Aboriginal tracker

The excellent tracking skills of these Aboriginal Australians were advantageous to settlers in finding food and water and locating missing persons, capturing bushrangers and dispersing other groups of Indigenous peoples.

The first recorded deployment of Aboriginal trackers by Europeans in Australia was in 1791 when Watkin Tench utilised Eora men Colbee and Balloderry to find a way to the Hawkesbury River.

[3] There are many other examples of explorers, squatters, military/paramilitary groups, naval missions, and police utilising Aboriginal assistance in tracking down wanted persons.

For instance, in 1834, near Fremantle, Western Australia, two trackers named Mogo and Mollydobbin tracked a missing five-year-old boy for more than ten hours through rough Australian bush.

No witness to the murder could be found but footprints of five men were tracked by the Jajowurrong to open country south of Mount Macedon (Sunbury region).

[9] Two members of the Queensland Native Mounted Police Force, Wannamutta and Werannabe, assisted in the capture of Ned Kelly at Glenrowan, Victoria in 1880.

[14] In 1941, the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit was established to patrol the north Australia coastline for Japanese landings and infiltration, and was primarily composed of Aboriginal soldiers.

Portrait of John Piper , an Aboriginal tracker who accompanied Major Thomas Mitchell in his expedition across the Great Dividing Range, c.1836
Aboriginal tracker on the right in Alice Springs (Mparntwe) in the 1930s
Members of the Queensland Native Police who assisted in the search of bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang
A contingent of Queensland Police trackers were sent to Victoria to help in the hunt for the Kelly Gang in 1879. The trackers along with Queensland and Victorian police officers pose in Benalla Police Paddock. Back Row L-R: Senior Constable Tom King (Standing); Troopers Jimmy, Hero and Barney and Victorian Police Superintendent J Sadlier. Front Row L-R: Queensland Sub-Inspector Stanhope O’Connor, Troopers Johnny and Jack and Victoria Police Commissioner, Captain Frederick Charles Standish (hands in pockets)