Carl Adolf Feilberg
Encyclopedia
Carl Adolph Feilberg was a Danish-born Australia
n journalist
, newspaper editor, general political commentator and human rights
activist.
Yet it so happened that his most lasting legacy became the numerous articles he wrote dealing with the most painful issue of all - Queensland’s frontier indigenous policy, Native Police system, and what he continually argued was an urgent need for the government to reform and move to protect the fundamental rights of indigenous people. An issue which was to remain unsolved, contested and a painful legacy that even his closest friends would prefer to forget rather than to remember.
Indeed, Carl Feilberg is beyond question the most outstanding advocate of indigenous human rights in the history of colonial Queensland, and he certainly belongs in the ranks of the most notable of his kind in the history of colonial Australia. Almost all indigenous policy critical articles, editorial comments and editorials printed in the Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander
between 1874 and 1886 were authored by Carl Feilberg. Additionally he conducted two lengthy campaigns, one in the Queensland Patriot in 1878 and the other and most notable in the Queenslander in 1880, triggering significant public and parliamentary debates centred around the issue of the colony's Native Police Force. Yet still, there are very few people whose writings and the response created that are more frequently cited today, yet there is probably no one whose name and personal history has been more thoroughly forgotten. It is almost as if someone set out to illustrate the wording of late Professor Bill Stanner
(1905-1981) about ‘the great Australian silence’ and ‘the cult of disremembering’.
Carl Feilberg was born on 21 August 1844 in a small apartment at 1 Bredgade
in Copenhagen
, Denmark
, as the first born and only son of Danish Royal Navy lieutenant
, Christen Schifter Feilberg (1808–1853) and wife Louise Adelaide Lindberg (1809–1850), daughter of a planter on the island of St. Croix in the then Danish West Indies
(his mid name was spelled Adolph with 'ph' in his birth record and so also in his prize essay from 1879, but he frequently used Adolf with 'f' as his personal signature). Following the tragic deaths of both parents, Feilberg was placed in foster care
with a Danish relative, the graingrocer Conrad Stegmann and his wife Louise Brummer (an Aunt to his late father) in Edinburgh
, Scotland
. He thus grew up bi-lingual, receiving most of his education in Scotland, England
and France
, and being afterwards employed at a shipping insurance broker
’s office in London
.
His migration to Queensland
was caused by what from all appearances was a fairly advanced case of tuberculosis
. He arrived in Sydney
from London by the Aberdeen
vessel Sir John Lawrence on 18 June 1867. Travelling to Rockhampton
he held a 'letter of introduction' to the Scottish squatter
Archibald Bedmore Buchanan (1810–1883). He then gained 'colonial experience' working as a shepherd, store and book keeper predominantly at Buchanan's properties. The first six months or so at Cardbeign station
in Springsure district, the remaining time in the Barcoo district on Greendale and possibly other stations in the central west. The connections and knowledge he gained in the outback
and frontier
, amongst others his experiences with the Native Police and the darker sides of the colony's frontier policies, were later used extensively in his work as a journalist
and political commentator, and in his occasional sketches and short stories.
Naturalised at Rockhampton Court House 21 June 1870 he shortly afterwards settled in Maryborough. He commenced a career in journalism sometime in August 1870, assisting Ebenezer Thorne (1836-1911) on his newly launched liberal-oriented three-weekly, the 'Wide Bay and Burnett News'. However, a mixture of family related matters and the burden of libel cases forced Thorne to give up the venture, selling his asset in the journal to Carl Feilberg who became the sole editor and proprietor from mid-November 1870. Feilberg's subsequent struggle for manhood suffrage, his campaigns against the Kanaka trade, and his success in breaking 'the ring' (a local conservative press monopoly established and maintained by the squatter-politician William Henry Walsh
1823-1888 from 1861 onwards by use of the Maryborough Chronicle) secured Feilberg a position as a rising star in the Queensland press of the day. He subsequently married Tasmanian born, Clara Smith (1854–1932) at the Presbyterian Church in Maryborough on 15 May 1872. She was the daughter of the engineer and proprietor of Kilkivan Mine, Walter Smith (1821–1903) & wife Clara Susannah Hammant (1829–1911). His career after Maryborough brought him to the northern northern frontier and he was subsequently employed as political commentator, leader writer on the Brisbane Courier and notably as the editor of its weekly, The Queenslander, from January 1879 to December 1880.
The personal and political fallout following the below mentioned campaign of the Queenslander in 1880 subsequently caused Feilberg to accept a position as sub-editor on the then leading Victorian journal the Argus in June 1882. It may be fairly said that he was politically exiled or decided to exile himself from Queensland. Yet he ‘was never physically a robust man’, as one obituary stated. The illness that brought him to Australia in the first place remained dormant and the move to Melbourne proved fatal for him. The ‘climate’ of Melbourne ‘did not suit him’, it was later said, what started out as a cold was to revive his old ailment and his days were numbered by mid-1883. He gave in to an offer and returned to Brisbane in July to subsequently take on the position of editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Newspaper Company (Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander
, now The Courier-Mail
) in September same year. He remained fully active in this position until a few weeks before his death, only 43 years old, at his home 'Claraville' in Cordelia Street (near Peel Street) in South Brisbane on 25 October 1887.
Rather paradoxically for a person who has been almost totally forgotten by posterity, the announcement of Feilberg's death triggered a quite unprecedented reaction in the contemporary press. His passing thus resulted in obituaries and memorial notices throughout Queensland and in all leading journals in Australia, hinting at the controversies he had once triggered and honouring his compassionate nature in glowing words and phrases. Indeed, the coverage and wording of these articles by far exceeds those honouring the passing of any of his contemporary and in many cases more famous colleagues. His funeral at Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery was similarly attended by a wide range of friends, journalists and interestingly by several high-ranking politicians from both sides of Queensland politics, and a eulogy was authored by Francis Adams
, one of the most outstanding poets in contemporary Australia. Notably attended also by one previously bitter opponent, the former Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith
.).
appointed him as government envoy for New Guinea during the New Guinea gold-rush in early 1878, and New Guinea was later a frequent subject for his numerous editorials.
as "...one of the most influential political tracts in Australian history..."
Beyond his other work, Feilberg thus notably authored a great number of articles on the issue of human rights abuses towards islanders and indigenous people in Queensland. The issue of the so-called Kanaka trade or Blackbirding
) - the use of Melanesian labour on Queensland sugar plantations - was high on his agenda from the late 1870 onwards; he and his journal were thus instrumental in bringing about the conviction of the Captain of the recruiting schooner "Jason" in 1871.
Feilberg's contribution to the history of colonial Queensland included editorials written for the Brisbane Courier from 1874 to 1878 and later in the Cooktown Courier during January to March 1877, and two newspaper campaigns strongly critical of Queensland's frontier indigenous policies. The first of these campaigns was conducted in the independent liberal journal the Queensland Patriot prior to the police estimates for 1879 being tabled in the Legislative Assembly. The move was daring but ultimately unsuccessful although it triggered a parliamentary debate on 10 July 1878. Yet the blue-print for this small campaign was then reused, commissioned by the managing editor of the Brisbane Newspaper Company, Gresley Lukin
(1840–1916), on a much larger scale in the leading Queensland journal the Brisbane Courier (now the Courier-Mail) two years later. In the nine months from during March to December 1880 Feilberg utilised its weekly, the Queenslander, as a platform to launch a series of powerfully worded editorials and articles demanding a Royal Commission and a change of policy. Yet again unsuccessful, he nonetheless managed to trigger two large parliamentary debates and the biggest public debate of its kind ever conducted by an Australian newspaper, on this subject.
It was parts of the latter debate which were reissued as a pamphlet in December 1880.
Feilberg outlined some of his deeper feelings in an editorial printed in the Queenslander on 19 January 1878, saying amongst other things that the
His opening lines to the campaign of the Queenslander on 1 May 1880, in his best known and most frequently cited editorial headed The Way We Civilise, it famously outlined Queensland's policy towards Aboriginal people in the following manner:
The memory of this crucial part of Feilberg's writings, however, was to remain victim to the 'veil of silence' which covered all issues related to the treatment of indigenous people in the colonial era for the most part of a century. To the extent Feilberg's name was remembered at all, it was for his advocacy of some restrictions being put on Chinese immigration and for him being an early opponent of the Kanaka labour-trade; issues which were clearly viewed as more acceptable by early nineteenth century Australian historians and record keepers. Yet Feilberg's commitment to human rights was hinted at in various ways by some of his obituary writers and close friends.
(1809–1898) and his Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Derby, that Queensland was utterly unfit for the task of ruling New Guinea. Carl Feilberg's writings and opponents of the same are now frequently cited in a great number of books and documentaries. Lengthy quotes can be found in books dealing generally with Queensland’s colonial history, such as Ross Fitzgerald
's From the Dreaming to 1915 (1982) and Wm. Ross Johnston’s A Documentary History of Queensland (1988). Similar quotes and references can be found in a number of books dealing generally with race relations in colonial Australia, such as Henry Reynolds’ famous study, The Other Side of the Frontier
(1981), Sharman Stone
's documentary on Aborigines in White Australia (1974), and in a variety of studies, books and articles similarly dealing with this subject. It is used as a reference in more popular outlines such as Bruce Elder
’s Blood on the Wattle (1988), and quotes appear in virtually all TV documentaries on the subject. And, it is naturally well represented in studies dealing specifically with Queensland’s race relations’ history such as Raymond Evans in Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination (1975), the Reynolds edited Race Relations in North Queensland (1978), Noel Loos’ Invasion and Resistance (1982) and Pamela Lukin Watson’s Frontier Lands & Pioneer Legends (1998). It was cited in Judith Wright
’s The Cry for the Death (1981) and more recently in Roslyn Poignant’s Professional Savages (2004). The satirical title The Way We Civilise was eventually re-used in 1997 as a title for Rosalind Kidd’s study on Queensland’s institutionalised policy towards Aboriginal people onwards from the 1880s to more recent times. Feilberg's pamphlet is equally cited in the highly profiled Bringing Them Home
or ‘stolen generation report’(1997), about Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families to be brought up in institutions during the twentieth century, and in Ben Kiernan
's Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination... (2008).
, journalist and Feilberg's predecessor as editor of the Queenslander, who was later the editor of the Sydney Mail, owner-editor of the famed weekly magazine The Bulletin
and a NSW politician, was the only one of Feilberg's friends who dared to mention Feilberg's feelings on the question of indigenous rights (possibly because Traill was living in Sydney at the time), saying:
Somewhat a political opponent, yet nonetheless a close personal friend, Walter John Morley (1848-1937) then the editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Evening Observer wrote about Feilberg that he was "...a man whom it was impossible to regard with indifference." Adding further that Feilberg, 'in his working days', was
Francis Adams (writer)
poet and journalist, wrote in connection with Feilberg's funeral at Toowong cemetery in Brisbane in October 1887:
'Bobby' Byrne, or John Edgar Byrne
(1842-1906), a Londoner turned bushman and pioneer during the Gulf country rush in the 1860s, later journalist and owner-editor of the Queensland Figaro and Punch, simply stated, in the plain and rather understated style of a nineteenth century Australian bushman (take note that he used first-name, highly unusual for this period):
(*) For an Australian 'bushman' to call another man 'white' was the greatest honour in those days, equivalent of saying that he was something like a plain, genuine and upright man of the highest personal integrity. It was used even on black people at times, one example is the black Danish West Indian, turned Australian heavy weight boxer, Peter Jackson (boxer)
(1861–1901) who was called a 'real whiteman'.
A few stories, in some cases half finished, were later sold from Feilberg’s estate and printed after his death in the radical journal the Queensland Boomerang, they were:
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, newspaper editor, general political commentator and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activist.
Life and achievements
Carl Feilberg was arguably the most prominent political commentator and newspaper editor in Queensland in his time, but he was certainly equally well known in the other Australian colonies. His death in October 1887 was received with an amount of strongly worded obituaries and expressions of grief, which was to remain extraordinary as well as unprecedented for any Queensland journalist of his era.Yet it so happened that his most lasting legacy became the numerous articles he wrote dealing with the most painful issue of all - Queensland’s frontier indigenous policy, Native Police system, and what he continually argued was an urgent need for the government to reform and move to protect the fundamental rights of indigenous people. An issue which was to remain unsolved, contested and a painful legacy that even his closest friends would prefer to forget rather than to remember.
Indeed, Carl Feilberg is beyond question the most outstanding advocate of indigenous human rights in the history of colonial Queensland, and he certainly belongs in the ranks of the most notable of his kind in the history of colonial Australia. Almost all indigenous policy critical articles, editorial comments and editorials printed in the Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander
Queenslander
Queenslander may refer to:* List of Queenslanders - a person from the Australian state of Queensland* Queenslander - a style of architecture found in Queensland* Queenslander - the name of a train service operated by Queensland Rail...
between 1874 and 1886 were authored by Carl Feilberg. Additionally he conducted two lengthy campaigns, one in the Queensland Patriot in 1878 and the other and most notable in the Queenslander in 1880, triggering significant public and parliamentary debates centred around the issue of the colony's Native Police Force. Yet still, there are very few people whose writings and the response created that are more frequently cited today, yet there is probably no one whose name and personal history has been more thoroughly forgotten. It is almost as if someone set out to illustrate the wording of late Professor Bill Stanner
Bill Stanner
W.E.H. Stanner was an Australian anthropologist who worked extensively with Indigenous Australians. Stanner had a varied career that also included journalism in the 1930s, military service in World War II, and political advice on colonial policy in Africa and the South Pacific in the post-war...
(1905-1981) about ‘the great Australian silence’ and ‘the cult of disremembering’.
Carl Feilberg was born on 21 August 1844 in a small apartment at 1 Bredgade
Bredgade
Bredgade is one of the most prominent streets in Copenhagen, Denmark. Running in a straight line from Kongens Nytorv for just under one kilometre to the intersection of Esplanaden and Grønningen, it is one of the major streets in Frederiksstaden, a Rococo district laid out in the middle of the...
in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, as the first born and only son of Danish Royal Navy lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
, Christen Schifter Feilberg (1808–1853) and wife Louise Adelaide Lindberg (1809–1850), daughter of a planter on the island of St. Croix in the then Danish West Indies
Danish West Indies
The Danish West Indies or "Danish Antilles", were a colony of Denmark-Norway and later Denmark in the Caribbean. They were sold to the United States in 1916 in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies and became the United States Virgin Islands in 1917...
(his mid name was spelled Adolph with 'ph' in his birth record and so also in his prize essay from 1879, but he frequently used Adolf with 'f' as his personal signature). Following the tragic deaths of both parents, Feilberg was placed in foster care
Foster care
Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....
with a Danish relative, the graingrocer Conrad Stegmann and his wife Louise Brummer (an Aunt to his late father) in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. He thus grew up bi-lingual, receiving most of his education in Scotland, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and being afterwards employed at a shipping insurance broker
Insurance broker
An insurance broker finds sources for contracts of insurance on behalf of their customers. The three largest insurance brokers in the world, by revenue, are Aon, Marsh & McLennan, and Willis Group Holdings.-Purpose of insurance brokers:...
’s office in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
His migration to Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
was caused by what from all appearances was a fairly advanced case of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. He arrived in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
from London by the Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
vessel Sir John Lawrence on 18 June 1867. Travelling to Rockhampton
Rockhampton, Queensland
Rockhampton is a city and local government area in Queensland, Australia. The city lies on the Fitzroy River, approximately from the river mouth, and some north of the state capital, Brisbane....
he held a 'letter of introduction' to the Scottish squatter
Squatting (pastoral)
In Australian history, a squatter was one who occupied a large tract of Crown land in order to graze livestock. Initially often having no legal rights to the land, they gained its usage by being the first Europeans in the area....
Archibald Bedmore Buchanan (1810–1883). He then gained 'colonial experience' working as a shepherd, store and book keeper predominantly at Buchanan's properties. The first six months or so at Cardbeign station
Station (Australian agriculture)
Station is the term for a large Australian landholding used for livestock production. It corresponds to the North American term ranch or South American estancia...
in Springsure district, the remaining time in the Barcoo district on Greendale and possibly other stations in the central west. The connections and knowledge he gained in the outback
Outback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...
and frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...
, amongst others his experiences with the Native Police and the darker sides of the colony's frontier policies, were later used extensively in his work as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and political commentator, and in his occasional sketches and short stories.
Naturalised at Rockhampton Court House 21 June 1870 he shortly afterwards settled in Maryborough. He commenced a career in journalism sometime in August 1870, assisting Ebenezer Thorne (1836-1911) on his newly launched liberal-oriented three-weekly, the 'Wide Bay and Burnett News'. However, a mixture of family related matters and the burden of libel cases forced Thorne to give up the venture, selling his asset in the journal to Carl Feilberg who became the sole editor and proprietor from mid-November 1870. Feilberg's subsequent struggle for manhood suffrage, his campaigns against the Kanaka trade, and his success in breaking 'the ring' (a local conservative press monopoly established and maintained by the squatter-politician William Henry Walsh
William Henry Walsh
William Henry Walsh Queensland squatter and politician. Member of New South Wales' Legislative Assembly 1859-1860, member of Queensland's Legislative Assembly from 1865–1878 and Queensland’s Legislative Council from 1879-1888...
1823-1888 from 1861 onwards by use of the Maryborough Chronicle) secured Feilberg a position as a rising star in the Queensland press of the day. He subsequently married Tasmanian born, Clara Smith (1854–1932) at the Presbyterian Church in Maryborough on 15 May 1872. She was the daughter of the engineer and proprietor of Kilkivan Mine, Walter Smith (1821–1903) & wife Clara Susannah Hammant (1829–1911). His career after Maryborough brought him to the northern northern frontier and he was subsequently employed as political commentator, leader writer on the Brisbane Courier and notably as the editor of its weekly, The Queenslander, from January 1879 to December 1880.
The personal and political fallout following the below mentioned campaign of the Queenslander in 1880 subsequently caused Feilberg to accept a position as sub-editor on the then leading Victorian journal the Argus in June 1882. It may be fairly said that he was politically exiled or decided to exile himself from Queensland. Yet he ‘was never physically a robust man’, as one obituary stated. The illness that brought him to Australia in the first place remained dormant and the move to Melbourne proved fatal for him. The ‘climate’ of Melbourne ‘did not suit him’, it was later said, what started out as a cold was to revive his old ailment and his days were numbered by mid-1883. He gave in to an offer and returned to Brisbane in July to subsequently take on the position of editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Newspaper Company (Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander
The Queenslander
The Queenslander was the weekly summary and literary edition of the 'Brisbane Courier' , since the 1850s the leading journal in the colony later federal state of Queensland...
, now The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail is a daily newspaper published in Brisbane, Australia. Owned by News Limited, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner northern suburbs, and it is printed at Murarrie, in Brisbane's...
) in September same year. He remained fully active in this position until a few weeks before his death, only 43 years old, at his home 'Claraville' in Cordelia Street (near Peel Street) in South Brisbane on 25 October 1887.
Rather paradoxically for a person who has been almost totally forgotten by posterity, the announcement of Feilberg's death triggered a quite unprecedented reaction in the contemporary press. His passing thus resulted in obituaries and memorial notices throughout Queensland and in all leading journals in Australia, hinting at the controversies he had once triggered and honouring his compassionate nature in glowing words and phrases. Indeed, the coverage and wording of these articles by far exceeds those honouring the passing of any of his contemporary and in many cases more famous colleagues. His funeral at Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery was similarly attended by a wide range of friends, journalists and interestingly by several high-ranking politicians from both sides of Queensland politics, and a eulogy was authored by Francis Adams
Francis Adams
Francis Adams is the name of:*Francis Adams , Scottish medical doctor and translator of Greek medical works*Francis Adams , English essayist, poet, dramatist, novelist and journalist...
, one of the most outstanding poets in contemporary Australia. Notably attended also by one previously bitter opponent, the former Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith
Thomas McIlwraith
Sir Thomas McIlwraith KCMG was for many years the dominant figure of colonial politics in Queensland. He was Premier of Queensland from 1877 to 1883, again in 1888, and for a third time in 1893...
.).
Career
Feilberg commenced his career in journalism as the owner-editor of the Wide Bay and Burnett News from Nov 1870 to about 1875, free-lance correspondent and occasional editorial writer for the Brisbane Courier and Queenslander and other journals, editor of the Cooktown Courier from Sep 1876 to June 1877, Hansard shorthand writer from July to Oct 1877, part proprietor and editor of the Queensland Patriot/Daily News from March 1878 to early January 1879. From there on he became the key political commentator and leader writer for the Brisbane Courier and editor of the Queenslander from January 1879 to December 1880, sub-editor on the Melbourne Argus from June 1882 to June 1883, editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander from September 1883 to October 1887. Feilberg additionally wrote many short stories and sketches reflecting the life and dreams of many of his fellow colonists. His journalism covered a wide range of subjects amongst which parliamentary business, railway and settlement policy, finance and economic policy and indigenous rights, took a prominent position. Beyond being additionally a harsh critic of the Kanaka trade (see below), he was an eager advocate for settlements in the interior and railway schemes supporting this, he questioned the uncontrolled Chinese immigration (during the great mining rush in the far north), and he was a strong advocate of laws to combat the threat to the environment of uncontrolled logging and deforestation and securing a policy of sustainable foresting. The Liberal Premier John Douglas (Queensland politician)John Douglas (Queensland politician)
John Douglas CMG was an Anglo-Australian politician and Premier of Queensland.Douglas was born in London, the seventh son of Henry Alexander Douglas and his wife Elizabeth Dalzell, daughter of the Earl of Carnwarth...
appointed him as government envoy for New Guinea during the New Guinea gold-rush in early 1878, and New Guinea was later a frequent subject for his numerous editorials.
Human rights and Aboriginal people
Carl Feilberg was the hitherto anonymous journalist, editor and author behind the Queenslander’s newspaper campaign and pamphlet The Way We Civilise; Black and White; The Native Police (published in Brisbane, December 1880) characterised by Henry ReynoldsHenry Reynolds (historian)
Henry Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian whose primary work has focused on the frontier conflict between European settlement of Australia and indigenous Australians.-Education and career:...
as "...one of the most influential political tracts in Australian history..."
Beyond his other work, Feilberg thus notably authored a great number of articles on the issue of human rights abuses towards islanders and indigenous people in Queensland. The issue of the so-called Kanaka trade or Blackbirding
Blackbirding
Blackbirding is a term that refers to recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work as labourers. From the 1860s blackbirding ships were engaged in seeking workers to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands in Peru...
) - the use of Melanesian labour on Queensland sugar plantations - was high on his agenda from the late 1870 onwards; he and his journal were thus instrumental in bringing about the conviction of the Captain of the recruiting schooner "Jason" in 1871.
Feilberg's contribution to the history of colonial Queensland included editorials written for the Brisbane Courier from 1874 to 1878 and later in the Cooktown Courier during January to March 1877, and two newspaper campaigns strongly critical of Queensland's frontier indigenous policies. The first of these campaigns was conducted in the independent liberal journal the Queensland Patriot prior to the police estimates for 1879 being tabled in the Legislative Assembly. The move was daring but ultimately unsuccessful although it triggered a parliamentary debate on 10 July 1878. Yet the blue-print for this small campaign was then reused, commissioned by the managing editor of the Brisbane Newspaper Company, Gresley Lukin
Gresley Lukin
Gresley Lukin Australian public servant, newspaper owner, company manager and newspaper editor, most prominently the part-proprietor of the Brisbane Newspaper Company from November 1873 to December 1880, then and still the leading journal in Queensland under the name the Courier-Mail.Lukin was...
(1840–1916), on a much larger scale in the leading Queensland journal the Brisbane Courier (now the Courier-Mail) two years later. In the nine months from during March to December 1880 Feilberg utilised its weekly, the Queenslander, as a platform to launch a series of powerfully worded editorials and articles demanding a Royal Commission and a change of policy. Yet again unsuccessful, he nonetheless managed to trigger two large parliamentary debates and the biggest public debate of its kind ever conducted by an Australian newspaper, on this subject.
It was parts of the latter debate which were reissued as a pamphlet in December 1880.
Feilberg outlined some of his deeper feelings in an editorial printed in the Queenslander on 19 January 1878, saying amongst other things that the
...complacent blindness which induces the natives of Europe to regard their own customs and institutions as excellent above compare, and their adoption as a certain remedy and advantageous substitute for all other manners of living, even to the most simple and Arcadian, has served as excuse for enormities at the contemplation of which humanity revolts...
His opening lines to the campaign of the Queenslander on 1 May 1880, in his best known and most frequently cited editorial headed The Way We Civilise, it famously outlined Queensland's policy towards Aboriginal people in the following manner:
This, in plain language, is how we deal with the aborigines: On occupying new territory the aboriginal inhabitants are treated exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there. Their lives and their property, the nets, canoes, and weapons which represent as much labour to them as the stock and buildings of the white settler, are held by the Europeans as being at their absolute disposal. Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women carried away, entirely at the caprice of the white men. The least show of resistance is answered by a rifle bullet; in fact, the first introduction between blacks and whites is often marked by the unprovoked murder of some of the former - in order to make a commencement of the work of ‘civilising’ them.
The memory of this crucial part of Feilberg's writings, however, was to remain victim to the 'veil of silence' which covered all issues related to the treatment of indigenous people in the colonial era for the most part of a century. To the extent Feilberg's name was remembered at all, it was for his advocacy of some restrictions being put on Chinese immigration and for him being an early opponent of the Kanaka labour-trade; issues which were clearly viewed as more acceptable by early nineteenth century Australian historians and record keepers. Yet Feilberg's commitment to human rights was hinted at in various ways by some of his obituary writers and close friends.
Legacy of a pamphlet
Carl Feilberg's 1880 pamphlet played a crucial behind the scene role in the British Government move to nullify Queensland's unilateral annexation of New Guinea in April 1883. It was actively used by Sir Arthur Gordon (Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore 1829-1912), the Aborigines Protection Society and others, as evidence to persuade the British Prime Minister William Ewart GladstoneWilliam Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
(1809–1898) and his Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Derby, that Queensland was utterly unfit for the task of ruling New Guinea. Carl Feilberg's writings and opponents of the same are now frequently cited in a great number of books and documentaries. Lengthy quotes can be found in books dealing generally with Queensland’s colonial history, such as Ross Fitzgerald
Ross Fitzgerald
Ross Fitzgerald is an Australian academic, historian, novelist, secularist, and political commentator.Author of 35 books, in 2009 Professor Fitzgerald co-authored "Made in Queensland: A New History", published by University of Queensland Press and also "Under the Influence, a history of alcohol in...
's From the Dreaming to 1915 (1982) and Wm. Ross Johnston’s A Documentary History of Queensland (1988). Similar quotes and references can be found in a number of books dealing generally with race relations in colonial Australia, such as Henry Reynolds’ famous study, The Other Side of the Frontier
The Other Side of the Frontier
The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European invasion of Australia is a history book published in 1981 by Australian historian Henry Reynolds...
(1981), Sharman Stone
Sharman Stone
Dr. Sharman Nancy Stone née Bawden , Australian politician, has been an Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Division of Murray, Victoria...
's documentary on Aborigines in White Australia (1974), and in a variety of studies, books and articles similarly dealing with this subject. It is used as a reference in more popular outlines such as Bruce Elder
Bruce Elder
Bruce Elder is a journalist, writer and commentator. He is currently a full-time journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald specialising in travel and popular culture. His other areas of expertise include film, television, and popular music. He has written extensively around Australia and has a...
’s Blood on the Wattle (1988), and quotes appear in virtually all TV documentaries on the subject. And, it is naturally well represented in studies dealing specifically with Queensland’s race relations’ history such as Raymond Evans in Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination (1975), the Reynolds edited Race Relations in North Queensland (1978), Noel Loos’ Invasion and Resistance (1982) and Pamela Lukin Watson’s Frontier Lands & Pioneer Legends (1998). It was cited in Judith Wright
Judith Wright
Judith Arundell Wright was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.-Biography:...
’s The Cry for the Death (1981) and more recently in Roslyn Poignant’s Professional Savages (2004). The satirical title The Way We Civilise was eventually re-used in 1997 as a title for Rosalind Kidd’s study on Queensland’s institutionalised policy towards Aboriginal people onwards from the 1880s to more recent times. Feilberg's pamphlet is equally cited in the highly profiled Bringing Them Home
Bringing Them Home
Bringing Them Home is the title of the Australian "Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families"...
or ‘stolen generation report’(1997), about Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families to be brought up in institutions during the twentieth century, and in Ben Kiernan
Ben Kiernan
Benedict F. Kiernan is the Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. He is a prolific writer on the Cambodian genocide...
's Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination... (2008).
Those who knew him
William Henry TraillWilliam Henry Traill
William Henry Traill was an Australian journalist and politician. He was an early editor and in a period the principle proprietor of The Bulletin.-Early life:...
, journalist and Feilberg's predecessor as editor of the Queenslander, who was later the editor of the Sydney Mail, owner-editor of the famed weekly magazine The Bulletin
The Bulletin
The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...
and a NSW politician, was the only one of Feilberg's friends who dared to mention Feilberg's feelings on the question of indigenous rights (possibly because Traill was living in Sydney at the time), saying:
I knew him well during the time he was for a while a journalistic free-lance, before he went on to the staff of the Courier or Argus, and if ever a man lived to falsify the popular idea of a ‘bohemian,’ he was the man. So far as bohemianism is supposed to comprehend a spirit of universal charity, of hatred of tyranny and cant, and of a most intense love for his profession, he was a thorough ‘bohemian’; but of the other side of the character, the reckless improvidence, dissipation, and contempt of respectability, he was as free as that great type, the ‘British Merchant of the old school.’ As a journalist he was an untiring worker, few newspapers in Australia have not been benefited by his pen, and few writers on all subjects were more appreciated by the public, he never wrote himself out, and his style was always fresh and free from any touch of respective sameness...Poor Feilberg! There were two subjects on which one could always rouse his righteous indignation – the treatment of the blacks, and the seizure of the Danish fleet by Nelson; his love of fair play was too strongly appealed to in both...
Somewhat a political opponent, yet nonetheless a close personal friend, Walter John Morley (1848-1937) then the editor-in-chief of the Brisbane Evening Observer wrote about Feilberg that he was "...a man whom it was impossible to regard with indifference." Adding further that Feilberg, 'in his working days', was
... one of the most voluminous and valued of Australian writers … There is hardly a newspaper of note in the Southern hemisphere for which he has not written … As a Press writer Mr. Feilberg was without a rival in the colony, and had few equals on the continent. His style was clear, crisp, and trenchant, and withal somewhat cynical; he could detect at once the weak spot of an argument, and understood thoroughly the worth of ridicule and the power of satire. His writings exhibit a perfect knowledge of the country, and of country life, and betray a sympathy with human nature for which those who saw only his other writings would never credit him. … His views were naturally extreme, for he was intense, as such men always are, and this extremeness, with the vigour of his enunciation, caused him to make many and bitter enemies. Probably there were few men in the colony more bitterly hated by political and social opponents, yet there was certainly no man more beloved by those whose privilege it was to know him intimately. For underneath all his cynicism and his apparent vindictiveness beat a heart that overflowed with all that makes humanity noble and good. He never saw distress without wishing to relieve it...
Francis Adams (writer)
Francis Adams (writer)
Francis William Lauderdale Adams was an essayist, poet, dramatist, novelist and journalist who produced a large volume of work in his short life.- Early life :...
poet and journalist, wrote in connection with Feilberg's funeral at Toowong cemetery in Brisbane in October 1887:
He was a soldier in the army of Letters and of light of whom his comrades can be proud. He fixed his eyes on the abiding truth of human life – on justice and on mercy, on trust and on love – and clung to them. He felt, as so many of us feel, that the old symbols see no new ones in the world of thought and feeling of his time. All honour to the brave heart that hopeless of the proof of justification, hopeless of the old support in life and of the old hope of reward in death, bated not one jot of belief in the beauty and necessity of the good, the noble, and true!...Not with sorrow only do we think of this man, of our dear dead comrade: no, but with the love for what he was, and with the pride for what he did, that rob death of its victory and make him that was brought low as one that is raised up.
'Bobby' Byrne, or John Edgar Byrne
John Edgar Byrne
John Edgar Byrne or 'Bobby' Byrne , Queensland bushman, Gulf country pioneer turned journalist and newspaper proprietor. Founder and owner-editor of the Queensland Figaro, later known as the Queensland Figaro & Punch....
(1842-1906), a Londoner turned bushman and pioneer during the Gulf country rush in the 1860s, later journalist and owner-editor of the Queensland Figaro and Punch, simply stated, in the plain and rather understated style of a nineteenth century Australian bushman (take note that he used first-name, highly unusual for this period):
Carl was a mate of mine of some 16 years’ standing. The Brisbane dailies supply full particulars of his life, and it is not for me to gush about his virtues. He was my mate, and I always found him ‘white.’(*) I first met him in Maryborough, when he had just come back from the Barcoo, where he had been jackarooing. Some of the best yarns that ever appeared in Punch and Figaro I learned from Carl Feilberg...
(*) For an Australian 'bushman' to call another man 'white' was the greatest honour in those days, equivalent of saying that he was something like a plain, genuine and upright man of the highest personal integrity. It was used even on black people at times, one example is the black Danish West Indian, turned Australian heavy weight boxer, Peter Jackson (boxer)
Peter Jackson (boxer)
Peter "Black Prince" Jackson was a heavyweight boxer from Australia who had a significant international career.-Biography:...
(1861–1901) who was called a 'real whiteman'.
Journalism, fiction and other literary contributions
Carl Feilberg's main strength was his work as a political commentator and leader-writer for amongst others the Wide Bay and Burnett News (c. Oct 1870 to 1875, unfortunately no issues available from this period), Cooktown Courier (from Sep 1876 to Jun 1877), the Queensland Patriot (from Feb 1878 to Jan 1879), The Brisbane Courier and its weekly the Queenslander (sporadically in the period 1875 - Feb 1878, intensively from Jan 1879- Jan 1881 & Jul 1883- Sep 1887) and Melbourne Argus (Brisbane correspondent from 1880–1882, sub-editor on amongst others the subject of Queensland & New Guinea from July 1882 - Jun 1883). He was the author behind the parliamentary column of the 'Political Froth' by 'the Abstainer' and the column 'Specialities' in the Queenslander from Jan 1879 - to May 1882. Yet next to this and in his spare time he wrote several sketches and some often surprisingly naive and romantic short stories, and also a small adventure novel ('A Strange Exploring Trip) which some contemporaries viewed as having a curious resemblance with Henry Rider Haggard's later 'King Solomon's Mines' (from 1885), while it was probably inspired by Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' (from 1726). He naturally used personal experiences in several of his stories from the outer Barcoo and early Rockhampton in the late 1860s, and from Cooktown and the Palmer gold field in the 1870s. His short-stories were exceedingly popular in his own time. The Illustrated Sydney News of December 1886 thus announced him as ‘Mr Carl Feilberg, the inimitable story-teller of Queensland'. Some of these sketches and stories were signed 'CF' but several were not signed at all (his authorship was revealed in the writings by various contemporaries). Below is a representative sample:- ‘Some Queensland Pioneers’ a series of ten articles by 'CF' (30 Dec 1882 to 30 June 1883) in The Australasian (weekly Melbourne Argus).
- ‘A Strange Exploring Trip’ - Chapter I-XVIII by ‘Old Harry’, a small serialised novel in the Saturday edition of the Brisbane Courier (and the Queenslander) onwards from 15 April to 7 October 1876.
- ‘To The Red Barcoo' by ‘* * *’ Queenslander Supplement, 24 February 1877, pp. 1d-4a.
- ‘Miami – A Tale told by the Sea’ by 'CF' Queenslander Christmas Supplement,’ 22 December 1877, pp. 10-11.
- ‘Dividing Mates’ by 'CF' Queenslander Christmas Supplement,’ 14 December 1878.
- ‘Jeannie’ by 'CF' Queenslander Christmas Supplement,’ 20 December 1879, pp. 1-3.
- ‘Drift’ by 'CF' Queenslander Christmas Supplement,’ 25 December 1880, pp. 10–12.
- ‘Our Friend the Captain’ by 'CF' - a story about a charming Central Queensland bushranger Queenslander ‘Christmas Supplement’ 19 December 1885, pp. 7-8.
- 'A Curl of a Woman's Hair’ by 'Carl Feilberg', Illustrated Sydney News, Christmas Edition, December 1886.
- 'My Mate's Locket' by Carl A. Feilberg, about the life of a Danish migrant (fiction) is the only story actually printed in book form, it appears in Turner, Charles (Illustrator): AUSTRALIAN STORIES IN PROSE AND VERSE, Melbourne (Cameron, Laing) 1882, 105 pages, ill., an anthology of fourteen stories by (cit.) ‘leading Australian writers, viz Frank Morley, Henry Kendall, Marcus Clarke, N. Walter Swan, R. P. Whitworth, Donald Cameron, Carl A. Feilberg, Charles Turner, and Janet Carrol.’
A few stories, in some cases half finished, were later sold from Feilberg’s estate and printed after his death in the radical journal the Queensland Boomerang, they were:
- ‘Camp Fire Yarns’, 3 December 1887.
- ‘Attacked by the Blacks’, 17 December 1887.
- ‘The Evil Eye’, 24 December 1887 and 7 January 1888.
- ‘His Colonial Experience’, 4 February 1888 and 11 March 1888.
External links
- The Way We Civilise A series of articles and letters Reprinted from the ‘Queenslander’ (Brisbane, December 1880)
- Feilberg, Carl Adolf — Brisbane City Council Grave Location Search