Kalkadoon
The Kalkadoon , also known as Kalkadunga , are an Aboriginal tribe living near Mount Isa in Queensland . This tribe has become known because it violently resisted the land seizure in their tribal area against the white settlers. In 1884, about 200 of them were shot dead in the massacre in the battle of "Battle Mountain" with the national police.
Battle Mountain
The Kalkadoon area was first entered as Europeans by William John Wills and Robert O'Hara Burke , who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861, and subsequently developed by settlers. The Kalkadoon took the settlement as an attack on their culture and land rights, which they had had for millennia, and resisted. As early as January 1883, the National Police were attacked in the McKinlay Range when they camped there and went to the Kalkadoon area. A police officer and three horsemen were killed by spears. While settlers began to settle in 1861 and tried to learn the Kalkadoon language , there were isolated cases of fatal confrontations with settlers. In 1884 a settler was killed by a spear in an altercation while he was herding his cattle. Then the police officer Frederick Charles Urquhart and the Scot Alexander Kennedy drove the Kalkadoons into a ravine and massacred them. They also killed defenseless women and children.
When a Chinese shepherd was killed while attacking the Kalkadoon with a bush fire near the Granadastation on the Argylla Ranges , they withdrew to a steep hill. Then 200 police officers and other men on horses went there and the fight on Battle Mountain began. The 200 armed horsemen could not climb the steep hill; the Aborigines attacked them with spears and injured them. The leader of the whites, Urquhart, was injured and was out of action for hours. When he came to, he split his force and attacked from two sides. This forced the Aborigines to leave their positions. During the uncovered descent from the hill, they got caught in the fire of the whites who massacred around 200 Kalkadoons. This tribe was almost extinct.
Kalkadoon Land
Through a legal act, the Native Title Act, the Kalkadoon have regained 52,212 square kilometers of land near Mount Isa. This Aboriginal tribe holds strong adherents to their land and after getting their land back began to restore their own culture, economy and relationships with their land. Kalkadoons artists are now successful painters.
Note
The name Kalkadoon also comes in the name of an endemic passerine bird found in Queensland, the Kalkadoon Grasswren .
See also
Web links
- Kalkadoon land use agreement (English)
- kalkadoon.org (English)