The Curr despatch.(... an eighteenth century document contradicts evidence of the targeting of Australian aborigines)(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: I am writing in response to "Whitewash Confirms the Fabrication of Aboriginal History" by Keith Windschuttle (October 2003). The author makes a number of claims relating to a chapter I contributed to Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History and to myself personally which I feel must be challenged and corrected.

In my chapter I referred to an entry in the diary of Rosalie Hare describing an expedition mounted by the Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL Co) vessel the Fanny to Cape Grim for the purpose of killing Aborigines in early February 1828. Hare's diary also mentions that twelve Aborigines were killed in this raid. The Manager of the VDL Co, Edward Curr, in his despatch to company directors in London claimed that the venture was unsuccessful and no Aborigines were killed. After pointing out that I made no mention of Curr's despatch in a twenty-minute paper that I delivered at a University of Tasmania conference in May, Windschuttle goes on to make the absurd claim that I only learned of the existence of this despatch from him at the conference and I then went on to "retrieve it from the archives" to reproduce it in "Manne's hook". This claim is untrue.

My paper was the first to be delivered at the conference and, with a strict twenty-minute time limit, I was not able to include every source for the issues addressed. During Windschuttle's right of reply he pointed out that I had not mentioned Curr's despatch. In response I explained why I had not. Curr's report to his directors was highly implausible, who would believe that men familiar with the conditions at Cape Grim would have crept up on Aborigines in the dark and, having their quarry silhouetted against their campfires, would have sat in the rain and cold all night to await the arrival of dawn and the loss of advantage only to discover that their powder was wet and their muskets wouldn't fire. The proposition is ridiculous. The details that I gave in my response indicated that I was very familiar ...