Why is there a Statue of the Slaver Robert Towns (1794–1873) in Townsville?
The mayor of Townsville Cr Jenny Hill has recently defended the placing of a statue of Robert Towns in the CBD of the city as part of the so-called ‘Pioneers Walk’. Cr Hill has stated in The Queensland Times (Jun 16, 2020), “there is little evidence Robert Towns was involved in slave trade”. This is far from correct. But worse still, Cr. Hill’s misguided argument is grounded in the council’s own paid research, published in a flawed report into the activities of Towns, commission in 2004 to pave the way for the statue, following the decision by Townsville CBD Promotions;
“to contribute to the Walk by funding research into the activities of John Melton Black and Robert Towns, much of which was subsequently pursued by local historian Jim Manion. This provided the basis for an approach to the Townsville City Image Committee which in turn consulted the Perc Tucker Gallery. The outcome was a decision to erect a life-sized statue of Robert Towns “to be placed at the beginning of the Walk, close to the Mall”. Funds were passed over to the Council which had approved the project and assumed responsibility for the monument’s commissioning.”. (Report by K. H. Kennedy “Robert Towns’ Townsville and the “Blackbirding” controversy” 2004 p iv)
In the research for the report into the activities of Towns, there is no mention of consultation with Indigenous or traditional land owners, or the South Sea Islander community. This is in contrast with the Eddie Mabo memorial on the same Pioneer Walk, which was constructed in consultation with Mabo’s widow.
Regarding the claim by the mayor that Towns was a pioneer through his financing of the establishment of the port of Townsville, Towns & Co was a private enterprise, financed by the Bank of NSW, with Towns himself sitting on the Board of the bank. The development of the Port of Townsville, or as it was known before 1866 the Port of Thuringowa, was part of the many business enterprises conducted by Towns & Co. The man himself only spent 3 days in the city named after him. This reflects very well the commercial origins of the settlement, conducted at a distance through appointees, and the underlying inference of the ‘empty, unoccupied north’ with its ignoring the people who actually lived here.
Towns established the use of indentured labour in Queensland, or in the words of council’s own report, he “commenced the recruitment of Islanders on a systematic scale for Queensland agriculture” (p59), which included South Sea Islanders who were ‘blackbirded’ or kidnapped. Between 1847 and 1863, according to Timothy Coghlan, and stated in the councils own 2004 report by K H Kennedy, in the context of imported Chinese, Indian and South Sea Islander workers;
“There was no pretence that such labour was better or more suitable to the country than white labour; its only merits, in the eyes of the importers, were its apparent cheapness and the inability of the labourer to seek redress for any injustice practised on him.” (pp11–12)
In her defence Mayor Hill aligns the Towns statue on the Pioneers Walk with its memorial to Eddie Mabo (a “cast bronze Warrup drum and stand; large carved granite tor; water motif pebble mosaic 5m x 3m oval with bluestone banding sets and sandblasted text”). But this is precisely our point — there is no image of Koki Mabo, but there is an expression of both his culture and ideas. We believe it should be likewise for Towns.
Mayor Hill has used the phrase “contracted labour from the South Sea Islanders” in regard to Robert Towns, which is extremely generous considering the history. The validity of any contracts between workers and their transporters is tenuous in relation to the indentured labor obtained by Robert Towns. Perhaps this best expressed in relation to Towns’s business associate, Benjamin Boyd:
“Boyd made out that the Islanders had knowingly entered into labour contracts of their own free will. The “contract” the illiterate men marked with their thumbprints promised payment of one pound six shillings a year, as well as clothing and rations of meat and flour, in return for five years’ labour. His attempts to impart a veneer of legality to proceedings fooled nobody. Robert Lowe, a member of the NSW Legislative Council, wryly noted the “natives” of the Pacific Islands were not likely to have given informed consent to work as shepherds, given they had never seen sheep before. Boyd, Lowe claimed, “brought his cargo of labour as he would have brought a cargo of tea or sugar … he had brought these people out as slaves, to traffic in and profit by their labour”. For their part, the Islanders had no idea they had agreed to sign on for five years’ work and, upon disembarking in Eden, many walked the 480 kilometres to Sydney to find passage home rather than be transported inland.” Alex McKinnon, Blackbirds: Australia’s Hidden Slave Trade, The Monthly July 2019.
This contrasts with the almost apologetic tone of the Kennedy report, when discussing the crime against humanity that is slavery:
“This was at a time when overseas attitudes towards slavery were hotblooded. The British Parliament passed the Emancipation Act in 1833 and its navy was active around the African continent, and in the Caribbean monitoring the human slave trade, so long a feature of the locality. In the United States the “underground railroad” was in full swing; Theodore Weld, Garrison, Wendell Phillips and other Abolitionist crusaders were at the peak of their agitation. NSW Governor Charles Fitzroy had the allegations of Boyd’s accusers investigated by the Attorney General who subsequently and not unexpectedly found them unsubstantiated.” (p15)
The vast gap between these two extracts can but raise the question of where the Townsville City Council stands in relation to this issue? Furthermore my own Great Great Grandfather, James Gordon (1822–1885) as Inspector of Polynesians for Townsville port, wrote in 1867 when trying to ascertain if the transported islanders understood the agreement they had supposedly entered into:
“. . . and so far as the agreement is concerned I could not satisfy myself that they had any idea at all as to the duration and nature of it, and Captain Brown virtually acknowledged that he could not make them understand it. On asking him how they managed to understand the agreement in the first instance he explained that it was explained to them by interpreters who reside in the Islands.”
Defending his own actions, and strangely predicting the present debate about his legacy, Towns wrote in 1863 (three years before the naming of Townsville):
“It is these drones in the hive of industry, whom I call the ‘breeches pocket patriots,’ who first drove me to the employment of native labour; and it is these men, or others pandering to their feelings and passions, who, after putting the Colony to so much expense for their own passage, and having done little or nothing to repay it, now seek to raise an outcry against those who cost the Colony nothing for their passage, and who, I venture to predict, will leave a lasting benefit behind them.”
Ross Lewin was the man who supplied the labourers for Towns. According to Kennedy, the same author of the Townsville City Council report of 2004:
“The name Ross Lewin epitomises the brutal reputation of the South West Pacific labour trade of the nineteenth century. He brought the first Pacific Island labourers to Queensland on Robert Towns’ schooner, Don Juan, in 1863, and continued recruiting activities until the early 1870s. Missionaries reviled him as a slave trader; Royal Navy captains pursued “the greatest man-stealer of them all” unsuccessfully. When Lewin was killed on Tanna, Vanuatu in April 1874 many felt he had received his just desserts.” (https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/4138/)
It seems odd that the righthand man of Robert Towns, who was “reviled […) as a slave trader” in a 2006 article by the same author is not described as such in the City Council report. Considering Ross Lewin captained Town’s ships and brought back the labourers from the islands for Robert Towns, he should also be mentioned in the memorial to him. Towns himself stated; “Ross Lewin was the person I employed in getting these people for me. I employed him in that way because he had been for many years second mate in my employ, and I understood that he knew the language, but he knew only a few catch words.” Even when the same author states Lewin was a “reviled […) as a slave trader”, in the Kennedy report he is defended by referring to how his “reputation nevertheless was coloured by court appearances and imaginative newspaper articles” that attest to his despicable character.
The Kennedy Report takes the line of the ‘kindly master’ when it comes to Towns, who apparently “went to great lengths in his instructions to ensure that indentured labour was treated in a humane manner”. (p59) Since he was investing heavily in this indentured labour, he would probably want them delivered in a good state and ready to work. The logic is comparable to how one treats a workhorse. The council’s own report concludes that Robert Towns “nevertheless will remain ignominious as the man who commenced the recruitment of Islanders on a systematic scale for Queensland agriculture” (p59). How can he be celebrated as a pioneer of the region without some explanation for what he has done to thousands of people in the name of profit.
In total, approximately 15,000 Kanakas died while working in Queensland, a figure which does not include those who expired in transit or who were killed in the recruitment process (McKinnon, 2019). This represents a mortality rate of 30%, which is high considering most were only on three year indentures. It is also strikingly similar to the estimated 33% death rate of African slaves in the first three years of being imported to America.
Towns paid his Kanaka labourers in trinkets instead of cash at the end of their working terms. He claimed that blackbirded labourers were “savages who did not know the use of money” (The Brisbane Courier Monday 7 March 1871) and therefore did not deserve cash wages.
With such a documented trail of infamy, how can Townsville City Council and Mayor Jenny Hill defend the monument to Robert Towns? At the very least this statue needs to be put in a museum and used as a teaching object, where the history of settlement in north Queensland can be taught to community and visitors. While the statue of Robert Towns remains as it is the 15,000 people who died working within the scheme he founded are betrayed by history.
The petition to have the statue of Robert Towns placed in a museum is still active and online. Please consider signing it here:
