Setting up St Joseph's Mission

Fr. Anthony Strele SJ, Fr. John Evangelist Neubauer, Br. Gregory Eberhard and the first Australian-trained Jesuit, Fr. John O’Brien journeyed north via Thursday Island, home to about four or five Catholic families in the diocese, and arrived in Port Darwin in September 1882.¹ They were assigned 320 acres at a remove from the twelve-year old township. Rapid Creek ran through the length of the property down to Shoal Bay and at the north-eastern boundary a huge banyan tree covered 'easily a quarter of an acre'. This was the territory of the Larrakia and Woolner people and according to Fr. Strele the site was known as Gorumbai, meaning an 'elbow' in the creek.²

According to Dalton the missionaries easily found Aboriginal people with enough English to be engaged as labourers to clear land and commence a plantation. They planted banana, pineapple and tobacco in the rich black soil and erected a mission house on the hill.³ From April to August nobody showed up at Rapid Creek but in August 1883 there were about fifty adults and many children in the camp, and twelve Aborigines were seen working.⁴ Aboriginal people were employed to sink a 40-foot well, to clear and fence 40 acres, and construct a 25ft bridge over Rapid Creek. ⁵ ‘They can use any tool we put into their hands’. Soon the mission had a school building with verandah, a four-room residence with a verandah, a two-part dormitory and a kitchen and storeroom all made from galvanized iron.⁶

The South Australian government contributed £100 per annum⁷, supplemented by subscriptions in Austria, America and Australia.⁸ Fr. Strele mentioned that Countess Walburga Lazanzky in Prague donated many things including a picture of the black Madonna.⁹ The life-size statue of St. Ignatius caused a stir when the missionaries unpacked it, because 'the blacks fled thinking it was a person'.¹⁰ When Br. Eberhard fell sick the Aborigines¹¹ showed great distress and kept inquiring about the patient, shedding tears and raising loud lamentations. The missionaries saw this as a sign of the strong attachments that they had already formed.¹² It is also possible that the residents made a show of their concern in order to avert any blame, and any subsequent revenge, in case Br. Eberhard died.

The mixed Aboriginal flock

The missionaries formed a positive opinion of the Larrakia and Woolner people, finding them 'much more intellectually gifted than those of South Australia'.¹³ People from the Alligator Rivers area visited every year and the missionaries found them to be 'much like the Alpine people of Europe, good humoured, skinny-legged and tall (6 feet high’)' - in other words, just like the Tyrolean cowherds of Strele's Heimat. Wagait and ‘Wilmonga’ (Woolwonga) people from the area towards the Daly River also visited the Rapid Creek mission. By 1884 Strele realised that it was necessary to 'segregate the natives'. 'It seemed to the Missionaries that they should begin by helping the Aborigines on the Daly River ... accustoming them to a stable settlement, and pre-empting the district' which looked like it might be invaded by settlers, and they wanted 'to get a second station in an area still free from contact with whites'.¹⁴ This was either a grave misjudgement of the situation on the Daly or a diplomatic silence on the warzone developing there. After four white men had been killed at the Coppermine in September 1884 the revenge visited upon Aboriginal people of the Daly River decimated their numbers (see Daly River missions - Life on the Daly). It has since been falsely assumed that the Woolwonga people became extinct as a result, however Woolwonga people kept in contact with the Jesuits and often appear in their diaries.¹⁵

Fr. Strele strenuously resisted popular negative opinion about Aborigines that cast them low on an evolutionary scale in terms of their morality and civilization. He argued that such opinions stemmed from superficial knowledge of indigenous people and from 'foolish reports of even their physical appearance'. 'How could it be possible for such as these [ill-informed critics] to be in a position to give a trustworthy account of the mental capacity of these [Aboriginal] men?'¹⁶ Strele had every hope that it was possible to 'accustom them to a stable settlement', and at any rate the Whites themselves were 'not above shedding blood and stealing', by which Strele meant stealing Aboriginal land. He found that women came to the mission station 'more readily than the men', being responsible for feeding their families and therefore already used to working. The polygamous marriage arrangements meant that 'the women are practically their slaves.'¹⁷ (This assessment foreshadows that of Fr. Gsell at Bathurst Island thirty years later.)

Expansion

The missionary staff gradually expanded. Fr. Neubauer left in March 1883 due to illness, but in February 1884 Fr. Joseph Conrath and Br. Vincent Scharmer arrived, and in November 1884 Fr. Joseph Kristen came with Br. Joseph Sboril, so they now had seven staff. Fr. Strele went to Adelaide to arrange a further lease ready for expansion. The tried and tested model of Jesuit Reductions involved allocating private agricultural plots to every married Christian couple. Their hopes for the expansion of Rapid Creek were rebuffed in May 1885 because 'the reserve is too near Palmerston to be increased in size'.¹⁸ All the more determined were they to branch out to the Daly River because they 'paid much heed to tribal country from the beginning'.¹⁹

The first solemn baptism of fourteen children at Rapid Creek took place on 24 August 1885. Armed with this success Fr. Strele attended the 1885 Plenary Council in Sydney and undertook a fundraising tour in the south in 1886. The Queen of the Holy Rosary Station was established on the Daly River in October 1886. In May 1887 Fr. Strele departed for America and Europe to raise more funds, leaving Fr. MacKillop as superior of the missions.

In 1887 Rapid Creek had between 30 and 40 residents, including a large group from the Alligator Rivers, who were coming every season to spend some time in the area.²⁰ That year the mission recorded a good rice harvest as well as a crop of pineapples and bananas. A bread oven was installed and instead of giving out flour three times a day for the residents to make their own damper, the missionaries were now able to give bread. This looked like more food, and was more appealing, and also facilitated the time-keeping on the mission. Fr. Duncan McNab (1820-1896), who had been instrumental in getting the support of the Roman Catholic Church for this mission, now aged 68 and living with the Jesuits in Melbourne, visited Rapid Creek on his return from Western Australia where he had just gathered up his remaining possessions. He donated some church furnishings and the proceeds from the sale of a horse, and praised the efforts of the Jesuits telling them that they 'had done more in a few years than in forty years at New Norcia.'²¹ (Fr. McNab had been refused admission to the Benedictine Order at New Norcia.)

The first solemn baptism the Jesuits performed in Darwin was a disabled Queensland pastoral worker. 'Queensland Harry' joined the mission to learn how to use the printing press and helped with the school and the production of school books in 1885.²² In 1889 he was courting Maria, who declined him, and in February 1890, still referred to as a neophyte, he left without a word.²³ A prisoner by the name of Wanti was also baptised as Bartholomew in 1897. He was under sentence with hard labour for killing a white man in retribution for the killing of one of his relatives at Croker Island and conducted himself so well that 'every day he received the highest number of good conduct marks' in the prison.²⁴ According to Strong SJ the nine years of mission at Rapid Creek produced only one adult baptism.²⁵

Strele's 1887 report contains the detailed description of the funeral of an old man known as 'Telegram'. The missionaries understood him to be dying of hunger, had him brought to the mission to try and revive him with food and to be baptised before death, and observed that the wailing and crying took place at each of the three places he had last been - the mission, his dying camp, and the place where he had stayed before that. The old women did most of the wailing, especially two close relations, who also flagellated their heads, arms and backs with sticks and firebrands for two days. The body was wrapped in bark and taken to a shallow grave, but before it was buried these two old women took the children by the hand and crossed the grave with each child back and forth. No other women attended the funeral, as women generally did not attend funerals. Thirty days later, and a year later again, there were further lamentations, but no tree burial as in other parts of the country. ²⁶

The mission residents tried to accommodate the expectations of the missionaries, who wanted everyone to stay on the mission year-round and to keep the children at school. If they wanted to leave the mission they consulted first with the missionaries (for 'permission'), and had to leave the children behind. The children then absconded a few days later to join their parents. When they all returned the children were taken back into the school and the parents were excluded from the mission for a week. 'They accept the penalty without complaining.' The missionaries knew that their hopes of conversion must rest in the younger generation, and therefore 'one must try with unwearying patience to weaken the influence which by tribal custom, the elder have over the younger.'²⁷

Trouble

In May 1887 a fight erupted at Rapid Creek that showed up some deep rift of misunderstanding between the missionaries and the locals. The Alligator Rivers people camping at the Rapid Creek had run out of food, so the missionaries gave them a sack of flour. This caused the enmity of the Larrakia and Woolner, who evidently considered the missionaries and all their supplies as 'theirs'. One of the Elders, 'a man of considerable eloquence', left the station enraged (and 'without the necessary permission'). Much debate ensued until the men painted themselves and battled it out at the beach four miles from the mission. Five men were injured and one from the Alligator Rivers died from his wounds. The Elder who had caused the confrontation was ordered off the mission.

'He thought the order was a joke, but when he realized that it was meant seriously he went. He soon returned, though, leading a great crowd of natives painted for war and armed with stone-pointed spears. It happened that there were in the Station only one Father and one Brother. The Blacks waved their weapons, and with bold aspect threatened the worst. But this trick of the natives who are close neighbours of the Whites is well known, and they were ordered off. They went, leader and all and Ours [the Jesuits] remained on the Station.'²⁸

It looked like a victory for the missionaries. The report does not state how the warriors were persuaded to retreat. (Br. Scharmer did have a reputation with his gun.) For the next month the remaining mission residents were so fearful that they 'did not dare to sleep in the camp at the Station, but withdrew every night into the densest part of the bush'. The missionaries thought the residents were afraid of the Alligator River people because the traditional friendship between them and the locals was now shattered. ²⁹ The 1887 trouble is generally described as a tribal fight, but more significantly the incident also revealed a gulf between the missionaries, who felt that they were in charge, and the Larrakia/Woolner leaders, who had tolerated the use of their land and were willing to defend it. Dalton SJ felt in hindsight that the Rapid Creek mission never recovered from this blow.³⁰

Decline

The Rapid Creek mission popuation was now much reduced. Fr. Strele arrived back in Darwin in February 1889 with new recruits so that the Jesuits numbered six Fathers and eight Brothers, and Sacred Heart Mission at Serpentine Lagoon could commence to compensate for the decline of Rapid Creek. At Rapid Creek the Woolner people were 'sent away', and some young Djerait men from the mouth of the Daly River were 'assembled' presumably in readiness for a move to Serpentine Lagoon.³¹ Fr. Conrath and Br. Sboril (and possibly 'Queensland Harry') formed the skeleton staff at Rapid Creek where, according to Dalton SJ, only 'a faithful few' remained to look after the stock and plantation, while the missionaries turned their hopes to the Daly River area.

In 1891 the Jesuits collapsed all three stations into a fourth site on the Daly River, also named after their patron St. Joseph. They herded the livestock to the new site and withdrew altogether from Rapid Creek. The idea of aligning the Jesuit mission policy of Reductions with the government aims of training cheap labour had failed. (The Moravians in Victoria had already garnered praise with much the same model - see Point Pearce.) The government withdrew its subsidy, with dire consequences for the missionaries and residents on the Daly River mission in 1892.

According to Fr. Conrath, Rapid Creek 'had a miserable existence, from its beginning to its end.'³² When Fr. Fleury resumed church service in Darwin in 1900 he noticed that the only Aboriginal people attending church were from the neighbourhood of the Daly River.³³