I acknowledge the Traditional Owners on whose land I walk, I work and I live. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and future.

Sunday 16 July 2023

THE DARING MRS CONN

On the Herbert in the early 20th century memories of the Indigenous people vacillated between gentle or savage encounters. Benign curiosity changed to violent opposition as it became clear that Europeans intended to plant sugar cane on traditional lands, vital for Indigenous people’s very substance. In turn they were massacred as James Cassady of Mungalla would attest. Once enough had been ‘subdued’ they were ‘let-in’ to live on the outskirts of the townships in camps. Planters and pastoralists, like James Cassady, who harboured both Indigenous peoples and Melanesian labourers whose indenture terms had expired, were criticised by their neighbours in whose minds was still vivid memories of an episode that had occurred 23 years earlier and involved small farmer, Elizabeth Conn. Both innocent Indigenous people and Europeans were caught up in this episode with tragic consequences. 
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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