Early History

Point McLeay in the Aftermath of George Taplin

When Fred Taplin took over his father’s role as superintendent, minister, medical provider and relief-teacher, he was barely twenty five. His position as farm supervisor was taken by his brother-in-law Richard Blackwell, who was to succeed him as superintendent for a short time, until his own death. Fred took over a lease of 4,200 acres (1,750 hectares), a well-equipped village of one hundred and fifty to two hundred people, with its own boat, a store, school, wheat-fields, flocks of sheep and a herd of cattle, horses, sheds, and extensive plant. The mainly young men who did most of the work around the mission had experience across the board in rural labour, from horse-breaking to baking, and from operating the boat to wool-baling.

Inexorably, the community was shaping itself and changing the nature of Ngarrindjeri society in the process. As well, it was moving towards self-sufficiency, partly intended, partly as a necessary consequence of the contraction of outside opportunities. This turning inwards was eventually to have devastating consequences for the motivation and aspirations of generations of children.
Fred Taplin was dogged for the next ten years by accusations of improper conduct: such an accusation is rumoured to have caused his father’s early death, and another would follow him beyond the grave. In late 1879, a Meningie stockowner, Walter Richman, laid a complaint against Fred which kept him busy in court for a year. As well, another complaint, perhaps the one which had caused so much stress for George Taplin, was laid by John Wilson before the AFA, who dismissed it, and ordered John Wilson off the Mission: because of his removal, his children were not allowed to attend school at Point Mcleay for some time.
Amongst the children listed in 1879 was Pinkie Karpani, aged eight. Later that year, Ophel’s salary was raised to £ 100 per year, after an inspection by the Secretary of the AFA, Rev. Cox:
The Rev. F.W. Cox visited the mission station in August last, and reports that everything was in fair working order as he could see throughout the institution. In the school the order and intelligence of the children would be a matter of surprise to those who have formed a low opinion of the ability of the native race.

‘In some departments the work of the children would bear favourable comparison with that seen in the best schools in Adelaide, especially the writing in plain and ornamental hands.

‘The reading of the children in the ordinary school lesson books shewed an amount of knowledge on matters quite beyond their own experience that proved careful teaching on the one part, as well as ready minds on the other. (AFA Report, 1880).
In 1880, the unfortunate Fred was again accused of improper conduct, this time by a young mother named Esther Butler, who had known him rather well at Naracoorte a couple of years earlier (perhaps this is the complaint which brought down his father!). Fred demonstrated that he could not have been the father of her child and the charge was dismissed (AFA Minutes, 7.8.80, 6.9.80).
By this time, Point McLeay was valued at £ 3,554, or $ 1.5 million in today’s prices. The population seemed to have stabilised at about one hundred and forty. Rabbit plagues were spreading across the country, providing some employment for trappers: sixty thousand were caught in one year at Wellington Lodge (Linn, 1988: 125).

Report of Superintendent, Point McLeay: ‘Those of the natives who have been trained to habits of industry and usefulness at the institution, continue to obtain what employment they can amongst the squatters and farmers around us, the overseers at some of the shearing-sheds showing a marked preference for native shearers…’ ‘The attendance of children at school has been rather above the average of former years, the natives generally exhibiting an increased desire to obtain for their children the advantages of the institution.’ ‘The boys and girls are put to work, as they attain the age of fourteen or fifteen years, at whatever employment there is about the station suited to their ability, the boys showing more or less aptitude at learning farm or station work under the tuition of our overseer, and the girls domestic duties under the care of the schoolmistress.’ Protector’s Reports: SAGG, 12.2.1880, pp. 544

The new superintendent was markedly different from the old: from his letters, Fred appears to have been much less dedicated, more flighty – perhaps just younger – more interested in gadgets (photography, the newly invented telephone) and less in the Lord, more in the pleasures of youth and less in the burdens of responsibility: in July, 1880, he wrote to Mr Blackwell of Milang, ‘[I] long for the company of friends instead of gloomy Mr. O.’ And later he wrote to his wife in Adelaide: ‘Have sent cheque for £4 … Don’t elope with it and go on the spree.’ Not that he was unaware of his failings: a year later he wrote to Cox, that he

doubts with sorrow as to whether anything is gained by anxious care and tedious patience exercised in dealing with a stupid and ungrateful people. … I realise more and more what my father endured. I am young and inexperienced in human nature and therefore I suppose susceptible to depression in a greater degree … ‘ (PMLB, 14.5.1881)
Traditional crafts were by now falling into disuse. Fred Taplin replied to a request, that it was ‘Not possible to get [boomerangs and waddies] from Narrinyeri as they do not make them now.’

In mid-1881, Albert Karloan approached Fred about becoming a deacon of the church. This encouraged Fred to revive the regular Deacons’ Meetings, which had lapsed after the death of his father. Little seems to have been discussed at these meetings, apart from praying and singing: an opportunity to involve the most forward-thinking of the young men in the running of the mission was thus wasted. However, such meetings continued until the late 1890s.

Fred seemed to go through the motions of tending to the religious needs of the local people. He wrote to a friend,
Things are going well but we long for greater spiritual success. We have 27 Native communicants and a young man with profound faith will be received to full communion in a few weeks. The consistency of our natives would bear favourable comparison with a similar number of whites on the same class. In 22 years, 68 natives have embraced Christianity, of which 26 have died, 12 have gone back, 3 have lapsed because of distance, leaving 27 on Church Roll.
He was as desultory in discussing the school and the mission generally:
The school is still a success - benefit of secular instruction as well as spiritual is recognised more fully generally. We have 34 children in school, 17 men working on the farm, building, fencing, fishing, harvesting, wool-scouring, road-making and general station work, e.g. repairs to works and buildings, fences, etc., and wood carting. (PMLB, 12.12.1881)
Ophel and visitors to the Point McLeay School were still favorably impressed by the children’s work: in 1881, even though he had classes of over fifty children, Ophel claimed that there was: ‘no need for severe discipline. Their behaviour would compare favourably with that of any like number of school children in the colony.’ As a visitor noted, their ‘work done will bear favorable comparison with the results obtained in the State Schools.’
In 1881, the Government agreed to allocate a grant of £ 1,000 [$ 400,000] towards the Mission. Fred Taplin and the AFA were becoming concerned that there were many single young men on the Mission, with little to do:
18 single men at mission. The want of some means of affording these young men with evening pastimes, either by reading, or some other innocent recreation, is felt, and it has been thought that a building might be erected at comparatively small cost, that would serve the purpose of Reading Room and Institute.
Such facilities were eventually constructed, in the 1890s.

Natives present in 1881: William and Jeanparry Kropinyeri and 3 children John and Ellen Rankine and 6 children Thos. and Louisa Martin George and Agnes Koolmatrie and 3 children John and Charlotte Laelinyeri Ellen Martin Wiliiam and Sally McHughes and 2 children Napoleon and Emily Bonney Peter and Nahraminyeri Campbell and child William and Susan Campbell John and Sarah Wilkins Philip and Isabella Rigney and 4 children Richard Bull, wife and 2 children Robert and Emily Wilson and 4 children Peter and Lizzy Gollan and 5 children John and RebeccaSumner and 4 children John Davison and 2 children Tungkutte and Flora White George and Emily Harris and 2 children Thompson, Bella and 2 children Archie and Lily Blackmoor Fred and Jessie Dodd and child Pompey and Preitpul Jackson and 2 children Lucy Holmes Single Men: D. Wilson A. McHughes Harry Hewitt Karloan A. Spender B. Tripp. J. Close A. Kartinyeri Denis Moilge F. Blackmoor G. Karpany Gollan Seymour C. Giles Anton Hall Ben Hall C. Connolly M. Polteena. AFA Annual Report, 1881

In his annual report to the AFA, Ophel was concerned about the impact on the children’s education of the daily tasks required of them in the dormitory and around the mission:

Average attendance for the year has been 33 - 19 boys and 14 girls. The elder girls having to do most of the cooking and cleaning, to assist in the washing, sewing, etc., and the elder boys being often required to do work about the Station, makes the average attendance as school lower than it would otherwise have been.
This irregular attendance necessarily interferes with their progress in the three Rs. But this disadvantage is more than counterbalanced by the great advantage this training in domestic and other work will be to them in the future. They have not, it must be remembered, any home training in industrial or domestic employment.
C.J. Holder, Esq., visited the Mission Station in 1881 and reported on the relations between Ophel and the children:
‘I visited the school on the 1st of October, and was much pleased with the general attention of the scholars, as well as with the specimens of their work I saw. The conduct of the scholars was such as to afford ample evidence of their proper respect for their teacher, and that such respect was the result of an affection for him, rather than a fear of his anger, while that work was an evidence of his patient and persevering efforts to impart instruction, and of a satisfactory amount of success therein.’
Neither Ophel nor the rest of his family were very robust or healthy individuals; in early 1882, Ophel’s son George died, and ever afterwards, either Ophel or his wife, and sometimes both, experienced chronic ill-health. By 1885, Fred had had enough and encouraged the AFA to dismiss Ophel and replace him.
Still, Ophel was very busy organising a Band of Hope, a Christian temperance group, which had 106 members in the district by early 1882. By 22 May, it had one hundred and thirty members, mostly Aboriginal, and Ophel was running fortnightly meetings. Fred worked to start a branch up in Meningie.
Fred, like his father before him, was the regional vaccination officer, and travelled as far as Wellington to the north and Coolatoo in the south, including the town of Meningie and numerous villages in between. Vaccination of farmers’ and town children kept him travelling in times of outbreaks (cf. PMLB, 17.7.1882).
As superintendent, Fred gave out free passes on the steamer and railway, but only for what he regarded as legitimate business. He was approached repeatedly to allow, or even to organise sporting events, cricket or football tours, of Strathalbyn and Mount Barker. John Wilkins was especially insistent about organising sports teams to visit Adelaide, for weeks at a time, but Fred discouraged such trips, on suspicion that they were pretexts for drinking parties. However, in July, 1885, he was involved in a Grand Corroboree at the Adelaide Oval, followed by a football match.
By 1882, a number of young men had applied for their own farming leases, and had been approved: John Sumner, William McHughes and John Davidson at various times farmed their own land, but sometimes found themselves eaten out by relatives who had urgent business when harvest time came around.
A program had been begun by George Taplin to assist boys leaving school, putting them under the control of the farm overseer, first Fred, and then Richard Blackwell, to learn the full range of farm and station work: boys were paid 1/- a day at first, rising to 12/- and 15/- per week, with rations. A matron was employed from the early eighties, specifically to look after the dormitory and to train the older girls to make their own clothes, and in general housework (AFA Report, 1882: 7).
School Roll Book comments in 1882 were as positive as ever, although it is difficult to get a firm idea of what was being taught:
I spent upwards of an hour in the school, had opportunity of hearing two of the upper classes read and inspected the writing of nearly all the children. Result: I am more than fully convinced that the Society is doing a work that cannot be tabulated and in no department more thoroughly than in the foundation laid amongst the little ones. (AFA Report, 1882: 8).
Henry Hammond reported on his visit:
In many respects these black children would bear comparison with the white children of our town schools under equal circumstances…
I cannot help expressing my surprise and gratification of the intelligence and earnestness and the amount of close application evidenced by these children in the answers they made, and the work which I saw them do. (AFA Report, 1882: 11).

28 May 1883: Subscriptions to ‘Christian Colonist’ paid by: P. Rigney, P. Jackson, W. MacHughes, J. Laelinyeri, J. Sumner, and F. Taplin.

Fred Taplin, like his father, held strong views on religion, and on the importance of voluntary observance, rather than going through the motions. As he explained to his cousin, the Rev. C.G. Taplin:

… if anyone imagines that these people can be made religious or trained to be Christians by rigid rule, they are mistaken.

The Aborigines are naturally a religious people, i.e. they were before the Europeans arrived. Their religion abounded in rite and ceremony, but without them understanding anything of their meaning; or at any rate for the last few generations. Now you may get them to observe Christian ritual in the same way. We here know what a fight it is against natives of intelligence applying to be admitted to church fellowship, under the impression that the form is sufficient (I know you will say that Europeans are as bad) but Europeans are as bad, I know, yes, and worse, and that is the point. These people may be led in this mission to conform to the form of Christianity and believe that is sufficient without heart service. I believe in the morning and evening call to prayer as being desirable, but when it comes to form I’ll tell you what it is, if I was a darkie I wouldn’t be religious under these circumstances.

Now for what we do here. Daily routine is: The Overseer rings the Church bell at 7.45 a.m. and the workmen only meet with the Overseer alone for prayer, asking for Divine blessing on the day’s work. At 9.30 a.m. the School master rings the boarding school bell and the school children, about 40, and the servants employed in the school are called together for prayer.

At 6 p.m. the School bell is rung for supper and immediately after that meal, the children and school servants again meet for prayer. The families living in the cottages are supposed to have family prayers, morning and evening and they do, as I know from my observation. But if the whole were collected within the Church by [ ... ] or we made the attempt to collect them, the result would be bad congregation and instant deception: to avoid what would amount to an irksome regulation, as it is, we work smoothly and well.

We follow up the same rule with reference to attending Church service on the Sabbath. It is purely optional and nothing but moral persuasion and reassuring is used, the result is that our natives attend better, much better, than the ordinary run of whites: we have nothing to complain of with regard to their attendance generally. (PMLB, 6.8.1883: his emphases)
In late 1883, Ophel’s health broke down and he was given three months’ leave of leave of absence. After considering and rejecting the possibility of a female teacher, the AFA sent down Mr Edward Marshall, with whom Fred seemed to get on with fairly well, working together in the Band of Hope. Fred wrote a glowing testimonial for him at the end of his contract. However, it turned out that Marshall was a heavy drinker:
Poor old Marshall went from here and got on the spree in Adelaide and went to Rev. Cox very drunk. I am very sorry that he should have acted so but not surprised - strong drink a curse again - probably the reason this man of ability and energy cannot get on in life. (PMLB, 15.12.1883)
At the same time, Fred engineered the dismissal of Whitehead, who looked after The Needles reserve and gave out rations there. Secretly, Fred had offered the job to a Meningie man, Sherwood.
In 1868, some of the young men had built their own houses on Point McLeay, William McHughes and John Laelinyeri among them. After some demurral, the AFA agreed to pay for these houses when the men left Point McLeay with their families.
Fred Taplin had quite an enterprising streak: When wool-washing promised to become an industry around the lakes, he managed to secure major contracts with Landseer and Dunk, the major shipping agents in Milang, and installed probably the first flying-fox in South Australia for the purpose. (Bartlett, 1959: 13) Wool was washed to remove the lanoline and significantly reduce its weight and bulk for shipping, thus bringing much higher prices in London.
1884:

Rev. D. Paton visited the mission in 1884 and reported, more specifically than usual, on the school: ‘The branches of study are of course mainly simple and elementary such as reading, writing, geography, arithmetic, &c., and in these subjects the children exhibited a fair amount of ability and proficiency.’ (AFA Report, 1884)