Dundalli

Dundalli (1820- 1855) was an Aboriginal lawman who figured prominently in accounts of conflict between European settlers and indigenous aboriginal peoples in the area of Brisbane in South East Queensland. Traditionally described as a murderer, savage and terrorist, he is now thought variously to have been a guerilla leader or to have coordinated a decade-long resistance to white colonization the area. He was hanged publicly in Brisbane in 1855 by order of the Sheriff of New South Wales.
Early life.
Dundalli was born into the Dalla tribes, probably as a son of the Dalambara clan. Together with his brother Oumulli, he grew up in the Blackall Range. The area had a rich regional economy, with fertile ranges spread out over areas of spectacular scenery, with waterfalls plunging into deep gorges, These uplands of the Glass House Mountains and the D'Aguilar, Conondale and Jimna ranges were the homelands of the Dalla, who spoke a language closely related to Gubbi Gubbi. His name Dundalli was that taken on his initiation into full tribal status, and meant wonga pigeon. His brother Oumulli's name meant "breast", which may also refer to the same species of pigeon. Dundalli grew to be very tall, and the judge at his trial recorded that he was "the largest man I ever looked upon", well over tall.
1840–1854.
Dundalli together with his fellow clansman "Anbaybury" was selected to lead a Dalla delegation which was organized to treat with German missionaries at Toorbul in order to invite them to set up an outpost in Dalla country. In June 1842 Carl Wilhelm Schmidt, with nine Aborigines, had explored the country round the Bunya Mountains, and had reported on the practice of squatters using gifts of flour laced with strychnine to local natives in order to clear out Aborigines in area beyond the confines of areas where settlement had been authorized. The encounter took place in August 1841. The two missionaries in question were J. P. Niqué and A. T. W. Hartenstein who, with several others, had trekked north from Brisbane as part of a lay mission recruited by John Dunmore Lang to work in the Moreton Bay area. They set up their mission 6 miles north of Nundah on Turrbal lands in 1838.
Sometime around the middle of the 1840s, perhaps around Cambayo's spearing of a shepherd in 1843, Dundalli was adopted by the Djindubari people, the traditional owners of Bribie Island and he moved over to that area. Connors dates to this period the transformation of the Djindubari from generous hosts to wandering or displaced Europeans who found themselves in their midst, to jealous guardians of their prerogatives as owners of the resources of their island. Warrants for his arrest began to be issued in 1846.
Background to his arrest and trial.
In the wake of these incidents Dundalli's reputation as a ringleader complicit in such attacks grew legendary proportions. None of the witnesses could finger Dundalli as a direct participant in the assaults at Durundur, on Hausmann or at Gregor's homestead, but all claimed that he had been present at each respective incident. According to Libby Connors, these rumours are to be interpreted in terms of the important role he assumed in adjudicating rituals where traditional aboriginal law, especially concerned with the application of the principle of talion or retribution for an injury suffered, was applied after agreement had been reached through wide intertribal negotiations.
Arrest, trial and hanging.
After a large pullen-pullen had taken place at Stone's Corner on the Norman Creek flats in Brisbane in December 1853, in which the Ningy Ningy and Djindubari faced off the Nunukul and Logan River Yugambeh in a ceremonial fight designed to put an end of feuding, Dundalli came back to the city, sometime in May of that year. Connors speculates that he may have sought tribal justice had secured peace at the December corroboree, which the Djindubari won, while stopping the feud when one of their own men was killed. He had not exacted revenge for his brother's death, had challenged Strange fairly, and had saved Mrs Cash, facts suggesting he had adopted a conciliatory policy of moderation. According to Tom Petrie, Dundalli had been hired by a bricklayer named Massie to fell a tree on his property in the vicinity of the present day Brunswick Street and Wickham Street. His presence in the town was revealed when a Turrbal enemy, Wumbungur tipped off the police.
The trial was presided over by Roger Therry, who had been assistant prosecutor in the Myall Creek massacre, and who had gone on record affirming at the bench the rights of Aboriginals to justice. Nonetheless, in this trial, commentators suggest he was somewhat intimidated by Dundalli's huge stature and physique, his visible disdain for the proceedings and an attempt to bribe him. The evidence brought against Dundalli is now regarded as having been weakly constructed, and flimsy.
The verdict, rendered on 21 November 1854, found Dundalli merited the death penalty for murder, that of the sawyer William Boller. The execution took place on 5 January, at the site of what is now the Brisbane GPO. A large number of aboriginals, Djindubari, Ningy Ningy and Turrbal, congregated at Windmill Hill. The local Brisbane constabulary had been put on high alert and many people were persuaded to leave the city in fear of hostile reactions by the blacks. A crowd of whites gathered on Queen Street to watch. He noticed Petrie in the crowd and addressed an appeal to him in his native tongue, and, sighting aboriginals, including his wife, on the farther hill, called out to them, telling them that Wumbungur had been responsible for his capture, and requested that they kill him. Others state that he called on his people to fight the colonizers.
The hangman was Alexander Green (52), an ex-convict who had hanged 491 people over 27 years. Green miscalculated the length of rope required causing a grotesquely bungled hanging. His cruelly botched execution helped bring about an order by the British government to put an end to public execution. When Dundalli was dropped through the trapdoor his feet hit the coffin below. Dundalli bounded up, the coffin was removed and Green seized his legs and tugged hard on them until Dundalli's neck snapped. Green himself was committed four months later to the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum.
Aftermath.
In the estimation of Libby Connors, 'The mystery as to why the authorities were unstinting in their pursuit of the execution of Dundalli makes more sense when it is viewed not as the legal execution of one man but as an attempt to destroy the ancient legal system of southeast Queensland'.
In a memoir Therry described Dundalli as 'a man of the most savage ferocity, his crime of the deepest dye' and as evincing 'a sad and pitiful inferiority to the European mind'.