A discussion of the link between oral history and written history with respect to my own background is relevant here.

Two of the sons of the former convict Samuel Foley were working as farm hands and shepherds in the Turon River district north of Bathurst at the height of the Wiradjuri wars. As the sons of Irish Catholics they had a sympathetic association with wanton destruction and indiscriminate murder of innocent souls, as their forefathers had suffered similar fates as the result of persecution, greed and murder at the hands of the British nobility and military in the conquest of Ireland. It is said that they showed respect and compassion to the Wiradjuri and were recorded by some as being kind to the Indigenous groups. For this they were spared and were treated with respect by the Wiradjuri, in a manner similar to the treatment of the settler Suttor.^[49] They witnessed either directly or indirectly the possible massacres at Billiwillinga and Bells Falls Gorge^[50] (or incidents nearby). In the chaos that followed they provided shelter for two young women and a small child. Several other children that they tried to defend and hide were ‘sliced to pieces’ by the mounted soldiers.^[51]

As mentioned previously, a shared ‘hatred’ of the English existed between the sons of Irish Catholics and the Wiradjuri. One of these men was Thomas Foley, who was the author’s grandfather’s great-grandfather. At the end of the Wiradjuri wars he married one of the young women that he protected, who was later baptised as Mary. Their union was officiated in the fledgling Catholic Church at Parramatta. Their great-grandson was born at Tingha and was baptised as Johannes Foley, known to the Koori families in Glebe in the 1920s and 1930s as ‘Jack’, or ‘John’. He spent a short period on the Tingha Mission as a child whereupon he joined up with his father and travelled on his dray and wagon, supplying the highland traders and the burgeoning towns of Inverell and Glenn Innes with freight from the steamer ports on the coast.

This oral history and knowledge was passed down through my family, from my grandfather to my father and my father’s brothers.^[52] The wanton slaughter of the Wiradjuri became ‘real’ in the family history and in some ways mirrored the Irish oral history. They were both indigenous to their sovereign states; from island nations; they were both brutally colonised by the British and they both had their leaders. In my family’s oral histories, the details of the Irish atrocities have been forgotten with time, it is the Wiradjuri accomplishments on the battlefield and Windradyne’s leadership that has been remembered and retold generation after generation.^[53]

After two months of massacres the Wiradjuri were a spent force with no reserves to continue the military struggle. Windradyne and what was left of his family, together with other survivors of the massacres, travelled over the mountains to Parramatta and surrendered to Governor Brisbane. He lived for another decade in peace and was widely referred to as a ‘chief’, ‘a great leader of his people’.^[54] Born into a pluralist society he witnessed the destruction and extermination of his Elder system. The loss of male Elders in a patrilineal society broke down any consultative and communally acceptable decision-making process. Windradyne, in a most uncharacteristic Indigenous mode, initially took control of a fighting force out of anger, hate or reprisal for the murder of family and loss of traditional lands.^[55] The precise trigger for his actions is unknown.

Windradyne exhibited those leadership qualities that Larson has defined in contemporary management literature as including creativity, inspiration, entrepreneurship and achieving a shared sense of commitment from his followers.^[56] Windradyne was described on his surrender as one of the finest looking natives ever seen, as ‘noble’.^[57] No doubt he was a charismatic leader who came to fame as a result of the chaos of colonisation, in a similar way perhaps to Pemulwuy and later Musquito.

After Windradyne’s surrender he was allowed to live in peace and was subsequently used by the colonial powers to assist them in the pastoral settlement of the western plains of New South Wales. He then became a leader whose power was illegitimate within his social order, categorised as a chief by the colonial government. He lived out his days as a token of what he had once been. He is a warrior without Elders, a clan leader without a clan, a ‘chief’ without land or a people. The Bathurst District Historical Society erected a plaque on his grave in 1954 that calls him the last Chief of the Aboriginals, a friend to the settlers, a true patriot.^[58] Perhaps this is how history wishes to recall him in his last years, but is it as a true patriot to the colonial conquest of settlement and subsequent stealing of land, or a patriot to the Aboriginal cause? Either way he died of injuries suffered following a fight with another Indigenous person.^[59] It appears his chiefly status was not universally recognised as superiority by all people.

With Windradyne’s surrender it seems he became a chief in name only. Pemulwuy and Mosquito’s military-like leadership status ended with their executions. In comparison, was Bungaree ever a leader or a ‘chief’ of his people? Western constructs of leadership resulted in the demise of all four of these individual examples of Indigenous leadership. These men would most certainly been cut off from their spiritual realms of knowledge within the circles of Elder knowledge. This would have occurred following population attrition by musket, smallpox and colonial-derived diseases. The leadership actions in military pursuits by Pemulwuy, Musquito and Windradyne took them away from family groups. This ensured that they were also unable to pass on their knowledge to their youth, as those that they associated with were inevitably killed. Leadership born from military chaos proved to be a negative attribute in the circles of their Indigenous society. The structure of Indigenous society in general made the formation of significant fighting forces almost impossible, as most groups remained small and semi-autonomous, except for periods such as the Eora mullet feast,^[60] or other important non-aggressive ceremonies.^[61] Clans rarely exceeded 60 people and, for the most part, Indigenous Australian gatherings pre-contact were peaceful. The dimensions of social behaviour that would provoke aggressive responses involving arguments over territory, ideology and rule by minorities were not issues normally tolerated within Aboriginal society.^[62] Within our oral history we talk of the warriors Barnoo and the man who became the water dragon. Both of these individuals were soldiers in unknown battles, which is contradictory to a peaceful society. Like them, Pemulwuy, Mosquito and Windradyne appear as aggressors within their social construct. Bungaree was a political appointment with limited leadership influence.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of leadership had gone full circle. Aboriginal people knew whether a person was a good choice for a chief or a king. Individuals were bestowed with a title or obtained one through coercive tactics, even when sanctions by non-Aboriginal authority figures no longer had any influence.^[63] The demise of the gorget saw the rise of contemporary Indigenous leaders beginning in the early years of the twentieth century.