 October 1887; Queensland Figaro 29 October 1887, p687 (‘Bobby’ or John Edgar Byrne).
  19. ↑ see obituaries listed above and the citation from Traill and Adams elsewhere on this page
  20. ↑ One only need to compare with the obituaries of contemporary Qld journalists such as G. Lukin, W. O'Carroll, C. H. Buzacott or W. H. Traill.
  21. ↑ Brisbane Courier 27 October 1887, p5d, Feilberg's funeral at Toowong Cemetery.
  22. ↑ Boomerang 19 November 1887, p.13 (Eulogy by Francis Adams), see also obituaries in Wide Bay and Burnett News (Maryborough) 25 October 1887 (obituary); Brisbane Evening Observer 25 October 1887 (obituary); Brisbane Courier 27 October 1887, p5d (funeral); (Ørsted-Jensen, R.; The Right to Live: The Politics of Race...).
  23. ↑ Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, 1998 p108; Reynolds, H.: An Indelible Stain?, 2001 chapter 7.
  24. ↑ Queenslander 19 January 1878, editorial & Browne, R.S.: "A Journalist's Memories" p.55-59
  25. ↑ Queenslander 1 May 1880 & Brisbane Courier, 8 May 1880, p.2e-f, editorial; The Way We Civilise; Black and White; The Native Police: – A series of articles and letters Reprinted from the ‘Queenslander’ (Brisbane, December 1880); Rusden: History of Australia Vol 3 pp.146–56 & 235
  26. ↑ This is well documented and described by Henry Reynolds in his book This Whispering in Our Hearts, Sydney 1998, chapter 6, The Crusade of the Queenslander
  27. ↑ Many of these writers believed, wrongly as it is, that the author of the articles was Gresley Lukin, the then part proprietor of the Brisbane Newspaper Co., but Lukin was 'only' the part proprietor and 'managing editor' he wrote articles only on rare occasions and the de facto editor of the Courier at the time was in fact not Lukin but William Augustine O'Carroll. All of this was partly revealed by Henry Reynolds in This Whispering in Our Hearts (see above), and it is further detailed and substantiated by Ørsted-Jensen in The Right to Live: The Politics of Race and the Troubled Conscience of an Australian Journalist chapter one The Resurgence...
  28. ↑ Sydney Quarterly Magazine Vol IV, no 4, 1887 page 379-80
  29. ↑ Brisbane Evening Observer, Brisbane, Tuesday, 25 October 1887
  30. ↑ Boomerang, Brisbane 19 November 1887, p.13
  31. ↑ Queensland Figaro 29 October 1887 p.687
  32. ↑ http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A090448b.htm
  33. ↑ Notes, memorials and Obituaries: Brisbane Courier 26 October 1887, p.5a; Sydney Morning Herald 26 October 1887, p.10a; Argus (Melbourne) 26 October 1887, p7g&8e; Age (Melbourne) 26 October 1887 p6; Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) 29 October 1887, p3e-f; South Australian Advertiser 26 October 1887, p5a; Evening Observer (Brisbane) 25 October 1887; Boomerang 19 November 1887, p.13 (Eulogy by Francis Adams); Boomerang 3 December 1887 (drawing/portrait); Sydney Quarterly Magazine Vol IV, No 4, 1887, p379-80; Brisbane Telegraph 25 October 1887, p.5b.; Queenslander 29 October 1887; Wide Bay News 27 October 1887; Gympie Times 27 October 1887, p3c (John Flood); North Queensland Telegraph (Townsville) 26 October 1887; Queensland Figaro 29 October 1887, p687 (‘Bobby’ or John Edgar Byrne). As seen above. No contemporary Queensland journalist was honoured with this level of attention, in particular not anything as strong worded as these obituaries. Indeed hardly any contemporary Premier of Queensland received this level of contemporary attention.
  34. ↑ See above: 'Legacy of a Pamphlet'
  35. ↑ Some may argue that Archibald Meston was as significant. Yet Meston only entered this cause when it became opportunistic to do so as the last genuine frontier had evaporated and some of his key political friends underwent a rather drastic change of attitude. Prior to the 1890s he was indeed known primarily as a man who frequently spoke about Aborigines he had personally shot in punitive expedition (more about Meston in Ørsted-Jensen: Frontier History Revisited (2011), p.141, and in general 112pp). Being a 'Queenslander' (Q., by all account, carrying the single largest pre-contact population of any state and territory of Australia)and a modern thinking and secular minded person some may even argue that Feilberg, although his name was almost completely forgotten, is by far more interesting and significant in this field than the mainly Tasmania operating humanitarian George Augustus Robinson.
  36. ↑ Queensland Patriot from 29 June to 23 July 1878. The campaign successfully aimed at the Police estimates which was tabled in parliament in July. The Premier (John Douglas), who was also the original instigator and part proprietor of the 'Patriot', had not approved of this campaign and he clearly was furious when the issue was forced on him and the parliament. Yet this brief campaign, and the fact that he was willing to cross the very man who had employed him added to Feilberg's reputation amongst fellow journalist in particular.
  37. ↑ The Queenslander (Brisbane Courier) campaign for indigenous right in 1880, remains the largest of its kind ever produced by a leading Australian newspaper. It lasted from March to December that year, and included a great number of more or less anonymously publicised letters from what clearly was a great number of leading frontier settlers of the day. It included a total of 9 articles, 12 editorials and a follow-up newspaper debate in which 37 settlers contributed with 48 letters.
  38. ↑ Stanner, W. E. H. After The Dreaming, the 1968 Boyer lecture (Sydney 1974)

References

Recommended further reading

External links

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