The Boydtown historic walk takes in the important sites of the Town’s past.                                                    

The WALK  starts from the car park adjacent to the Seahorse Inn at Boydtown. It is over generally flat ground around the Inn and along the beach and turns inland through the coastal country. You should allow around at least an hour to complete the Walk.

The only climb is to the Church and Graves-Sites 12 and 13, which may be omitted by walking back from the Boiling Down Works site along the road to Site 14, near where you began.

Copies of the map are available on site or from the Eden Visitor Centre

Blackbirding

Etymology
The suggested origin of the term is that is a contraction of blackbird catching. A blackbird was a term used for local indigenous people. Some suggest that the term was derived from the  African Slave trade.  The term did not come into common language until the 1870’s-P.A.Taylor was the first author to use the word in print.

Definition: Blackbirding-the practice of kidnapping, coercing and deceiving  Pacific Islanders and using them as forced labour in Australia.
    

History
Some Historians suggest Boyd conceived the plan of Black birding in 1847 to recruit cheap labour for his ventures . However in 1846,a Sydney ship owner Robert  Towns  brought in coolies on a return voyage from India and was using Pacific Islanders on his trading vessels.
The title  of Boyd as a  Blackbirder  must have been retrospectively applied to Boyd as  he died almost 2 decades before the word was coined and entered common usage.

Other references suggest the practice began in 1863 with Townes who set up a large property otside Townsville  importing labour for Cotton and Sugar Plantations in Queensland which expanded into over 2 thousand of arriving.

In any case, subsequent investigation Boyd’s recruitment process revealed no illegal practices involved. More detail is covered in the article titled The Pacific Islander Venture..

Slave trading

   
Definition:    The sale of slave-a condition where one person has complete control of another’s life, liberty and freedom  

There is no evidence to suggest that Boyd was engaged or interested in Slave Trading,nor was he interested in procuring Slaves.  He was purely interested in finding employees  for his pastoral ventures under the existing labour relation Laws.

BEOWA-the new name for the Park was announced on Friday Sept 30th,2022. It pleased some local indigenous people and disgusted others. The aim of the History Centre is to display historically recorded aspects of Ben Boyd’s activities in the Colony. The purpose of the Centre’s submissions in this Re-naming process was to provide some historical balance to unsubstantiated allegations made against Boyd.

THE PROCESS

The process involved in the renaming of the Ben Boyd National Park was unfortunately a travesty of decision making, truth telling and democracy.
The original decision made by the Minister of the time was based on a statement that Boyd was associated with Blackbirding.
                                                  

BLACK BIRDING

This term did not come into common language until the 1870’s-some 20+years after Ben Boyd’s death. Furthermore, a Sydney shipowner- Robert Towns- was earlier bringing in coolies from India and in 1846 brought  in Pacific Islanders for crewing on his sandal-wood trading vessels, this was the year before Ben Boyd’s venture.

The definition of Blackbirding is the practice of kidnapping, coercing anyone into forced labour.  An investigation by the Attorney General of the day reported neither Boyd nor any of his staff was  involved in any illegality in the employment of Pacific Islanders. All Islanders were employed under the Master and Servants Act applicable at the time of their employment, although the Act was subsequently amended  by the Legislative Council as not applicable for Pacific Islanders, leading to all Boyd’s employees having to be released and abandoned in the community.

The Minister dismissed as irrelevant the fact that that the investigation, resulting in the Attorney General’s  legal decision was that Boyd and his employees had committed no illegality in the employment process. The investigation arose following unsettling “public opinion” about the  process. However not all public opinion was against the activity with a Sydney magazine declaring that the Colony was indebted to Boyd for his experiment that would do more to solve a difficult colonial problem than missionaries could possible do in a century.

Finally, it should be noted that NO Aboriginals were involved in Boyd’s “alleged” blackbirding, nor did it have any real effect on them.

TRUTH TELLING

The original request for the Re-naming came from local indigenous people and involved allegations that are not supported by history eg Boyd had locals“ chained in pig pens….”

On the first night Boyd spent camping with his associate, Oswald Briely on the shore of Twofold Bay, they had an harmonious interplay with locals
cooking their evening meal.               

Brierly who later controlled Boyd’s whaling operation and the design, construction an operations at Boydtown developed a very strong relationship with a local Aboriginal leader-Budginbro, who he called Toby. They worked closely together in the integration of the two cultures and Toby advised  Brierly on  local language and customs. Brierly’s personal Diary shows no evidence of any problems.

When Boyd travelled inland with Brierly, Toby accompanied them and introduced them to the local Aborigines. In regards to Boyd reffering to the Aboriginals as “vermin”. Boyd had a high regard for the local Aborigines he employed in his shore-based whalers and also in his off-shore whaling fleet as well as his own top-sail schooner. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald cited this fact as an example to be followed by others

Regarding the issue that Boyd was a Slave Trader. Boyd’s long struggle to obtain labour for his enterprises meant he needed to employ labour, not sell it to anyone else.                    

DEMOCRACY        

Contrary to the Minister’s announcement that the Bega Valley Shire Council would be involved in the naming process and despite NPWS confirmation of this, the Council was later advised that they had no part to play in the re-naming process. Early after the original Re-naming process was announced, the BVSC wrote to the Minister suggesting a joint naming, reflecting “our shared history”.

The Ben Boyd History Centre made 2 submissions on the matter which included similar joint-naming as an alternative, but and were subsequently told that these submissions were not considered. No  doubt other submissions were similarly handled.

No indication of local opinion or support was canvassed from the 95+% of non-indigenous ratepayers in the BVSC, yet the Pacific Islander Association from Queensland was took part in the consultation.