Jack Watson (cattle station manager)

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Jack Watson

John "Jack" Watson (March 1852 − 1 April 1896) was a frontier cattle station manager and drover in the British colony of Queensland and in the Northern Territory. He was renowned for his fearless behaviour and also his sadistic brutality toward Indigenous Australians. He was called "The Gulf Hero" due to much of his fame being achieved while working on pastoral properties located in the Gulf Country.

Early life[]

Watson was born in March 1852 in Melbourne in the British colony of Victoria. He came from the wealthy Anglo-Irish Watson family which had significant landholdings around Kilconnor in County Carlow, Ireland.[1][2] He was the eldest son of George John Watson who emigrated to Victoria in 1850 and was a noteworthy businessman and horse-racing identity, having important roles in establishing the Victorian Racing Club, the Melbourne Hunt Club, the Cobb & Co transportation company and the Melbourne Cup.[1][3]

Jack grew up in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda in a stately house named "Fenagh Cottage" after his father's home village of Fenagh, County Carlow.[4] He was educated at the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School where he excelled at sports, becoming captain of the rowing team. Jack also became an accomplished horseman with him, his father and brothers all being well known for their abilities in steeplechase racing.[1]

As a young man in the 1870s, it appears that Watson became bored with living in Melbourne and took to a lifestyle travelling by sea, heading to the tropical regions. It has been said that while working as a sailor he jumped into the water to rescue a man overboard, taking a knife to a shark that was cruising around the vessel.[5] The Watson family history states that he resided some of the time in the newly formed port town of Palmerston in the Northern Territory. For the remainder of the 1870s it seems that he continued to travel, occasionally returning to Melbourne.[1]

Queensland[]

The Watson family became involved in Queensland cattle station management through Jack's brother, William Henry Watson who was also known as Currawilla Bill.[6] In 1881, William Henry was appointed manager of Currawilla Station in the southwest of the colony of Queensland.[7] He was famous for his athletic and shooting abilities and would make the Aboriginal workers at Currawilla stand with matchboxes on their heads or between their noses and shoot them off.[8] These activities were similar to Jack's recorded hobby of shooting jam tins off the heads of Aboriginal people.[9]

Lawn Hill Station[]

In 1882, Jack himself was appointed manager of Lawn Hill Station in the Queensland Gulf Country, 600 km (370 mi) north of Currawilla. Lawn Hill was owned by Frank Hann, a man noted for brutality against Indigenous people.[10] Emily Creaghe, a traveller who passed through Lawn Hill in 1883, wrote in her diary:

"Mr Watson has 40 pairs of blacks' ears nailed round the walls collected during raiding parties after the loss of many cattle speared by the blacks."[11][10]

The massacres perpetrated by Jack Watson and Frank Hann when collecting these ears, were not the only ones committed at Lawn Hill. The local detachment of the paramilitary Native Police under Sub-Inspector James Lamond shot "over 100 blacks" from 1883 to 1885 on that property alone.[12]

As well as managing Lawn Hill, Watson led droving excursions from there to stock the frontier Macarthur River Station with cattle. While returning to Lawn Hill from one of these journeys, Watson encountered another droving party whose horses had been speared by local Aboriginal people at a place called Skeleton Creek. Watson took it upon himself and his "blackboys" to conduct a punitive expedition and spent two weeks tracking and hunting what fellow drover Charley Gaunt called "those niggers, shooting them down as he came up with them until there was not a black on the creek".[13] Watson also led another punitive expedition in the Burketown region around this time, where after a week out hunting the "cattle-killers" he returned carrying eleven human skulls.[5]

Watson would also employ torturous means of punishment when he was displeased with the Aboriginal employees. In a conversation with Alfred Searcy, Watson boasted that he would lash them with a stock whip to which a piece of wire was attached to the end, and at other times would drive a sharpened stick through the palms of their hands.[14]

Northern Territory[]

Alexandria Station[]

By 1886, Jack Watson was working for the North Australian Pastoral Company, mustering and droving cattle from their massive Alexandria Station in the Northern Territory to markets in the south.[15] He still maintained a business partnership with Frank Hann as well as his brother, the explorer and pastoralist William Hann. In 1889, William Hann committed suicide by drowning himself in the sea off Townsville. Watson, who was travelling with Hann, attempted to save him but failed.[16][17]

Florida and Auvergne Stations[]

In the immediate aftermath of William Hann's drowning in 1889, Watson decided to change employers completely and took on a contract with John Arthur Macartney to manage his Florida Station cattle property in Arnhem Land.[18] Indigenous resistance here was fierce with the previous manager of the property, Jim Randell, having to bolt a swivel cannon to the verandah of the homestead to keep "the blacks...at arm's length".[19] Watson took a more aggressive role against the Aboriginal population and would conduct expeditions to hunt them down. An associate of his recalled how Watson "wiped out a lot" of "the blacks" living on the coast at Blue Mud Bay and Caledon Bay.[13] During the period of Watson's management, another large massacre is recorded to have happened at Mirki on the north coast of Florida Station. The Yolngu people today remember this massacre where many people including children were shot dead.[20][21]

The wet season in Arnhem Land would sometimes flood the plains at Florida Station for months and Watson would spend these periods either shooting buffalo, lounging at the pubs in Darwin or travelling to Hong Kong or Shanghai to play polo.[22]

In 1892, flooding, fatal bovine diseases and Aboriginal resistance forced Macartney into the decision to abandon Florida Station. He employed Watson to take apart the buildings, muster up the remaining cattle and overland them to Macartney's other property at Auvergne Station on the Victoria River in the north-western region of the Territory.[23] The stock-routes in the Northern Territory that drovers such as Watson utilised to transport cattle were known places of violence. After interviewing Watson about them, the Administrator of the Northern Territory, Charles Dashwood, came to the conclusion that the drovers "shot the blacks down like crows along the route".[12] Before heading out from Darwin to shutdown Florida Station, it was communicated to Watson that a number of Yolngu men were going to kill him.[24] Reports emerged that Watson was speared to death while dismantling Florida in 1893 but these proved to be false.[25][26]

Once at Auvergne, Watson took over operations there from Sam "Greenhide" Croker who had recently been shot dead during a game of cards by an Aboriginal stockman named Charley Flannigan.[27] Watson only lasted another year at Auvergne, resigning in 1894.[28]

Victoria River Downs Station[]

In March 1895, Watson was employed by Goldsbrough Mort & Co to manage the Victoria River Downs Station which neighboured the Auvergne property.[29] Watson by this stage had such a "bad name among the blacks" that the Aboriginal people used as cheap labour on the station had all run away. Even his own "blackboy" servant named Pompey had cleared out. This did not change Watson's attitude and when he later heard that Pompey had been killed, he asked the local mounted police constable, William Willshire to bring him Pompey's skull so he could use it as a spittoon. Willshire complied with the request and brought him the skull.[29]

Not long after he started at Victoria River Downs, a group of Aboriginal people attacked a supply wagon travelling through nearby Jasper Gorge. Two colonists were seriously wounded and a significant amount of firearms and ammunition were taken. It was thought that with these weapons, a formidable local Aboriginal uprising could result. Before the police could act, Watson decided to organise a punitive expedition himself, to punish those involved and also try to recover the guns. He gathered 17 armed and mounted men and in two days tracked down a large camp of Aboriginal people, fatally shooting possibly 60 people. Watson did not find any guns but he did return with three captured women. One of these women had a broken arm, another was covered in welts from being whipped and the third was lactating from her breasts but no child was with her. These women later escaped.[29]

Death and legacy[]

Jack Watson died in the Katherine River on 1 April 1896. While transporting supplies across the river to the town of Katherine with his companions, Watson decided to swim across but soon disappeared. It is unclear whether he was drowned or taken by a crocodile. His body was never recovered.[30] An obituary in the local newspaper described Watson as "a fearless and clever horseman...a rough diamond...who was guided by a spirit of daring almost amounting to recklessness." It goes on to say that "the natives more than once received terribly severe lessons" from Watson and that "his ideas of revenge for murders or station depredations committed by the blacks were scarcely orthodox but they were generally up to requirements."[31] A more recent newspaper article described Jack Watson as a "total monster."[32]

In 2008 artist Judy Watson collaborated with Yhonnie Scarce to commemorate the escape of her great-great grandmother Rosie from Lawn Hill Station. For the work, the two artists cast 40 pairs of ears of volunteers and nailed them to a wall.[33]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Coutts, Peter (2019). The Watsons of Kilconnor, County Carlow, 1650 – present. Nerang: Paragon Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78222-621-5.
  2. ^ O Riain, Flann (26 February 2001). "kilconner 1342". Irish Times. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  3. ^ "George John Watson". Racing Victoria Hall of Fame. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  4. ^ Peterson, Richard (2009). "Fenagh Cottage". A place of sensuous resort, buildings of St Kilda and their people. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Hill, Ernestine (1951), The Territory, Angus and Robertson, ISBN 978-0-7254-0019-4
  6. ^ "Memories... Browsing Back Along the Years". The Longreach Leader. Queensland, Australia. 13 December 1944. p. 6. Retrieved 23 December 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ^ "History of Currawilla". Townsville Daily Bulletin. LX (280). Queensland, Australia. 24 November 1938. p. 3. Retrieved 23 December 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. ^ "The romance of old homesteads". The Richmond River Herald And Northern Districts Advertiser. 26 (1409). New South Wales, Australia. 9 February 1912. p. 8. Retrieved 21 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  9. ^ Buchanan, Gordon (1933), Packhorse and waterhole : with the first overlanders to the Kimberleys, Angus & Robertson Ltd, retrieved 21 October 2020
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b Sutton, Candace (8 July 2019), Grisly secret of cattlemen who kept '40 pairs of ears' as trophies in outback horror house, news.com.au
  11. ^ Creaghe, Emily Caroline; Monteath, Peter, 1961- (2004), The diary of Emily Caroline Creaghe : explorer, Corkwood Press, ISBN 978-1-876247-14-0CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b Roberts, Tony; Roberts, Tony (Anthony John), 1945– (2005), Frontier justice : a history of the Gulf country to 1900, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3361-6CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b "Old time memories". Northern Standard (52). Northern Territory, Australia. 6 July 1934. p. 4. Retrieved 21 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  14. ^ Searcy, Alfred (1907), In Australian tropics, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, retrieved 21 October 2020
  15. ^ "Stock Movements and State of the Country". The Queenslander. XXX (565). Queensland, Australia. 24 July 1886. p. 153. Retrieved 21 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  16. ^ "Townsville (Q.)". Australian Town and Country Journal. XXXIX (1006). New South Wales, Australia. 20 April 1889. p. 16. Retrieved 21 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  17. ^ "The Australasian pastoralists' review: a monthly journal and record of all matters affecting the pastoral and landed interests throughout Australasia", Australasian Pastoralists' Review, Melbourne: Twopenny, Pearce and Co (Vol. 9 No. 4 (15 June 1899)): 213, 1891, ISSN 0314-7096, nla.obj-540836800, retrieved 21 October 2020 – via Trove
  18. ^ "News and Notes". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XV (813). Northern Territory, Australia. 1 June 1889. p. 2. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  19. ^ "On the Track". Morning Bulletin (19, 211). Queensland, Australia. 13 March 1926. p. 3. Retrieved 20 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  20. ^ Ryan, Lyndall. "Mirki massacre". Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930. University of Newcastle, Centre for 21st Century Humanities. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  21. ^ Read, Peter (2002). "Reconciliation, trauma and the native born" (PDF). Humanities Research. 9 (1): 29–35. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  22. ^ "THE CALL OF THE NORTH". Truth (1299). Queensland, Australia. 8 February 1925. p. 12. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  23. ^ "Siftings, Local and Otherwise". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XVI (963). Northern Territory, Australia. 15 April 1892. p. 3. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  24. ^ "Northern Territory Times". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XIX (1004). Northern Territory, Australia. 27 January 1893. p. 2. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  25. ^ "Further Outrages by Blacks". The Week. XXXV (897). Queensland, Australia. 3 March 1893. p. 23. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  26. ^ "Siftings, Local and Otherwise". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XIX (1006). Northern Territory, Australia. 10 February 1893. p. 3. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  27. ^ "Murder of Samuel Crcker". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XIX (1029). Northern Territory, Australia. 21 July 1893. p. 3. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  28. ^ "Notes of the Week". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XX (1074). Northern Territory, Australia. 1 June 1894. p. 2. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  29. ^ Jump up to: a b c Lewis, D. (Darrell) (2012), A wild history : life and death on the Victoria River frontier (1st ed.), Monash University Publishing, ISBN 978-1-921867-26-2
  30. ^ "The Drowning of Mr. J. Watson". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XXII (1171). Northern Territory, Australia. 10 April 1896. p. 3. Retrieved 22 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  31. ^ "The Late Mr. John Watson". Northern Territory Times And Gazette. XXII (1170). Northern Territory, Australia. 3 April 1896. p. 3. Retrieved 21 October 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  32. ^ Sutton, Candace (8 July 2019). ""Total monster," outback horror house". Daily Mercury. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  33. ^ Reich, Hannah (5 December 2020). "Australian history put through the looking glass by Aboriginal artists Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce in new exhibition". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
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