“A sharp frost- the thermometer at seven o’clock sank to 30 degrees. Having directed the occupations of my people during the day, I proceeded, accompanied by one of my party, to climb the steep ridge immediately before us. In an hour we gained the summit but found other ranges not to be seen from our tents although of greater elevation interrupted our view to the eastward. We continued along a gradual ascent from one tier of ranges to another and generally in a northeastern direction until about 3 pm when we gained the loftiest point of the lateral range immediately connected with the main range above us at a distance of two miles.”
This is how Allan Cunningham’s journal entry described the events of his day on June 11th 1827. His campsite was at Swanfels and the ridges he traveled along that day were those separating the Swanfels and Upper Freestone Valleys. He went as far as Cedar Mountain and from there sighted a pass in the ranges to the east that was later to be called Spicer’s Gap. Allan Cunningham led the first expedition of Europeans to travel through the areas later to become known as Yangan and Swanfels. Cunningham, the son of a Scottish gardener had trained as a botanical collector working at Kew Gardens under Sir Joseph Banks. After working in Brazil he arrived in Sydney in 1816.
With six men, eleven horses and rations for fourteen weeks his party set out from the Upper Hunter River reaching the Inglewood area on May 30th 1827. On June 5th from the top of the Herries Range at the head of Sandy and Thane’s Creeks they had their first view of the expanse of country Cunningham was later to term the Darling Downs.
Moving ENE they came across a small river having a brisk current from which some in his party were able to catch a number of cod. Cunningham named it the Condamine River. This river was followed from Toolburra to its junction with Glengallan Creek.
The party subsequently followed Glengallan Creek traveling up the Glengallan Valley on the 6th and 7th of June. Heavy rain then forced them to camp on the creek at a place near Gladfield. Mt Dumaresq was climbed and Cunningham saw and named Peel’s Plains (near Allora) and Canning Downs. Maryvale was given the name Millar’s Valley (or Millar’s Vale).
On June 10th the party passed around the western side of Mt Dumaresq and Mt Carter (Mt Sturt). From there they passed through the area which is now Yangan and up the valley Cunningham named Logan’s Vale (Swanfels). Mention was made in his journals of a sandstone outcrop on the banks of a stream.
From June 10th to June 15th the party camped at Swanfels at a site about 350 meters east of the entrance to the Swanfels Pioneers’ Memorial Park. The campsite was only a short distance from the creek. This position was determined by Colin Bauer, Bill Kitson (Surveyor) and Colin p Munro (Historian) in 1984.
From his campsite, Cunningham could see “a remarkable double. headed mountain of the main range bearing northeast by east about ten miles.” This was Mount Doubletop. It was on the first day camped in Swanfels that Cunningham climbed the ridge and sighted Spicer’s Gap. Cunningham’s diary records his view from Cedar Mountain in the following words:
“From here we observed through some hollow part of the extreme range in our front (about one and a half miles away) portions of the country in the vicinity of the Brisbane River at North-East, also parts of the more distant lands at the base of the Mount Warning Ranges, the cone of which we distinctly saw crowning the group of mountains about sixty or seventy miles away.”
He recorded bearings to two peaks and back to his campsite and continued “Had the day continued fine and clear I should have endeavoured … to have gained the highest ridge … About two miles distant.” (Spicer’s Peak)
“We noticed from the station to which we had climbed a very deeply excavated part of the main range bearing from us about ~ .N.E. two or three miles, to the pitch of which there appeared a tolerably easy rise along the back of a forest ridge from the head of Millar’s Valley. So remarkable hollow in the range I determined not to leave unexamined since it appeared … It might prove to be a practicable pass from the Eastern country to the Darling Downs.” The hollow was Spicer’s Gap.
Heavy showers of rain forced Cunningham and his men to leave the range and descend by a rocky gully. They returned to camp drenched to the skin at 8 pm, and Cunningham recorded, “myself more disposed to sink beneath excessive fatigue”.
Researching the history for his book of Swanfels stories, A Very Beautiful Grassy Vale, Norman Bauer suggests that in all probability the rocky gully Cunningham climbed down was Oakey Creek.
Bauer further comments that “the amazing ability of this man is shown by the fact that this was about the middle of June when darkness falls between 5.00 pm and 5.30 pm yet he did not get back to his camp until 8 pm. It would take a very good bushman to travel for two hours in such rough, unknown, unexplored country, on a dark night in falling rain, and yet find his camp.”
On the morning of June 13th, Cunningham sent two of his men to further explore the gap in the mountains that he had discovered. They arrived back at camp at noon on the 14th.
Cunningham later sent this report of their findings to Governor Darling. “They ascended a narrow ridge by which they rose gradually seven miles, to a distance of about one mile from the highest pitch of the Gap, when the difficulties appeared to consist of the ruggedness of the large masses of rock that had fallen from the heads into the hollow and the brush with which the boulders were covered.
On ascending the South Head, (Spicers Peak) they observed a rather easier passage over the range where a road could be constructed, the acclivity from Millar’s Vale being by no means abrupt, and the fall easterly from the range to the forest grounds at its foot appeared exceedingly moderate.
Despite having five days of rest, their horses had shown no recovery in condition. Supplies were diminishing. The party left the Swanfels Valley on June 16th reaching Segenhoe, their starting point on July 28th 1827. They had travelled around 1,300 km in 13 weeks. The following year, on another expedition, Cunningham sailed from Sydney and embarked at the penal colony of Moreton Bay (Brisbane). From there he travelled to Limestone (Ipswich) and heading generally southwest, attempted to find the same gap in the ranges. On August 25th 1828 members of his party (in Cunningham’s absence due to his ill health) explored another gap which lay to the northwest of Spicer’s gap. Today it is known as Cunningham’s Gap and the main highway passes through it.
It has frequently been suggested that Cunningham thought that the two gaps discovered from different sides were actually one and the same. Historian Jan Ward Brown believes that Cunningham was aware that two gaps had been discovered. She supports her view with an extract from his diary: “I was induced to conceive that the gap into which I had simply looked from its western side in June 1827 was very distinct from the one before us”
From 1840 through to 1847 Cunningham’s Gap was used as the path through the ranges. It was not without its problems though, being exceedingly steep. Laden drays could not traverse it and were forced to go by Gorman’s Gap some seven or eight miles south of where Toowoomba now is.
Henry Alphan, a stockman on Canning Downs, pegged a path through Spicer’s Gap in 1847. Spicer’s Gap then served as the main communication route for many years. It was replaced in importance firstly by the railway connecting Warwick to Brisbane via Toowoomba, and then in 1923, by a shorter and more trafficable road being built through Cunningham’s Gap.
ABORIGINAL HERITAGE
Prior to European settlement, the Keinjan tribe were the occupants of the Yangan Swanfels area. The Keinjan, also known as the ‘Blucher’ or Canning Downs tribe, occupied an area of some 3,600 square kilometres centred on Warwick. We do not know just how many Keinjan people there were. The Darling Downs with a total area of 34,000 square kilometres was home to four tribes including the Keinjan. The total Aboriginal population of the Downs in the 1840s has been variously estimated at between 1,500 and 3,000 people.
At ritual ceremonial gatherings such as corroborees and feasts, different tribes would meet. The Bunya Mountains pine nut feast drew tribes from the Downs as well as from northern NSW, the Maranoa, Warrego, Wide Bay, Burnett, Dawson and southeast coastal Queensland regions.
There were inter-tribal marriages and extensive trade and gift exchange networks. At times, however, there were battles between different tribes. Flat ground a short distance from the Yangan School, and behind where the Silverwood cheese factory later stood is said to have been the scene of many battles between local Aborigines and those from the Fassifern.
History records that settlement in many places was accompanied by violent conflict between the native inhabitants and settlers. When Allan Cunningham was camped at Logan Vale (Swanfels) in June 1827 he recorded the following in his diary. “Although very recent traces of natives were remarked in different parts of the vale in which we encamped about a week, only a solitary aborigine (a man of ordinary stature) was seen, who, in wandering forth from his retreat in quest of food, chanced to pass the tents. Immediately, however, on an attempt made by my people to approach him, he retired in great alarm to the adjacent brush at the foot of the boundary hills, and instantly disappeared. “
Thomas Hall in his “Story of the Blucher Tribe” gives the following account: “It was in 1853 that 1 first saw the members of this tribe when they were at their full strength, and 1 never met a finer and more trustworthy body of men than those of the “Blucher” tribe, provided they were treated fairly and promises made to them were kept.” Hall, a station hand, also recorded that the Keinjan had protected the Leslie Brothers from attacks from the McIntyre (Bigambul) tribe. Hall recorded that the Leslies had a practice of passing on meat to the Keinjan whenever they butchered stock for their own needs. This he suggests may have gone some way to averting hostilities. Hall’s writings suggest that the Leslies had (for the era) a reasonably enlightened attitude towards Aborigines. Had he been in the district a decade earlier he may have painted a different picture of the situation. In compiling her work Rosenthal-Historic Shire (1989), Jan Ward-Brown examined letters written by the Leslies. She draws attention to several passages in the letters portraying the state of relations. They include the following passages written by George Leslie:
” We never allow them to come about the station or hold any communication with them except it be with a gun or sword. Two blacks were shot the other day by a new arrival on the Downs for attempting to spear some sheep he had lost in the bush.” (24.6.1841)
“The Blacks have been annoying us greatly within the last 10 months, We have lost through them 100 head of cattle and they attacked us again the day before yesterday. Walter being down country 1 can’t leave home, but Dalrymple and a party are out hunting the n****s. They have killed a great many white men in this part of the country and not many days pass without our hearing of some man killed.” (To brother William L. 1-1-1844)
I recorded that Canning Downs employed shepherds to keep sheep safe from attacks from dingoes and Aborigines. Which tribe of Aborigines this refers to is uncertain. Tom Mahony related a story told to him by Jack Wilson. It was to the effect that the Aborigines took some sheep from Canning Downs and secreted them in scrub country killing and using them for part of their food supply. However, a shepherd eventually found out. His questioning of the Aborigines failed to get any information until one young Aborigine gave in. This chap was ousted by his companions and had to live amongst the white people, moving about doing some work and soliciting for food. Each Aboriginal tribe had its own language. Only a small part of the Keinjan language has been recorded.
Tim Mahony was born in Yangan on Christmas Day 1888. As a young boy, he was acquainted with Aborigines who at times camped near his family home in the Swanfels district. The natives referred to their camping place as Woodgerah and a pine scrub further up the gully from the Mahony home was Gundenmgin. Aboriginal names for some of the mountains were Moonganmilly (Mt Sturt), Barguggan (Spicer’s Peak), Cooyinnirra (Mt Mitchell) and Niamboyoo (Mt Cordeaux).
A Mochel Mochel was a bunyip. Campoons is the name for The Gap. It has been suggested that the name Yangan has been derived from an Aboriginal term meaning “go forward”.
During the early days of settlement Aborigines were employed from time to time by the settlers and paid with either money or provisions. Numerous records exist of Aboriginal men being employed by white settlers to fell timber and Aboriginal women performing domestic duties in the settlers’ shacks.
The Aboriginal people lost their hunting grounds and necessarily became dependent on white settlers for food. Europeans brought with them infectious diseases to which the natives, having not been previously exposed, lacked resistance. Death from such disease would have reduced their numbers. Displaced by the settlers some seem to have migrated south to the country around Woodenbong.
Tim Mahony’s recollections suggest that Aboriginal tribal groups were last in the Yangan-Swanfels area in the 1890’s. Ellen (Johanson) Free related in her recollections (written 1991) that as a young child, her brother Charles (Plum) Johanson recalled that many Aborigines lived on a small reserve close to one of their family’s farms in Swanfels. Charles was about two years older than Tim Mahony so this separate
reference also suggests the disappearance of the remnants of tribal groups in the 1890’s.
From “Early History of Yangan and Swanfels” by Timothy Mahony.
Acknowledgements and References
ISBN 0-646-37536-9
The Yangan & Swanfels Chronicle Yangan P&C
Alan Gamgee
NOTE ON LANGUAGE
The content on this page is derived from historical texts that reflect outdated and offensive language. We recognise the importance of these texts in understanding the past, but also acknowledge that the language used no longer reflects the respect and dignity owed to the Indigenous peoples of this land.