Black 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, capturing bushrangers and violently dispersing other groups of aboriginals.

The first recorded employment of the services of Aboriginal trackers by Europeans in Australia was in 1791 when Watkin Tench utilised Eora men Colbee and Balloderry to find a way to the Hawkesbury River. In 1795, an aboriginal guide led Henry Hacking to the Cowpastures area where the lost First Fleet cattle were rediscovered. In 1802, Dharawal men Gogy, Budbury and Le Tonsure with Gandangara men Wooglemai and Bungin assisted Ensign Francis Barrallier in his explorations into the Blue Mountains. There are many other examples of explorers, squatters, military/paramilitary groups, naval missions, and police utilising aboriginal assistance in tracking down wanted persons. For instance, in 1834, near Fremantle, Western Australia, two trackers named Mogo and Mollydobbin tracked a missing five-year-old boy for over ten hours through the rough Australian bush. Another notable 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.

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Wikipedia