Australian Selectors in the Nineteenth Century and Discrepancies in Imaginings and Realities: Critical Family History

Abstract

Queensland became an independent state in 1859, separating from New South Wales. Almost immediately, an ambitious plan on migration was embarked upon in order to attract emigrants to Queensland, above all other possible colony destinations in the British Empire. Henry Jordan was instrumental as the Emigration Commissioner (1861–1866) in devising the land order scheme and Richard Daintree, as Agent-General, wooed, through modern techniques on never-before-seen photography in colour, small capitalists to the isolated outreaches of Queensland, where settlement was encouraged. Life there for those that migrated was, however, vastly different from what either they knew in Britain, or what they expected. But, ultimately, they settled, took possession of considerable stretches of lands, as selectors, or pastoral land owners, with disregard for the indigenous populations there. In this article, I examine one migration story on an ancestor in the nineteenth century, Andrew Milne, from London to Queensland, through the lens of critical settler family history theory. I take up the challenge for historians to question who their ancestors were, since the past is telling of the present, and the perceptions that are longed for in the future selves. Namely, in the construction of the future self, an individual must also confront their past, and the lives of those that preceded them. In particular, in the case of Australia, settlement, colonisation, and the possession of land are not benign, and are not isolated events, but have an impact on the present and future lives of both descendants of those that possessed the land, and those from whom it was taken away. The legacy of racial segregation (through the Stolen Generations), and despite the attempt to ‘close the gap’ since 2008, Aboriginal peoples in Australia still suffer the consequences of objectification and dehumanisation to which they were subjected. The consequences are not only financial and economic, but are visible in health, education, social status, and in their mistrust of public services.

1. Introduction

In 2018, after 30 years of searching, I finally found out what had happened to Andrew Milne, my second great-grand uncle, the brother of my second great grandfather, Colin Milne (1885–1938). He had been born on 25 February 18451, baptized in St. Clement Danes2, London, England, the fifth child of George Milne and Jane Pars. I had checked everywhere, including army records, even asylums, and prison records, all to no avail. There was simply no trace of him, and I had resigned myself to the fact that he had changed his name, or had just fallen off the radar, and civil registration, as can sometimes happen. However, he had, in fact, emigrated to Queensland, Australia in the 1860s.

My interest in history had spurred me on to discover where my ancestors came from and to put them into the context of their periods of time, rather than just adding names and dates to a tree. I did not spontaneously ‘happen’, but I am the sum of those that preceded me. Bluntly, I am where I am because of those that came before me, whether that be good or bad.

Inevitably, for a British citizen, this also means the possibility of migration, colonisation, and the possession of lands, with the consequences of social and economic change for those that migrated, and those that were in the territories before, through the removal of lands by the British Crown. Surely, therefore, I am responsible for the way that those that preceded me are remembered, or, at the very least, considered in their historical contexts, since I have benefitted from what they did, where they were born, and who they were. This is all the more important due to the immigration policies connected to Queensland, Australia, and how that ancestor became a ‘selector’, accompanied by the dispersal of Aboriginal peoples from those lands, at the same time. This paper, therefore, is a re-examination of migration, and settlement, through the lens of family history theory, a micro-level of memory that has wider implications on the macro-level of identity, and the construction of the nation (Mansour and Milne 2014; Verdugo and Milne 2016). It will deal with the discrepancies between what was imagined by those selectors as to what awaited them in Queensland, and how the promises differed in the propaganda, and the reality of the hardship there. However, it will concentrate on the discrepancy on how those selectors are perceived in the grand narrative on the construction of the British/Australian identities of the colonisers, and the identity of the conquest of Australia, a far from innocuous or inoffensive act of land orders and the granting of permission to exploit that land.

The memory on my ancestor, Andrew Milne, had metaphorically died when his immediate family were no longer around to remember him, in the true Halbswachian (Halbwachs 2020) ethos of being relegated to the confines of oblivion when the group has died out.

If he resurfaced, it was only because of the digital world and the boom (Barnwell 2013, 2019) in genealogical research (Hershkovitz 2016), which allowed archives around the world to be accessed. Evans (2011) notes that the changing face of the world and rapid shifts in social make-up have brought about an increase in people looking back into their own pasts. However, Field (2002), Darby and Clough (2013), as well as Durie (2017), have already shown in their research that the majority of people are interested in just connecting names, and dates, with places, rather than connecting them to their social context. The quest is not necessarily, therefore, for truth, but just adding data. I am not solely interested in just amassing dates, but the contextual positioning of individuals in both time and space, even if this means, perhaps, disrupting the past (Evans 2011). It is noteworthy also to make mention of the fact that family historians and amateur genealogists have vastly contributed to the growing availability of resources. They have recorded, indexed, and compiled data that today is used by historians, despite the latter criticising those amateurs for being only interested in their own stories, and yet using that data at the same time. As Evans notes “family historians were once sidelined by libraries and archives” (Evans 2021, p. 3), and yet, as she goes on to note, they are more likely to be seen in those places than historians.

Through the digitisation of resources, and their availability across the globe, and in order to provide proof on the data, I managed to locate a marriage between an Andrew Milne and an Ellen Eleanor Alice Flynn on Ancestry.com, and was taken to the Queensland State Archives, Australia. I applied for the certificate and was able to access a digital copy immediately3. After three decades of searching, in just as many minutes, I had found the missing ancestor. Basu (2007) notes that genealogical research is ranked second in the reasons for using the internet. Had there not been a boom in family history, and had those amateurs not contributed to the compiling of data, there would not have been a digitisation project to make those records available.

Andrew Milne, born 1845, had emigrated to Australia. How much he knew about his own ancestry and his family origins is not known. However, the fact that he had decided to emigrate was not that surprising. His own father, George Milne, had migrated internally, from his native Aberdeen in Scotland to London, at least prior to 18364, when he had married Andrew Milne’s mother, Jane Pars. He had migrated south from Scotland to London by at least 18325. His own father had died in 1820. There is no knowledge on why he had migrated south, but perhaps it was due to the death of his father, the inheritance that he had from a property in Aberdeen, or the greater opportunities available in London. At least, there was no knowledge whatsoever on the internal migration in my generation, or my father’s generation, or in my grandfather’s. The narrative had not been passed on, and the family had been settled in London for generations.

The marriage certificate for Milne and Flynn stated that he had married at St. Paul’s Church, Rockhampton, Queensland, on 26 June 1890. I was somewhat intrigued, however, by the fact that he was a bachelor, aged 49 years, and that Ellen Eleanor Alice Flynn was a spinster, aged 50 years old. It was indeed the right person, since it stated that he had been born in London, England. Nevertheless, the age did not correspond with the real birth in 18456, and Andrew Milne himself had aged by 5 years. However, there may have been reasons for doing so (such as the fact that his wife was older than him, that he simply made a mistake, or that the civil registrar had). His father was listed as George Milne, hairdresser, and his mother was listed as Jane Parr. The misspelling in the name is not surprising since Pars is an unusual name, and only found in the branch of my third great grandmother’s family, after two brothers, Albertus and Evert Pars, emigrated in the very early 18th century from Groningen, Holland, to London, as a goldsmith and silversmith, respectively; after William of Orange and Mary had succeeded in gaining the English throne as Protestants, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Migration seemed to be a recurring family theme. The name ‘Parr’ was a far more English-sounding name. Andrew Milne and Ellen Flynn had both been living in Redcliffe, Duaringa, Bananashire, at the time of their marriage, in June 1890.

This, therefore, intrigued me on various levels. In the first instance, why had Andrew Milne waited so long to get married, and how did this one-time (1861 census) engineer’s machinist7, in the growing print industry in the hub of London of the mid-nineteenth century, end up as a simple labourer in Queensland, Australia? How had neither he, nor Ellen Flynn, married before, and what had become of their lives there? My curiosity had been piqued because I have the same name as this ancestor. However, more importantly we had both migrated to other places. Inevitably, migrants have an impact on the surroundings and on the communities in those places.

It was more than simple genealogy, or the meaningful ordering of data into relationships between people (Durie 2017). It was purposefully, ‘family history’, the surrounding contexts of history, society, and the political aspects related to certain decisions that might have been taken by those people (Durie 2017; Sleeter 2020). The two terms, genealogy and family history, are often taken to mean the same thing. Furthermore, it was not simply the micro-historical narrative that was of importance (Scodari 2016), the self-importance and personal pleasure, but the revelations on the macro-narrative (Shaw 2020; Sleeter 2020), in both the past and the present. The link between the micro and the macro levels of narration, on the level of the individual, family, and then society and the nation, became apparent even more so when the death certificate for Andrew Milne revealed that he had died on 29 July 1913, and been buried in the small town of Banana, Queensland, 127 km (150 miles) from Rockhampton, where he and Ellen had owned two farms, as ‘selectors’. They never had any children, but that land still went on to benefit others, after having been removed from the hands of a group of people, the native indigenous population in the area. Today, there is greater value recognised (Hershkovitz 2011) in genealogy and family history, due to the critical approaches that are provided, and new ways of analysing data from the perspective of elements in micro and macro narratives.

My academic life has been centred around questions on migration, integration, adaptation, and national identity, and what it means to belong, the question of nation-building, memory, and historical recounting of the past. I also, like my ancestor, decided to migrate. I currently live in another country to the one in which I was born, and now possess the citizenship of that state, meaning that questions on identity and belonging, and place, are important. In the research that I am currently undertaking on the presence of the Anglophone community in the SW of France, it became obvious that migration has effects on the communities and places that people settle in. The city of Pau, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, for example, saw an influx of English-speaking settlers in the mid-19th century, to such an extent that it became known as ‘la colonie anglaise’ [the English colony]. Today, there are remnants of that past, since some of the buildings on the Place Royale were financed by English speakers8, as well as the Boulevard des Pyrénées, which is the grand promenade overlooking the Pyrenees mountain range. Even the town’s trees and plants in the public gardens were planted to bloom in September, when the English speakers arrived for their winter sojourn there. It seems evident that when one migrates, there is an effect on the place and the surrounding community that is there. These questions also sprang to mind when I discovered Andrew Milne’s presence in Queensland, in another form of migration: colonisation.

It seemed interesting that while I had personally made a breakthrough in terms of the discovery of the long-lost ancestor, it also raised engaging questions as to power, land, and possession, in particular in Australia, and in Queensland, which had a unique way of addressing issues on migration and pull factors to encourage people to move to Queensland after it broke away from New South Wales (1859).

This paper, therefore, attempts to look at those elements through the lens of critical family history, and in particular, critical settler family history, taking up the challenge by Christine Sleeter to get “historians to ask about their ancestors”. Sleeter (2008, p. 3) coined the terminology and showed its importance since it not only analyses the past in a new way, but it connects it to the present (Sleeter 2008; Bell 2022) and challenges the way that we wish to perceive ourselves in the future (Bayer 2016; Sleeter 2016). Alistair Thomson (1990) notes that generally individuals/nations compose memories in order to feel “safe and comfortable” (p. 25), repressing those memories that cause pain, or negativity. He stated that “we seek alignment of our past, present and future lives”. As Simona Tobia (2019) underlines, therefore, “identity and memory become deeply interrelated” (p. 32).

This is at the heart of memory studies, how one remembers, what one remembers, and why. Victoria Freemen also undoubtedly contributed to the use of critical family history as a means of challenging indigenous erasure (Bell 2022), analysing the implications of colonisation and the amnesia associated with nation building in such beginnings. Benedict Anderson’s (1983) words on the ‘imaginary community’ (p. 6) hold true to the extent that national identities and communities are constructed, rather than being innate. National identities are established politically and socially, and are constructed in opposition to something else; outside what is the ‘we’ is also constructed through what is not the ‘we’ (Milne 2022). This is all the more important for the amnesia associated with the recounting of the narratives related to colonisation and land possession. However, it is not only about recounting histories on the powerful but recognising the histories that have been forgotten on the less powerful, and the consequences for them today.

Byrnes and Coleborne (2023) note that if the intricacies of family history have contributed to history, then critical family history makes an attempt to “understand the methodology and approach one step further [in order] to speak to power, authority, and, frequently, structural inequality”. Critical family history can contribute to revealing the past and seeing it through different eyes. The past has contributed to the way in which power is played out today, how the legacies and inherited past from colonialism have contributed to the continued position of certain groups in societies, whether they be of a privileged or unprivileged nature. What it is contributing to history and the understanding of the past, is stepping outside of the national narrative, by connecting the present, me, with the past, my ancestor, to reappraise that past and what happened to Aboriginal people in Australia. Therefore, the way that the past is analysed and re-told can also have an effect on legacies, and what society wishes to retain from them, as well as the ways that people are treated or perceived.

In the case of Andrew Milne’s and Ellen Flynn’s settlement in Banana, they had no issue, and as such their lines became extinct. The land was not passed onto their direct descendants, or those that were back in the British Isles (for Milne) and Ireland (for Flynn). Their direct lines died out. Nevertheless, Flynn, who was the last survivor in the married couple, passed on the land to other settlers in the same town of Banana, Queensland. As such, therefore, this does not erase the confiscation of land, or the empowerment of my ancestor through his ownership rights to that land, and by examining that from a critical perspective, it may provide the dynamics to address issues and understand positions in the present time.

I suggested earlier on in this article that settlement was not benign, and not without its consequences. In the safeguarding of the land that was owned by migrant settlors from Britain, there was a desire to protect those land rights and the livestock on them (Kociumbas 2004). There was contempt for the use of that land by peoples before British arrival on the territory (Kiernan 2007). Even prior to the Stolen Generations (1910–1970), the land was removed from the Aboriginal people, and they were forced out of those territories. The dispossession of those peoples meant that they became inferior to the settlors (Deschamps and Prum 2007). Thus, settlement became an instrument of indirect violence against those peoples. This was accompanied by physical violence in Queensland, through the Native Police. While I have no knowledge of any physical violence perpetrated by my ancestor, it is important to understand that the dispossession of the Aboriginal people in the area was largely accompanied by physical ‘dispersal’.

In particular, that ‘dispersal’, which was part of the Queensland frontier conflicts9, was implemented both by local settlers and through the formidable “crushing” force of the Native Police (first formed in New South Wales in 1848 and which remained in effect until 1915 in Queensland) (Richards 2005, p. 1). The indigenous people in Bananashire were the Gangulu. The town of Banana was where the Acting Sub-Inspector, Edward Seymour, for the Native Police “brutality killed an Aboriginal woman in 1866” (p. 145). He was found guilty of the crime and later discharged (1868), but not for his crime, only due to the “abolition of his position” (p. 145). In 1868, a letter regarding the Native Police in Queensland was written and published in the Queenslander in which it stated:

[B]arbarous outrages of this kind are frequent occurrences in the pastoral districts […] the native mounted police force, as at present constituted, is an unmitigated source of evil, and that, when once let loose, it makes no distinction between the innocent and the guilty10.

Banana was where James and Norman Leith-Hay and Thomas Holt, after squatting the pastoral land there illegally, obtained a licence for the area on leasehold (1855)11. Firstly, they had evicted, through what was termed ‘dispersal’, the Aboriginal occupiers of that land.

By the time Andrew Milne arrived in Queensland, the frontier had already been pushed further north. The Gangulu people were a group of tribes, made up of the Karranbal, the Maudalgo, and the Mulkali (Tindale 1974). After the passing of the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act in 1897, people from all over Queensland were sent to the Cherbourg Settlement reserve, where more than two thousand Aboriginal people were removed (1905–1939), from nearly 30 different tribal groups (Tennant-Kelly 1935; Blake 2001). The Cherbourg Settlement would become the largest settlement reserve in Australia and undertook a practice of ensuring “a clean and compliant labour force, kept at a distance from white settlement”, showing that “hygiene, as a concept, was closely linked to ideas of a duty to labour” (Brookes et al. 2014, p. 13). Hygiene was used as a means to control those Aboriginal people on reserves and, at the same time, allay the fears of the white settlers. As Brookes et al. (2014) note, this attention to hygiene was more important than the welfare of those on the settlement reserve (since they were perhaps clean, but often undernourished there). The intention was more to protect white settlers, than for the improvement of the health conditions of Aboriginal people. The consequences today are not only financial and economic, but are visible in health, education, social status, and in their mistrust of public services (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Durey et al. 2023).

The resurfacing of the past memory of my ancestor is important, since it has been lost. It is important that it should be told if there is to be a confronting of those past actions and the consequences of the colonisation of Queensland. Memory is a constantly changing element in what we choose to tell or not to tell in terms of micro, family narratives. The story of Andrew Milne and Ellen Flynn disappeared from all narratives, since the immediate group to which they belonged no longer exists. There was simply, as the etymology shows, no ‘member’ of the group who could ‘remember’, when thousands of miles away in London, their siblings also died. Andrew Milne’s mother died in 189312, his last remaining sibling; Colin Milne, my second great grandfather, died in 193813. Andrew Milne’s father had already died in 186014. By the middle of the twentieth century, there was no person alive that had met Andrew Milne before his emigration to and settlement in Queensland. He had been relegated to oblivion, forgotten, and archived. History can only be remembered if it is maintained as a memory, as part of a group. Andrew Milne had no group to ‘re-member’, re-attach him to the group, and remember him. However, today that is no longer the case, since genealogy has enabled those stories to be uncovered, but only if they are remembered in the contexts of their social, political, and economic beginnings, and the contexts in which they were played out. They resurface after decades of being buried in the archives.

Therefore, what were these particular contexts for Andrew Milne’s presence in Queensland in the mid-to-late nineteenth century?

As Maurice Halbwachs (2020) already established, remembering is a very social act, and we only remember in the groups that we hold membership in. It is the social frameworks that contribute to those memories. Traditional historical national narratives have eliminated, from the telling, those power struggles for land and power, and replaced them with settlement stories of a different nature, ones that are more acceptable to those that had power, property, and possession. Barclay and Koefoed (2021) note that what the family and, by extension, society (and on an even wider level the nation) decide to tell changes generationally, as part of a negotiation process that is collective (Green 2013; Dragojlovic 2015; Barnwell 2017).

It is with this in mind, and through the case of Andrew Milne’s nineteenth-century migration to Australia, and his subsequent settlement in Queensland, that I propose to examine the wider implications in their political, social, and economic aspects, as to how that land was removed from one group, taken by another. This must also be taken into account in the nuanced examination of Andrew Milne’s period of time, and the cultural baggage that he took with him when he emigrated there. He can neither be removed from his time, nor from his culture, but the way that we choose to look at what his time did and what he, as an individual did, should be examined in the light of today’s world, in the quest for the realignment of power and possession.

2. Queensland: From One Land to Another

Andrew Milne, born in 1845, appears for the last time in any records in the British Isles in the 1861 census15. He is aged 16 years old and is an engineer’s machinist in the print industry. This is not, in itself, surprising since his maternal grandfather, Edward Pars, was bound to Andrew Strachan, a printer, at New Street, Shoe Lane on 2 March 1790. A premium was paid by his father-in-law (this meant stepfather at the time, since the words were synonymous in the 18th century), David Lesley, for the sum of GBP 10 10 s. He was also bound on 1 November 1791 to Stephen Jones, a printer in Fetter Lane. The father, Edward Pars, a jeweller on Stanhope Street, Clare Market, is mentioned on both occasions, as being deceased. William Pars, Edward (junior) Pars’ brother, was also apprenticed to Charles Clarke, a printer of Northumberland Court, the Strand16. Andrew’s eldest brother, George Milne, was also a printer compositor. His younger brother, Edward Milne, was a printer’s reading boy. George Milne, the father, died in 1860, a year before the census was taken. The family was living at 11 Stamford Street, Christchurch, Southwark. There were eight children, along with a widowed mother, Jane Milne, Jane’s mother, aged 82, and a ‘nurse monthly’, living with them.

Andrew Milne’s death certificate, located in Queensland State Archives, states that he died at the age of 72, meaning that his birth, therefore, occurred in 1841, four years different from the actual date of 1845, but in line with his declaration of age on his marriage certificate in 1890. It is not unusual for people pre-20th century to forget their ages, or not to provide the correct one. His father is again mentioned on the death certificate as George Milne, a hairdresser, and a Jane Parr (with the spelling mistake). However, this has probably been provided by Ellen Milne, who declared the death, and she was basing it upon the marriage entry details, or what she believed she knew. There are zero entries for a George Milne married to a Jane Parr in Great Britain at any date for civil registration, ruling out that this might not be the correct person. It also states on the death certificate, the date of entry into the ‘Australian States’: 45 years present in Queensland. This would place entry into Australia at 1868. Unfortunately, the shipping lists, as well as customs lists, assisted passenger lists, unassisted passenger lists, and ‘Shipping Intelligence’ reports, published in Australian newspapers, are not complete. In particular, this is the case for Queensland, where a great number were lost in the 1893 floods that took place.

The name ‘Andrew Milne’ is not a common one, however. There were a handful of them only, throughout Australian states, in this period of arrival. There was only one that might fit, but it was for an Andrew Milne, an able seaman, who arrived in Brisbane aboard the ‘Wansfell’, with the ship’s master William Reynolds, leaving Southampton on 16 March 1866 and arriving on 28 June 1866. There are no other entries for an Andrew Milne arriving aboard any other ships, as either a passenger or a seaman. There are no entries for an Andrew Milne leaving Australia for this period.

Let us for a moment, however, interrupt the migration of Andrew Milne, and look at the arrival of Ellen Flynn, which is of some importance, since it reveals the conditions of travel at the time. Ellen Flynn appears to have been an assisted passenger who arrived from Ireland to Australia, aboard the General Caulfield. The General Caulfield was noted in the shipping details of the Brisbane Courier, 17 September 186417. It left Southampton on 28 May 1864, under the medical supervision of Dr. Barry. The health of the “immigrants had been very good”, except for at the start of the journey, when there had been a typhoid outbreak aboard the ship and they were treated for 32 days, with everyone aboard having recovered. But there were also six cases of measles, and two deaths (one from heart disease and one woman from diarrhoea). This shows the great dangers that were very present during the journey and the risks these migrants were prepared to take. Assisted passengers were poorer and their life expectancy was already diminished. The death rate aboard ships (despite dropping after the 1850s to the same levels as land deaths) was of considerable danger (McDonald and Shlomowitz 1990).

The newspaper report notes that Dr. Edmundson’s ventilating apparatus was installed on the ship to “expel the foul air effectually in a few minutes”. The state of the ship, and the passengers, were said to “amply testify to the safety of the commissioners’ system of emigration, both as to the fitting up of the ship, and the care taken to preserve the single females from the dangers to which they are too often exposed during so long a passage, with extreme care and unremitting watchfulness on the part of those to whom they are entrusted”. This is of paramount importance, since it was going to be read by those perhaps in Great Britain, and the decisions of Henry Jordan, the Emigration Commissioner (1861–1866), had to be seen to be working well (Morgan 2021). There was difficulty in the recruitment of female migrants. There was what was seen to be a ‘surplus’ of spinsters in the British Isles, after the census of 1851 had been taken, and there were conscious decisions to “emigrate them”18. The surplus of unmarried women was viewed by Victorian society as being a great societal danger, and the essayist William Rathbone Greg even enquired as to what should be done, advocating forced migration, to solve the issue (Greg 1869), in his piece entitled Why are Women Redundant? In parliamentary debates in April 1865, it was noted that there was an issue with the lack of women being sent to Queensland, notably. Apparently, there was a surplus of female servants who were in the Shetland and Orkney Islands, but it was impossible, due to their immense poverty, to get them to travel to southern England, where the ships left from19. There was a question raised as to whether it was possible to directly allow ports in Scotland and Ireland to leave for Queensland, rather than having to pay for their own passage to Southampton, or London, for example. Ellen Flynn embarked from Southampton and, therefore, would have had to travel there from her native Waterford, at her own expense. There was, therefore, a desire to transport people, including a number of Irish and Scots, to other parts of the expanding British Empire. Ellen Flynn was one of those people, encouraged perhaps by the promise of a change in circumstances, from the poverty perhaps that she experienced in Waterford. Eric Richards (1993) notes the consequences of such forced migration, the economic imbalances created, and the new societies constructed in those destinations.

It would be another 20 years before it would be determined that females travelled more often, but males migrated internationally, and females locally (Ravenstein 1885). However, this is no longer the case today, as migration has been feminised all over the world (Sharma 2011), and females travel internationally more than men. The number of females migrating has doubled in Oceania and Europe since the 1990s, as it has in the Americas. In the latter region, females represent approximately 60% of migrants in the data for 202220. In the 1860s, migration was still not fully analysed. Females, according to Ravenstein in the 1880s, migrated for marriage, locally, and due to obligation and poverty. He determined that while they migrated more, they migrated over shorter distances. Women certainly did not migrate with the same possibilities (during the journey, or upon arrival at destinations) as males. In particular, if Ellen Flynn was travelling alone, which appears to be the case21, she would have run into varying degrees of danger, both during the journey and upon arrival. She was a single woman and travelling on her own. This would mean dangers related to sexual and physical violence, as well as harassment or exploitation. It is only recently that migration, and the fact that it is not gender neutral, has begun to be examined from a different angle (UNFPA and IOM 2006). There were 93 single men aboard the General Caulfield and 98 single women.

It should be noted that the Brisbane Courier had to appear to be selling the merits of the safety of the journey, despite this not being the case, in order to encourage migrants and, in particular, females, who were decidedly lacking in Australia, to travel there. They, indeed, ran the risk of what is termed today as sexual and gender-based violence, during that trip. There was, and still is, a danger related to the violence inflicted upon females travelling.

Ellen Flynn was an Irish Catholic. However, in this mixed, interfaith marriage, the union with Andrew Milne was solemnised in a Protestant church. Perhaps it could be presumed that her faith was still important to her, despite this marriage since she was buried in the Catholic section of the Mount Morgan Cemetery (27 November 1923) and her denomination was listed as Irish Catholic22. We should recall that ‘mixed’ marriages were considered in need of Papal intervention, after the Synod of Thurles in 1850 (Barry 1959) decided (in the first Irish Catholic synod to be held since the 12th century) on the uniformity of nationwide policies, thus eliminating local interpretations and perceptions on the Catholic religion. Marriages were not allowed to be officiated over if they were between Protestants and Catholics, and a Papal authorisation would need to be requested, according to the recommendations by the Synod. It was, however, largely ignored, and Irish priests continued to decide on a local basis, at least, until 1858, when Rome officiated and declared that inter-faith marriages should not be recognised. The reality of everyday life was, however, different, in particular, in Queensland, where opportunities did not always exist. However religious Ellen Flynn may have been at the time she married a Protestant, in a church of that same denomination, she was buried a Catholic, which is revealing as to who decided where they married.

The fact that Ellen Flynn was Irish and ended up in Australia is not that surprising. Between 1788 and 1868, 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia, of which about one quarter were Irish (McClaughlin et al. 2010). In the 1850s, approximately 50,000 free immigrants (Knott 2002) were arriving in Australia every year. Ellen Flynn was an assisted ‘bounty’ migrant, meaning that she had probably been recruited by a bounty agent, who would be paid upon arrival. The value of a female servant between the ages of 15 and 30 would have been GBP 19 (McClaughlin et al. 2010). It is quite possible that Ellen Flynn was migrating to Australia to escape poverty, or to join someone already there that had previously migrated. However, there is no proof of this taking place. Nevertheless, it should be understood in the context of the fact that she was deemed to be ‘assisted’, although it could be taken as being displaced by the British State. The record of her arrival is documented in the shipping lists.

Nevertheless, there are no records of Andrew Milne leaving or entering Australia (or for Ellen Flynn leaving Australia), which does not mean that it did not happen. However, there are no details on what Andrew Milne might have done between the date of his arrival (situated around 1866–1868), and when he next turned up in archives in 1882, for the registration of cattle branding. He was listed in the Queensland Government Gazette for that year, living at Cattle Creek, on a farm, with the nearest town being Roma. The brand that is attributed to him is AM3 (with what is termed a ‘lazy’ ‘M’, turned 90° to the right, lying on its side). The certificate of possession was ‘^B19626′. This is highly important, since it is also the same certificate number and the same brand that is mentioned in the 1903 Queensland Gazette, granted to Andrew Milne, living in the town of Banana. This proves that it is the same person, since Andrew Milne was living at Chin Chin Park, Banana, Queensland, when he died in 1913. It can be ascertained, therefore, that Andrew Milne arrived at some point in 1866–1868 and disappeared until resurfacing in 1882 as a cattle farmer, with a unique brand, in Cattle Creek, Roma. He was living in Redcliffe, Duaringa, in at least 1890, when he married. He then moved in 1890, when he acquired the farm at Chin Chin Park in Banana, as a ‘selector’. Selection of land had been open from 1860 in Queensland. Selecting land meant that under the Crown Lands Alienation Act 1860, then 1868, and successive land acts that followed until 1910, a selector would make an application for a piece of land, and in return they would have to occupy that land, make improvements to it, including fencing, and also building dwelling houses and farm buildings on it. Not only was the land removed from Aboriginal people, but the cattle on that land had a lasting effect on the environment, emptying water holes and creeks (Reynolds 2006). The herds of sheep and cattle cropped the vegetation and there was strong competition for water.

Branding was introduced in 1872, under the Registration of Brands on Horses and Cattle Act, in Queensland, in order to resolve disputes and determine property rights, to be used as a method of conviction for horse and cattle theft. The ‘A’ series was introduced in that year. The ‘B’ series was introduced on 1 March 1882. Therefore, Andrew Milne was part of the second batch of brands that were distributed in Queensland, since his brand was AM3 (lazy ‘M’) and the series was ^B1962623. A quick look at the newspapers from the period shows that there were rising prices for meat, and cattle was being stolen. One article from 1872 states that the problem had reached “gigantic proportions”24 and was a “common-place affair”. The problem was said to be “in proportion as the population increases”. However, the author of a letter to the editor of a newspaper at the time stated that it was the fault of the:

[…] children in the bush [who] are imbibed with their mother’s milk, and from their earliest days […] are endowed with moral perceptions, what do they see and hear?—almost anything and everything they should not see and hear, drinking to excess and all its attendant evils, the most vile and foul language that can be imagined, in fact almost every conceivable vice, to which so-called civilized human beings give themselves up25.

It is, therefore, in the opinion of the author of this letter that it was the rise in population in Australia, the lack of moral fortitude of those people, and their vices that pushed them to steal. The author goes on to state that they end up in prison, and the Queensland population then has to incur the costs for incarceration. The 1872 Act stated that a brand directory would be set up and published, and that the brand would be placed on the cheek or the neck of any stock animal26. The Queensland government would also have collected a tax for the registration of a heard, as noted in the Queensland Government Gazette of 1872, in which “50 head and upwards” incurred a payment of “2 shillings and six pence per hundred or portion of a hundred”27, payable to the clerk of petty sessions. By 1882, therefore, Andrew Milne owned at least 50 head of cattle on a property in Cattle Creek. No trace of a farm there, however, has been found. In 1903, Andrew Milne was declared in the Queensland Government Gazette28 as having changed his address to Banana (Chin Chin Park) for the Brands Directory 1902. The certificate number and the brand remain the same, however. This, therefore, would lead to the belief that if Andrew Milne possessed at least 50 head of cattle, when the first brand was issued in 1882, then he possessed a farm or occupied land at least during that period. No farm file exists for this (Cattle Creek farm), since it would only have been lodged in the archives if he had selected that land and occupied it for the required period of time, as well as complying with the regulations in place for selectors. This would suggest, consequently, that he may indeed have had a farm, but that he had lost it somehow, perhaps through not respecting the land selector regulations. This will be examined in the following section, with regard to the farm file related to the Banana selector farm.

The Queensland State Archives reveal in the farm file (ID 2388970) that the farm was plot 8v, Banana, and selector Andrew Milne applied for the purchase of that farm on 29 July 1890. Milne and Flynn had married on 26 June 1890. A month later, Andrew Milne applied to purchase the plot of land that was 160 acres in size, at a price of GBP 1 per acre29. No other (known) property was held by Andrew Milne at the time of purchase. It should not be forgotten that these lands were taken from the indigenous Gangulu people by the British, through the land order distribution and selector procedure, from which Andrew Milne benefitted.

2.1. Queensland’s Plentiful Land: Reality or Hardship

Immediately upon the separation of Queensland and New South Wales in 1859, the former embarked on a vast programme of populating the newly formed state of Queensland, “twelve times larger than England” (Morgan 2021, p. 380). Between 1860 and 1900, it was the prime destination for migrants from England (Morgan 2021, p. 381) and, as such, recruitment procedures were crucial. The land order scheme was intended to ensure that only those that had enough money to pay for their passage in the first place, and the vetting by Henry Jordan of all prospective emigrants, would mean that less desirable people would not end up in Queensland (Morgan 2021). Nevertheless, those that were attracted to the opportunity were certainly not prepared for the hardship that they would sometimes endure there, including the climatic conditions, remoteness, isolation, necessary laborious work, and their lack of knowledge on farming and pastoral agricultural sectors. The intention of Jordan was to attract “small capitalists” (Morgan 2021, p. 391). Richard Daintree was a pioneer photographer in Queensland. He extensively promoted, as the Agent-General for Emigration for Queensland (1872–1876), through public lectures and through his photographs, the advantages of emigration to such a colony. His coloured photographs were displayed, for example, at the Exhibition of Art and Industry in South Kensington (1872) (Sanker 1977). The photographs were of mineral resources, including gold and maps, as well as prices related to the acquisition of land, and examples of emigrant ships were provided in displays for visitors to the lectures. These were new, modern, never-before-seen mediums of communication, and they were stunning in their effect to attract people to migrate (Newton 1988; Mackay 2004). However, the realities of what those people were to find in Queensland were considerably different. Andrew Milne had no knowledge of farming from his profession in the print industry, or from his immediate circle of family members.

In a letter dated 17 August 1895, Andrew Milne requested an extension to the requirements to complete his residency on the farm, under the Crown Lands Act 1884 to 1886. These acts allowed for the purchase of property from the government, for property up to a maximum of 1280 acres, purchased freehold after 5 years, and upon residency on the property and improvements to the land, including fencing, and the building of a dwelling house or homestead. In Andrew Milne’s letter to the Lands Commissioner, he requested an extension to this, stating that he had suffered “accidents to my person and the lack of employment I have been unable to make it pay and am now offered a situation by Mr. E. J. McConnel at Moura together with my wife as a married couple. I am anxious to take the situation so by doing so for a year or two I should then be enabled to improve my homestead”30.

It should be remembered that when the British arrived in Australia, they took possession of it as if it were terra nullius, a land void of human habitation or belonging to nobody. It was only relatively recently, in 1992, that in the case of Mabo vs. Queensland (N°. 2), it was ruled that the continent called Australia today was not void of habitation and was not terra nullius. It was under the principle of the land being declared as uninhabited (Mercer 1993; Banner 2005) that the indigenous population was dispossessed of their ancestral and millennial lands, as well as access to water, food sources, and the places that they lived in. The Proclamation of Governor Richard Bourke, on 10 October 1835, was of historic significance since it meant the disposition of indigenous peoples’ rights to the land, and the confiscation of all land, for future sale by the British State, through the doctrine of terra nullius. It is interesting that the recognition of the fact that Australia was indeed not a land void of habitation and human presence took so long in the history of Australia, and elsewhere. However, it should be noted that Foucault (1977) states in this respect that history is compounded into an unalterable state of belief of being the truth: “hardened into an unalterable form in the long-baking process of history” (p. 81). It is only through the resurfacing of individual stories of settlor histories that the grand narrative on the national identity of Australia can be brought into question. Genealogy and family history perspectives can challenge contemporary systems of power and knowledge, and what is deemed to be the long-baking process called history. Thus, a new perspective on the past may be contemplated, rather than a (re)construction of it (Sleeter 2016, 2020; Bayer 2016). It is necessary to investigate the individual genealogical past of each one of us, to examine under what circumstances that land was removed from the hands of Aboriginal peoples and maintained in the hands of those that preceded them.

2.2. Securing the Land Permanently and the Difficulties

One binding and protective, permanent element of selection of land was that it should show improvements and fencing. To defend Andrew Milne’s application for an extension to the requirements, in his letter of 1895, when he should have already completed the purchase, he stated: “I have been a constant resident upon my selection for more than two years and have spent most of my time over £100 in cash upon it but of these facts you are fully aware. I have fully paid £150 of improvements upon the selection besides which I have wire and building materials awaiting erection, for which I have paid £60”31. Andrew Milne and Ellen Flynn were incapable of making the land pay and had insufficient funds from pastoral grazing or the produce from the herd of cattle. They, therefore, wished to work temporarily for McConnel on the homestead in Moura, Queensland. Mr. E. J. McConnel was Edward John McConnel (1864–1930), son of landowners David Cannon McConnel and Mary Ann McLeod. The latter was the author of Memories of days long gone by the wife of an Australian pioneer (1905) and defended the ‘civilising’ of native indigenous peoples in Queensland. The book can be considered to be the “textual representation of a white colonial woman’s assumed racial authority over Indigenous people” (Dawson 2014, p. 100). She attempted to ‘improve’ their status, believing that they needed to be elevated by the adoption of British values and Christianity. As Dawson (2014) notes, Aboriginal peoples were considered inferior, and the legal system ensured that they had fewer rights. The Licensed Publicans Act 1838 (NSW) ensured that they were not able to buy, or even receive a gift of, alcohol. This continued in Queensland after the separation. The Aboriginal Firearms Act 1840 ensured that they were not allowed to possess, or use firearms, unless specifically authorised to do so (for the Native Police, for example). The Queensland Elections Act 1872 and 1874 made it certain that the indigenous peoples in Queensland were not allowed to vote, unless they specifically held property under freehold title from the British (which was not possible). Andrew Milne and Ellen Flynn would be working for the son of this settler, who believed that her specific role was to civilise, then Christianise, the native peoples.

Mr. Edward John McConnel provided the Land Board with a letter, recommending that they accept the request for extension lodged by Andrew Milne (undated, but received by the Land Board on 28 August 1895)32. He described Andrew Milne as being “an industrious and sober man and deserving of any consideration”33. In a letter dated 19 September 1895, Milne was allowed to “suspend for a period of six months”, for “the purpose of bona fide earning wages elsewhere”34. This he was granted, but it meant that he had to extend the lease considerably, and he did not enter into full ownership until 1900. He made an application in March 1899 to obtain the necessary documents proving his ownership, but the local office had mislaid the paperwork35. They admitted this, and when he wrote again on 28 November 1899, and applied for the Deed of Ownership, it was issued on 11 January 190036, for portion 8v.

McConnel’s letter also noted that Andrew Milne had been the victim of certain accidents “to his person” since entering into selection, in his letter to the board. Not only was selection unable to provide sufficient income for Andrew Milne, and he was obliged to undertake other activities to make up the money, but he also had strict rules to comply with regarding fencing, building, and land occupation. The occupation of the land was with the intention to reduce squatting and land rights unauthorised by Queensland (Weaver 1996; Panza and Williamson 2017; Byrne 2023). Alana Piper (2008) notes that in propaganda and handbooks from the second half of the nineteenth century the “drawbacks of an overtly masculine pioneer society” (p. 380) were overlooked, and to what extent the ease to find work and become successful were promoted, was wrongly set about, in particular for women. Piper also underlines the fact that men would have to work for years after arrival in order to be able to support a family. Perhaps these are the reasons for the late marriage of both Andrew Milne and Ellen Flynn. Perhaps neither of them wished to get married. It is possible, given the circumstances of their marriage, just after the accident (mentioned by McConnel) that the marriage was some sort of business relationship between them. There is no proof to indicate why they married and this can only be, at most, a supposition. What did happen, however, was that prior to the 1890 marriage, and prior to the purchase of the selection in Banana in the same year, Andrew Milne was reported in the local newspapers as being involved in an accident in 1889, telling of the dangers in Queensland, in comparison with the relatively comfortable life in London.

The Brisbane Telegraph noted, on Tuesday 22 October 1889, in an article that had the headline “Shocking Accident at Duaringa—A Whole Family Thrown off a Dray”37 that “a man named Andrew Milne, who lent them [Prideaux family] two young horses and dray”, with the household furniture piled on top of the dray and the five children sitting on top of it with the two parents, had had an accident and overturned. The article went on to say that “the leader [horse] trod on a hornet’s nest and the hornets stung the horses until they became unmanageable”. The Prideaux family were thrown out of the dray, and the wheel went over the abdomen of Mrs. Prideaux. It was said that “Milne stuck to the horses, but the wheel of the dray struck a tree stump, throwing him out, and the dray fell on top of him, smashing his body very badly”38. The accident had occurred, according to the article, the previous Thursday (17 October 1889). The Capricornian in Rockhampton noted, on 26 October 1889, that Andrew Milne was transported by train in a critical condition to Rockhampton Hospital, stating that he had been crushed “in so terrible a manner that his recovery is despaired of”39. Due to the remoteness of Duaringa and the lack of transport to the nearest hospital, “some considerable time elapsed” before they could take the train40. The Week, in Brisbane, noted on 26 October that Milne had broken his hip and both his arms above the elbow41. The Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs General Advertiser noted that neither Milne nor Prideaux received any medical attention before they managed to arrive in Rockhampton, after some time42. It is doubtful that the propaganda that had been used in order to encourage people to emigrate to Queensland included such startling facts as the daily calamities that might occur and the consequences of living in remote areas.

It is in these circumstances, therefore, that Andrew Milne married shortly afterwards, and selected a piece of land in Banana, not far from Duaringa, where he was living at the time of his marriage to Ellen Flynn. Just a few months after the accident, in which he broke his hip and both arms, above the elbow, he married Ellen Flynn.

The survey document in the farm file at the Queensland State Archives includes that the plot of Andrew Milne had a chain of waterholes that went across it from north to south, as well as Banana Creek, a river that flowed across it, also from north to south. There were forests, rich agricultural soils, and brigalows. It was bordered on the southern and western sides by roads, which were requirements of the Crown Lands Act of 1884 that the plots should be accessible by road. In the Queensland Government Gazette of 191043, Andrew Milne filed a request to have the road between plot 8v and the plot 7v, just to the south of it, removed. The intention was to join the two adjacent plots together (8v, which he already possessed, and plot 7v, just to the south of it). This was because, on 6 January 1909, Ellen Milne had made an application to select the property of portion 7v at a cost of GBP 1 per acre, and she had put down a deposit of GBP 4 16s, with an annual rent of 3d per acre (GBP 2) per year44. The property also had thickly timbered forests, rich agricultural soils, and a chain of waterholes, as well as access to the river45.

Access to lands, water, and forestry, or to cross the lands was prohibited (due to the fencing and property laws now in place in Queensland). The report by the ‘Bailiff of Crown Lands on Selection or Farm’ dated 2 July 1899 for Andrew Milne’s plot (8v) stated, in a diagram, that Milne had built a horse paddock worth GBP 5, a dwelling house worth GBP 30, and also a garden and a stock yard. The stockyard was described as “good and strong” and was worth GBP 25. There was also two miles of “good fencing” at a cost of “£25 per mile”. The farm was described as being a “dairy and agricultural, vegetable farm”46. Ultimately, Andrew Milne entered into full ownership of the property in 1900, as already stated. However, the importance of all of these elements are rights of ownership now connected inextricably with the rights of settlement on the land. Their delimitation, privatisation, and accessibility all contributed to the taking of those lands from the indigenous peoples in Queensland and their forced removal to the Cherbourg Settlement reserve. In that settlement, hygiene became the main object of concern, and “women saw their children die in conditions where scrubbed floors took precedence over full bellies” (Brookes et al. 2014, p. 94). The Cherbourg Settlement was previously known as the Barambah Settlement and was populated by the Aboriginal people that had first been sent to the Durundur Reserve, established from 1877 (Prentis 2008). It is precisely the resurfacing of this memory on my ancestor that is important, in order to refuse the erasure of colonial violence and any form of mystification on colonial domination through what has largely been deemed as ‘settlement’. The intention of Cherbourg, and other places like it, was to “inculcate in their inmates a personal and collective historical amnesia through the criminalization and attempted eradication of indigenous languages, spiritual belief systems, kinship, and entire ways of life” (Willis et al. 2019, p. 354). Deeming that colonisation to be mere settlement meant that there were rights that were associated with it.

In a letter written in defence of Andrew Milne to extend his settlement rights, Mr. Edward John McConnel notes that Andrew Milne provides “butter for the township from his small heard of milkers”47. The settlement on the farm, its development, and its geographic situation contributed to the expansion of the town of Banana. But Andrew and Ellen Milne were also attempting to enlarge their own property perhaps and own more land, in particular, through the selection of an adjoining piece of land. It was Ellen Milne who made the application to enlarge the farm. However, her application for plot 7v was rejected and her deposit returned. The Land Board wrote a marginal note stating that under the Land Act of 1897, section 86, paragraph 1, she had no right to make the purchase. The page that follows notes, “When reopened advise Andrew Milne, Banana”, dated 10 April 1909. Article 86 of the Land Act 1897 states the following:

A married woman shall not be competent to apply for any land as an Agricultural Homestead or Grazing Homestead, or to acquire any such selection unless she has selected the same before her marriage or becomes entitled thereto as the legatee, executrix, administratrix, or one of the next-of-kin of a deceased selector, whether before or after her marriage48.

It would appear that the land was proclaimed available for selection, again, in September 1909. While lands were undoubtedly taken away from the indigenous population in Australia, women were also denied the right to purchase land, in their own right. This is despite the fact that in 1902 women in Australia gained the right to vote, at a comparatively (with other nations) very early date. Yet, that right to vote referred solely to females of European heritage who obtained full suffrage. Discrimination remained for all indigenous peoples at all levels. Discrimination also remained for women in terms of equal pay, and rights related to access to contraception, and the right to work.

With regard to Ellen Milne, it seems rather surprising not only that she was refused in 1909, but also that Andrew Milne might be informed, since there had been a modification to the Land Act 1897, under the amendments that were added in 1902. Article 28 of the amendment law of 1902 noted that a married woman “shall be competent to acquire and hold a Grazing Homestead after the expiration of the first five years of the term of the lease thereof”49. Legally speaking, Ellen Milne should have been allowed to acquire the land, lease it for 5 years, and then she would become the owner, in her own name and right, as a married woman. In 1909, she was not allowed to, and her husband was informed.

The property was handed over to Ellen Milne in 1914 (13 July), when there was a Grant of Letters of Administration50 in favour of her, since Andrew Milne had died intestate in 1913. Ellen Milne died aged 82, on 27 November 1923, and was buried on the following day at Mount Morgan Cemetery, Rockhampton51. An issue of a deed was provided to Isabella Mary Berry, wife of Herbert Arnold Berry, for farm N°. 6902 (formerly AF 109 Banana, portion 7v) on 16 December 1931. It was only, therefore, at this time that I discovered in the Queensland State Archives file (Item ID ITM3462315)52 that Andrew Milne had acquired the adjacent property in 1909 that Ellen Milne had been refused. They had acquired both plots 8v and 7v, and they were both in the name of Andrew Milne. Ellen gave (at least) portion 7v to Isabella Mary Berry, “by way of gift and natural love and affection”, on 29 July 1920. I have not managed to discover what happened to the rest of the property (portion 8v).

It is here that my quest for understanding the context of my ancestor’s settlement in Queensland ended. However, the land settlement did not end with his death, nor that of Ellen Milne, née Flynn. The land was passed onto other selectors, and the indigenous people were deprived of it still. The taking of the land by European settlers began in Australia in 1788 and was complete by the 20th century. It was only through the landmark case of Mabo vs. Queensland (N° 2) 1992 that pre-existing title rights for indigenous peoples were recognised and through the Native Title Act (1993) that there was a process set up to allow for claims to be heard for native titles over land and waters.

3. Conclusions

Barnwell (2019) notes that “to research one’s family history is to reveal the process by which generations have shaped memory, editing ‘the family narrative’ in response to changing social ideas about which kinds of identities and families hold value and promise” (p. 398). In this paper, I have attempted to resuscitate a forgotten and lost member of the past, and to realign them in the presence of today’s values based on present-day worth (Edwards and Stratham 2000; Barnwell 2019). Faced with the stark reality of my own mortality (Lambert 1996), I have attempted to explore a more truthful analysis (Smart 2011) of what my ancestors might have done through critical family history, set within the present society in which I live. I have revisited the past. As Kuhn (1995) has noted, family histories are ‘memory texts’ (p. 5) that are being modified in the present, with a projection of what one might wish to become in the future (Thomson 1990; Bayer 2016; Sleeter 2016; Tobia 2019). Barnwell (2019) rightly notes that “new generations are not passive recipients of past memories or family histories, but actively reconstruct these stories within the contested and shifting political determinants of the present” (p. 402). Therefore, today, passive recipients of past memories on colonisation, settlement, the spoliation of land, and confiscation, with the violence perpetrated directly, or indirectly, on groups of indigenous peoples must be rectified in accounts of future narratives. This can be conducted on a micro level for family contexts and on macro levels for national identity stories that are recounted. Foucault (1977) noted that this type of genealogical/family history research does not “oppose itself to history as the lofty profound gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspectives of the scholar” (p. 77) It is an attempt not to locate the origins of an individual, a family, or a nation, but rather a commitment to the dissipation of the narratives that have not considered the reality of what was conducted. Family history theory can contribute to understanding the past, identities, and nation building.

Various questions arise as to identity regarding Andrew Milne and Ellen Flynn. For example, when did they respond to feeling Australian and, if they never returned, did they remain feeling British and Irish? There is no trace of either of them returning to their countries of birth. There are no traces of any exchanges with their families, and what might have been written in any letters. Contact with England would not have been cheap, at any rate. The cost of a telegram of under 20 words in 1872 between Queensland and London would have been GBP 9 16s 6d53. I have no knowledge of whether Andrew Milne communicated with his family members at home; but, I do note that in March 1890, he was listed along with those people that the postmaster of Rockhampton warned about letters that had been left unclaimed. He was informed that the letters, if not collected, would be sent to the Dead Letter Office in Rockhampton. This advertisement by the post office was put in the Morning Bulletin, 31 March 189054. The accident with the dray and horses occurred in October 1889. Given the gravity of the situation, he had perhaps still not recovered. In the June of 1890 he was to marry Ellen Flynn.

In the hand-written55 will by Jane Pars, Andrew Milne’s mother, dated 1883 (although she died in 189356), there is no mention of Andrew Milne. The other surviving siblings all obtain gifts. The bequests included leasehold properties at 20 and 22 Sedgemoor Place, as well as furniture, books, silver, and a portrait of George Milne. While Andrew Milne was embarking on his selection of land, his family were establishing their lives through property and possession in London. Colin Milne, his brother, was already by 187157 a goldsmith (working for Onoto De La Rue, as a penmaker). The career of Andrew Milne was very different in Banana. Conjecture can only ascertain some understanding as to why Andrew Milne was omitted from the will by his mother, when it was written in 1883.

There are a multitude of reasons why he might have migrated in the 1860s, including opportunity, persuasive communication and selling techniques, a land of opportunity, the call of prosperity, the discovery of gold, or an escape from London. Andrew Milne left England and travelled to Australia. He did not have the opportunity of easy communication, as a migrant may, indeed, have today. This surely had a profound effect on the construction of who he was, especially in a place such as Queensland, with the immigration policies put in place there.

While I do not presume to imagine what Andrew Milne considered himself to be, it can be said that outside of the group that defined itself as being firstly English, then British, in Australia, he would have been defined both by what he was and what he was not, in both his presence and absence. Australia was at the same time both very connected to Britain, but so far removed from it, not just geographically, but also philosophically, socially, and in terms of how it had been constructed. What is certain is that Andrew Milne’s identity was constructed geographically, both at home, in London, and also abroad in the theatres of colonisation that were played out, mapping places across the world, and in the minds of the colonisers, at the same time. His identity was also constructed within the colony in which he lived, firstly Queensland, then Australia. He moved from being a subject in his life in London, to a possessor of land, an imperialist in the colonies, subjugating, directly or indirectly, those that were there before him, through possession, and the taking of land from those people, the privatisation of water sources, the wealth that he accrued. There was in his identity a change, one that made him perhaps move across borders, from being British to being Australian, or what he perceived it as being, once settled there. He became a hybrid version of his own identity. His identity can only have been forged by his sense of who he once was, British, or perhaps English, and then imperial, but what he became surrounded by others in a similar manner. The native population of Queensland, and by extension the entire new nation that was being constructed for them, became the imperialists, disrupting the social order of ‘home’, into a new order, in which they ruled, and the subjects were the indigenous peoples, theatrics that were played out throughout the British Empire, wherever the British went. This hybrid identity was constructed knowingly, or not, from the settlement policies that were put in place, paving their arrival as imperialists.

However, in this article what is more important is my own identity, and of those around me, in the present time. As stated in reference to the intrinsic link between memory and identity (Tobia 2019), this memory must be revived in order to construct my own identity of today. If Aboriginal people are to be included in the identity of the history of Queensland, then what must be recognised is the past of those that settled there through colonisation and the consequences of the removal. If that community, however imaginary it may be (Anderson 1983), is to be constructed together and the nation re-formed in a different and perhaps improved way, then it must include these memories, also, not just on a macro level, but also a micro and individual level. Memories can no longer be composed to feel the safety (Thomson 1990) of the past, but they must now be composed together so that the Indigenous peoples in Queensland, and Australia, may feel that safety that they were deprived of through erasure (Bell 2022). In the resurfacing of this lost memory, I re-attach the member, my ancestor, to the here and now, to allow for (re)membering. In doing so, they are not brought back from the oblivion (Halbwachs 2020) to which they were sent when their immediate family group died out, but their actions are recalled now, here, so that the consequences may be seen.

It is for this reason that it is important to understand what the colonisation of Queensland brought about, and how it mapped out relations between the settlers, my ancestors, on however small a scale, and the peoples who inhabited those places, the Aboriginal peoples, for at least 65,000 years, before the British colonised those lands.