Frederick Walker (native police commandant)

Frederick Walker
Frederick Walker, circa 1860.
Nationality	English
Occupation	Station manager, police officer, and explorer.
Title	Commandant of the New South Wales Native Police Force (1848-1854)

Frederick Walker (14 April 1820 – 19 September 1866) public servant, property manager, Commandant of the Native Police, squatter and Australian explorer.

Frederick Walker is today best known as the first Commandant of the Queensland based Native Police Force. He was appointed commandant of this force by South Wales government in 1848, eleven years before Queensland became a separate colony. However this force remain most accurately described as a Queensland force. Beyond one or two patrols on the southern side of the Macintyre River this force operated solely on territory which in 1859 became colonial Queensland (the Macintyre River forms the border between New South Wales and Queensland). One detachment worked on the Clarence and Macleay Rivers in NSW until 1859.

Walker was born in Hampshire, England and lost his father John Walker in an early age and the mother, the allegedly French-born Maria Teresa Henrietta Swinburne, was said to have struggled on with six children of which two were handicapped.

He emigrated to Australia by the Ceylon in 1844 and was shortly after employed on William Charles Wentworth's Murrumbidgee River station Tala (south eastern New South Wales) where he ultimately served as superintendent. He was appointed Clerk of Petty Sessions in Tumut on 5 January 1847 and he functioned in this position at Wagga Wagga in April same year. On 18 August 1848 he was appointed "Magistrate of the Territories and its Dependencies" and Commandant of newly established Native Police Force on the recommendation of his former employers William Charles Wentworth (1790–1872) and Augustus Morris (1820?-1895), both members of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Walker had attracted attention, it was later stated, by his capacity to engage local Aborigines, understand their culture, speak their language and use this to secure peaceful coexistence between them and the white settlers. The Native Police Force was formed in August 1848 and commenced working in late that year subsequently arriving at the Macintyre River (at the present-day southeastern border of Queensland) on 10 May 1849 with a band of fourteen 15- to 25-year-old Aboriginal troopers picked from four different Murrumbidgee tribes, by all accounts a well drilled and highly disciplined band greatly committed and attached to their Commandant who remained exceedingly proud and protective of his men.