“The command of the Native Police has been intrusted [sic] to me for the maintenance of peace and order and not for the purpose of carrying war into an enemy’s country”

Letter from Frederick Walker to Colonial Secretary

“You Sydney people can have no idea of how much we are indebted to the commandant of the native police for the admirable pains he has carried out for protecting these large districts. It used to take seven years for a newly occupied river to be considered free from danger”

Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, July 29, 1854

“Will you if it is possible send out a section of Police to be stationed here for a few months, unless the Blacks get a lesson I know not what will be the end of this unfortunate affair, they are now all around us, and I expect every hour to hear of further murders”

Letter from James Leith Hay to Frederick Walker

“The blacks are especially bad on the Lower Herbert — so much so, in fact, as to cause most of the settlers to continually move about with loaded firearms, which they also retain in close proximity during the night”

Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser April 14, 1877

“The miners are for the most part pretty well armed, but they cannot be always on the lookout, and a party cannot go out prospecting a few miles without leaving one to keep camp, while the others must be all armed”

Brisbane Courier January 21, 1874

“They will select out of the terrified crowd of women one or two girls that strike their fancy for wives, possibly the gentleman in charge will secure a terrified baby boy as a present for one of his friends”

Brisbane Courier, December 14, 1877

“On 30th January Sub-Inspector Crompton captured three little children—two girls and one boy, the eldest about 10 years—on Gould Island. They were given away in Cardwell to domesticate them”

Brisbane Courier, April 12, 1872

“The native police have been patrolling the district, ostensibly for the purpose of “dispersing” the blacks, but really, it is alleged, to hunt up gins, and shoot down blackfellows like kangaroos”

Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser, 4 December 1862

“A native policeman… is an expert swordsman, a perfect light dragoon, and one, perhaps, of the best skirmishers of any troops in the world; and when dismounted and fighting on his own hook, nothing stops him, nothing daunts him, he scales the highest mountains like a goat, traverses the plains in pursuit with the swiftness of a deer, rushes through the scrub like a wallaby, loading and firing with the precision of an old soldier”

Sydney Morning Herald, May 11, 1853

“Hostility and bloodshed frequently occur between the wild blacks and white settlers at the outset of their intercourse from perfect ignorance on the part of the former as to what the white men require of them—"Thou shall not steal" and "Thou shall do no murder" having always required heretofore to be taught them by the rifle and revolver”

George Elphinstone Dalrymple, Brisbane Courier, August 6, 1864

“If the object of the Native Police is merely the destruction of the aborigines, they are a most efficient force for that purpose. If you want to destroy the blacks by wholesale slaughter, you could not find people more suited for the purpose than the Native Police”

Maurice O’Connell, June 19, 1861

“Do you think fear is the best agent for keeping blacks quiet, or is there any other mode; do you think they are best kept in order by being made afraid? Yes; I think fear is the only thing to be attained with a black Force”

Henry Hort Brown, December 10, 1856

“The blacks since they have become friendly tell me that in the old days of “reprisals”, carried out in the usual manner—i.e., shooting the men and destroying their nets, water bags, and implements—we used to starve numbers of the old men, women, and children to death”

Brisbane Courier, July 14, 1880

“Kindness to aboriginals is unappreciated, as seen, among the many others, in the recent murder of Mrs McCauley on the Mulgrave River; fear alone will control them”

Telegraph, January 26, 1885