Aboriginal tracker

In the years following British settlement in Australia, aboriginal trackers or black trackers, as they became known, were enlisted by settlers to assist them in navigating their way through the Australian landscape. The trackers' hunter-gatherer lifestyle gave rise to excellent tracking skills which were advantageous to settlers in assisting them in finding food and water and locating missing persons or capturing bushrangers.

The first recorded employment of the services of Aboriginal trackers in Australia was in 1834, near Fremantle, Western Australia, when two trackers named Mogo and Mollydobbin tracked a missing five-year-old boy for over ten hours through the rough Australian bush. Another notable early event occurred in 1864 when Duff children Jane (7), Isaac (9) and Frank (4) Duff, lost for nine days in Wimmera, were found by aboriginal tracker Dick-a-Dick.

When asked how he tracked, Mitamirri, a famous tracker of the early 20th century, said "I never bend down low, just walk slow round and round until I see more."

In 1845 Edward Stone Parker the Assistant Protector of Aborigines based at the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford, wrote a letter to the Chief Protector reporting on the murder of a native at Joyce's Station (near Newstead). No witness could be found to the murder but the footprints of five men were tracked by the Jajowurrong to open country south of Mount Macedon (Sunbury region). The trackers there met with another man attached to the Loddon Protectorate Station who was on his return from Melbourne. He told the trackers he had met with the group they were tracking and was able to give a description of them.

The New South Wales Police Force actively engaged Aboriginal Trackers from 1850, attempting to secure Aboriginal Trackers for each of the police districts. By 1867, 52 Aboriginal Trackers were in the employ of the police at a daily rate of 2s 6d (approximately ₤3 17s 6d per month). In that year, at the height of Bushranger activity in the Goulburn Police District, three mounted Aboriginal Trackers of the New South Wales Police Force were actively involved in the capture of the Clarke brothers at Jinden near Braidwood. Aboriginal Tracker Sir Watkin Wynne (later Sergeant Major Sir Watkin Wynne), led the initial party of police from Fairfield under the command of Senior Constable Wright (later Sub-inspector Wright) to their location at Jinden. He was seriously injured during the capture and had an arm amputated. He was awarded ₤120 for his role in the capture. Two other trackers, who subsequently led other police to the scene, Trackers George Emmott (stationed at Ballalaba) and Thomas (stationed at Major's Creek), secured lesser awards of ₤7 10s. Tracker George Emmott had previously received an award of ₤30 for the arrest of Pat Connell another member of the gang.

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