EVILDOERS FEARED BLACK TRACKERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 3 January 1930, Page 9

EVILDOERS FEARED BLACK TRACKERS.

KELLY GANG HATED “ LITTLE BLACK DEVILS.” The black tracker who beat a ’plane in searching for a missing jackeroo at Longreach, Queensland, recently is following, in modern fashion, a tradition set in the bushranging days of long ago, when native trackers were recognised as the best of all searchers. The Kelly gang feared O’Connor’s black trackers as they feared not all the Victorian police force, says a writer in the “ Adelaide Observer.” Humble, primitive and despised, the native people of Australia have brought one unique gift to the service of white justice. In fallowing the trail of evildoers who have taken the bush for the sanctuary of lawlessness, they have far excelled the efficiency of the most skilful detective. As early as 1525, the possibilities of the black tracker were recognised. At that date the young colony of NewSouth Wales was terrorised by bands of bushrangers, and the Legislative Council addressed a memorial to Governor Brisbane, suggesting that small parties of soldiers and natives, under the charge of constables, should be stationed on the main roads out of Sydney to keep watch for desperadoes. Brisbane duly forwarded the memorial to Bathurst, but there the proposal lapsed. A year later, Brisbane’s successor, Sir Ralph Darling, recommended police officers to attach some of the most intelligent of the natives to their parties, “as these People may be made extremely useful, if properly employed, in tracing the Bushrangers and discovering their Haunts. It will be left to the Discretion of the Officers to Reward the Natives according to their exer tion; for which purposes some Slop Clothing will be put at their Disposal, and they will be at Liberty from Time to Time to furnish them with such provisions as they may require when employed.” The Ghost of the Pool. A remarkable instance of the black tracker’s skill at that early time has been recorded. One Fisher, of Campbell Town, an ex-convict, who lived with another emancipist called Worrell, had mysteri ouslv disappeared. This in itself was no great matter in those days, and nothing more was thought about it until a story went round that Fisher’s ghost had been seen sitting on a fence at the corner of his home paddock. Superstitious bushmen then demand ed an inquiry, and a police trooper, with two natives, made a does search for the missing man. One of the trackers finally turned his attention to a pool of water. _ _ “ Here,” said the trooper, in giving evidence afterwards, “ Gilbert took a cornstalk, which he passed over the surface of the water, and put it to his , nose, and said he 4 smelt the fat of a white man.’ ” The black next turned into a small creek leading out of the pool, and came at last to a stop at a place on its bank ‘ There’s something here,” he said, and. when they dug, the body of the murdered man was found. Worrell confessed to the murder at his trial, and was executed. One black tracker at least put to ill use his experience iu the service of justice. Mosquito was a member of a Sydney tribe, who had been transported to Van Diemen’s Land. He was used there in hunting escaped convicts, but at last he escaped himself. At Oyster Bay he • ecame the leader of a tribe of 200 blacks, and terrorised the island by his atrocities. As a bushranger he was thorough, and left only the mutilated remains of his victims as evidence of his hold-ups. A great reward was offered for the capture of Mosquito, end another native finally tracked him down. He was captured desperate fighting. After the Kellys. Black trackers, as distinct from the black police—who had massacred so many of their own people in Queensland—achieved interstate reputations. O’Connor’s trackers were borrowed from Queensland to help in hunting down the Kellys. “Of all those who pressed close upon their heels,” says A. L. Haydon in “The Trooper Police of Australia,” “the bushrangers most feared O’Connor’s trackers. These blacks, Hero, Jack, Johnny, Jimmy and Barney by name, were men of exceptional skill, who had been in the Queensland Native Mounted Police for many years. By their quickness in picking up and following a trail, the trackers kept the gang in a continual state of suspense. The Kellys more than once evinced their fear of these sleuthhounds—‘little black devils,’ they called them—being far more anxious to shoot them than the troopers whom they could more easily hoodwink. “Sir Watkin Wynne/* a very skilful and bra\-e black tracker, bore a notable part in the break-up of the Clarke gang of bushrangers. He lost an arm in the fight, and was rewarded by being made an honorary sergeant-major; but his honours apparently went to his head, and he drank himself to death. “Native assistant Bilella” also stands out among famous trackers. This black boy was the protege of Sir Patrick Jennings, of Victoria, who had him educated at Lvndhurst College. He made several attempts to follow a •darned calling, but the call of the bush was always too strong for him. Early Training. Police officers take their best trackers straight from an aboriginal camp, as civilised life spoils the keenness of native perceptions. Tracking is not a case of special gifts, for all uncivilised aborigines can accomplish the seeming miracle of tracking down an emu or kangaroo bv the minutest of signs. In an almost waterless country, where native animals are scarce, this has been the gift of life to countless generations. Native children are schooled by Nature as soon as they can run about. From infancy they learn to draw tracks in the sand; ana to “look out tucker” is the main occupation of adolescence. In a higher civilisation, it is conceivable that the native mastery of the ways of Nature, the keen perceptions brought to perfection in the wild life of the bush, might be put to some use other than the tracking down of human beings. Then aborigines would be the animal tamers, the naturalists, and the interpreters of the unknown life of the bush. But before such an advance in civilisation, the child race, with its one pitiful but extraordinary talent, will have perished from the earth