Elizabeth Conn is an enigma. But what we can
glean from newspapers accounts of the episode we learn that she was plucky and
hardworking and committed to her husband and the lifestyle he wanted to carve
out on the then frontier of European settlement in north Queensland. In 1875,
loneliness and the want of other women’s company and help were by far the
greater drawbacks of living on the Herbert for women than attacks by the
Indigenous peoples. On the day Elizabeth died she was so unwell that she had
agreed that Sub-inspector Robert Johnstone take her back to Gairloch Plantation
to be cared for by women there.
Many marriages on the frontier were between
older men and much younger women. Some of those had lost wives and looked for a
new wife to look after the children, others, perhaps wanted a young woman who
could work physically beside them to achieve their dreams of landholding
independence. We will never know whether Elizabeth was with William Conn for
love or opportunity. She was 20 years younger and proved herself prepared and
agile enough to take on the hard, physical work typical of small settlers and
their families. Her tasks included field work, building, preparing refreshments
for travellers as well the usual tasks of domestic life. She was plucky and
prepared to use a gun to defend her husband and property. She was brave,
prepared to live in an isolated location, despite the warnings from fellow
settlers that she was courting danger.
William George Conn was a Scottish
immigrant and Elizabeth Burrows was purported to be his second wife. However,
there is no marriage record for William and Elizabeth in Victoria where they
were supposed to have married, as recorded on William’s death certificate.
Neither is there a marriage record in New South Wales or Queensland. Elizabeth’s
origins are unknown and no parents’ names were recorded on her death
certificate. There is however, a birth and death certificate for a baby Henry
George Conn. He died 19 days after birth at Capeville on the upper Cape River,
his parents being William George Conn and his mother Elizabeth Henderson. They
may have been there for the gold diggings on Cape River which were on the wane
by 1869 and could explain a move to the Herbert in 1870. However, there is no
record of a child being born to Elizabeth and William on her death certificate.
Moreover, on her death certificate names of parents and where she was born were
information ‘to be obtained’ and which one of the signatories to the death
certificate, William Conn son of William George, could not supply.
William was
around 51 years of age and she 31 when they came to the lower Herbert in 1870
were supposed to have come via the Darling Downs where the children of William’s
first marriage lived. A newspaper report confirms that at the time of his death
he had three sons living near Stanthorpe, Queensland and two daughters living in
Sydney. He is described in that report as a pioneer of the Clarence River, NSW,
and afterwards of the Western district, where he took up and stocked the
Dillelah station, Warrego, Queensland. Conn Waterhole west of Winton bears his
name. Described as ‘a brave and clever bushman and explorer’ another writer
recognized that ‘Mrs Conn evidently had some of her husband's daring. For many
months she would be left in the vast solitudes of the Australian bush; without a
white person near’.
By 1871 they had an established garden growing fruit, sweet
potatoes and maize on land they appear to have squatted on, on the south bank of
the Herbert, directly opposite Macknade Mill on the north side. William also
secured fencing work at Macknade plantation in 1872. Their lasting contribution
at that site was to carve a track from the south bank of the river, across a
group of sand islands — identified in a survey may of 1871 as the Elizabeth
Group (clearly a nod to Elizbeth Conn) — over to the north side, continuing on
downriver. The locals found it made a good track for drays and the Conns took
advantage of the passing traffic, selling refreshments to travellers. This track
came to be called Conn’s Crossing. Once a bridle path was cut from the Crossing
to Cardwell in 1872 the previous track carved out by George Elphinstone
Dalrymple and his party over the Seaview Range became obsolete as the new track
put Cardwell only 30 miles away.
The Herbert River is prone to regular and
destructive flooding and a large flood in 1873 may have precipitated their move
to a picturesque but isolated selection 14 miles south of Cardwell. They named
their selection the Hermitage and whimsically, the nearby creek Williams Brook
(later called Conn Creek). William was paid a small salary by the Government to
keep the bridle track open to traffic. Meanwhile once again they established
gardens, producing produce for which there was a ready market for in Cardwell
and offered refreshments to travellers on the new track. The creek also provided
an access point between mainland and Hinchinbrook Island for the Indigenous
people.
Elizabeth was clearly an equal partner in their working relationship.
Arthur Neame travelling on that track observed the Conn’s building a hut with
William on the ground and Elizabeth on the roof putting on the thatch. Such
laborious work was not uncommon for small farmers’ wives. Local A.S. Kemp
describes how some small farmers had their own saw-pits and both husband and
wife would man the cross-cut saw.
That already by the end of 1873 the Conn’s
selection could be described as well-established meant that both Elizabeth and
William had both worked hard, after all apart from the government stipend there
were no planters in the immediate vicinity who could employ either of them, so
there was an imperative to make their selection pay.
Planter Arthur Neame
observed that he and fellow settlers thought that the Conns were very foolish to
settle where they had, given that there were no other white settlers nearby. In
fact, so concerned were they that were invited to work for William Bairstow
Ingham on his plantation, Ings but they refused. Conn countered that ‘he did not
mind the blacks. He would not interfere with them, and they would not interfere
with him’. This is consistent with his general attitude to the Indigenous
people. Many years before he is recorded as saying that ‘whatever part of the
country you go to treat the blacks kindly; you will find in cases of extreme
need they can render you great service.' Moreover, undoubtedly, he and Elizabeth
were loath to give up their selection and the independence it offered them.
Elizabeth had good reason to have faith in her husband’s decision, after all, he
was older, more experienced and had spent some years in western Queensland where
he would have had frequent encounters with Indigenous people, and prior to 1875
there had been few violent confrontations between settlers and the Indigenous
people on the lower Herbert. So trusting was his relationship with them that he
traded vegetables for fish with those who paddled their canoes up Conn Creek to
their property.
However, misunderstandings began when the Indigenous people
began to take vegetables rather than offering an exchange of goods. So in early
1875 as his potatoes were getting close to being ready for harvest Conn
requested Sub-Inspector Johnstone to maintain his patrols so that ‘the blacks
might know that he was not lost sight of’. Robert Johnstone and his Native
Police detachment usually did boat patrols of the area. Johnstone records that
he was so concerned for their welfare that he made a special patrol on horseback
on 5 April, 1875. When he expressed his concerns to Conn, Conn replied that he
had just got his supplies in for the wet season and his wife was sick and he did
not want to leave her. He also did not want Johnstone to ‘molest’ the
Aboriginals as it would make more trouble for Conn and his wife. As Elizabeth
was too sick to travel back with Johnstone on his horse he promised to return
the next day in a boat to take her to Gairloch where there were ladies who could
provide some nursing care (he was possibly referring to Isabella Stewart and
Isabella Wickham of Gairloch Plantation). Unfortunately, due to bad weather and
tidal conditions they did not reach the Conn’s farm until sunrise on the morning
of 7 April 1875. In which time William and Elizabeth Conn had been massacred.
There are numerous conjectures as to why this happened. Whether it was that Conn
had chased them off on the times when they raided his garden, or that they were
raided for blankets and food for the wet season, or in retaliation for when the
Conns had refused to give them second-hand clothes that they had drying on the
clothesline and had threatened them of the property with a gun.
On the morning
of 7 April Elizabeth had got up early and was dressed and ready to leave with
the boat patrol for Gairloch. As she was preparing breakfast Conn had been
wheeling manure to his garden. He was attacked from behind and bludgeoned to
death and his body mutilated. Elizabeth too was captured and dragged some
distance before escaping. Arming herself with a gun she began to run towards
Cardwell. On being pursued again she fired the gun but it misfired. She too was
bludgeoned and mutilated. They were buried near their cottage and a tree marked
with the date and their names. A group was located with items taken from the
cottage and body parts of the victims.
Retribution was immediate and merciless
and included many who had nothing to do with the massacre, including women and
children. Arthur Neame believed that the actual perpetrators may have actually
got away.
SOURCES: Barrie, Douglas. Minding my Business, p. 66. Cassady, James.
Jas Cassady for F A O’C Cassady, JC/1 Original notebook. Johnstone, Robert
Arthur. Reminiscences of Pioneering in north Queensland Kemp, A.S. The Kemp
Report. Neame, Arthur. Diary of Arthur Neame. Newspapers reports Queensland
Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorces. Vidonja Balanzategui,
Bianka. Herbert River Story.
IMAGE SOURCE:HInchinbrook Shire Library, Conns
Crossing, Lower Herbert, 1880
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