Scotch College

Three Scotch beacons: Forbes, Mathew and Thompson

Graham Bradbeer, Chaplain

We tend to think that consciousness of the rights of our Aboriginal people, respect for their culture and awareness of our common destiny in shaping the Australia of the future is something new. Yet there are many examples over the years of men and women whose Christian principles led them to become bright, shining lights in fostering awareness of the needs, aspirations and rights of Australia’s indigenous peoples. Here are three examples – all with tangible Scotch connections.

James Forbes

J D Lang, first Presbyterian minister in Australia, was a real stirrer. On his vigorous recruiting drive in Glasgow in 1837, he persuaded young clergy there was plenty to do for God in the infant colony. Not only were there convicts and settlers who needed the services of Christian ministers, argued Lang, there were indigenous people too.

Tragically, many white settlers supposed indigenous people were less than fully human, or were deficient because they lacked a written culture. Lang thought differently. Forbes learned from him that Aboriginal people had numerous languages and could recount long poems and songs telling the stories of their people. At 24 years old, Forbes was persuaded to leave Scotland. Before he left he signed a petition urging the British government to promote Christian missionary work among Australia’s indigenous people.

Forbes canvassed energetically in personal correspondence, and published numerous articles in the Port Phillip Gazette, revealing his far-sighted educational vision. He sought assistance from the government and also from his congregation at Scots Church.

After the outrageous Myall Creek massacre, Lang preached that indigenous people were ‘bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh... formed after the image of God’. Not all accepted such solidarity with indigenous people. Forbes, however, shared Lang’s fervour. He describes the white settlers as ‘savage’ towards the starving blacks; the former ‘lords’ of their domain, whose stolen lands, he noted, were now occupied by the ‘flocks and herds of the settlers’.

The issue of a suitable model for funding schools was to remain contentious. As the debates continued, Forbes established the Scots’ School, the Mechanics Institute (1839), three other schools, and his planned academy, which became his ‘Scotch’ college. In 1838 the Scots’ school listed two Aboriginal students among its prize-winners.

John Mathew

As a 16-year-old, John Mathew, newly arrived from Scotland, became a jackaroo on his uncle’s cattle station in Queensland in 1865. Mathew was severely critical of the brutality of the ‘native police’ and sympathetic to the blacks. He learned the Kabi language and developed a strong anthropological interest.

Like Forbes, John Mathew became a teacher and then, while at Melbourne University and active in the student union (with John Monash), a Presbyterian minister. The proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1897 record his writing on the Koori rock art of the Grampians. Subsequently Mathew joined the council of Forbes’ ‘Scotch College’ which brought to the school’s innermost sanctum a conspicuous lifelong interest in Aboriginal ethnography.

Donald Thompson

In the spirit of Forbes and Mathew, Donald Thompson left Scotch during World War I with a prize in natural history. After a sojourn in Arakun in 1932, Thomson, a committed Presbyterian, tried to restrict information about the shocking brutalities he witnessed at the Presbyterian mission in Arnhem Land. He asked to address the Church leaders privately so they could take steps to put things right discreetly, but they refused to hear him. Thompson’s relationship with his Church ended in disgust. The mission superintendent stayed in the same role until the 1960s.

Thompson’s love of Arnhem Land and its people is vividly communicated in his ardent journal and his stunning black and white photographs. His years living with indigenous people made him unique as a Professor of Anthropology. It was only after his death that his powerful advocacy was to be instrumental in helping indigenous people win recognition in Australian law, with land rights and native title. His photograph of 10 canoes has given title to a recent film.

Black and white Australia needs another bright and shining light. Will Scotch and the Gospel fire the flame, or will it be left to others?