J. B. Gribble

John Brown Gribble FRGS (1 September 1847 – 3 June 1893) was an Australian minister of religion, noted for his missionary work among Aboriginal people in New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland.

He was devoutly religious, and early chose the life of a Congregational Minister, serving in Rutherglen around 1876,[1] and in 1878 moved to Jerilderie,[2] so was there at the time of the Kelly gang's occupation of the town (February 1879).

[11] Four months later Gribble announced that he had been invited by the Anglican church in Western Australia to found a similar mission on the Gascoyne River, and with John Rushton, a Warangesda missionary, as his assistant, left for Shark Bay in July, travelling by ship to Fremantle, train to Perth, then the steamer Otway to Carnarvon.

[12] After a generally cordial reception by managers of the various sheep stations on the way to Dalgetty Reserve on the Kennedy Range, where a large area had been set aside for the Mission, he built a house and native hut, sunk a well, and conducted well-attended church services.

[14] Trouble started in December 1885 when Gribble held a lecture "Only a Blackfellow" at St Georges Hall, Perth, and aired some of his criticisms about the way Aboriginal persons were treated up north.

With the consent of his bishop, he favoured its competitor, the Daily News, with a copy of his journal, which included a number of personal observations and accounts from sympathetic residents.

[17] Extracts published by the Daily News included cases he witnessed of Aboriginal persons being tied together with chains, shackled round the neck.

Among other abuses, he described how illiterate Aboriginal persons were induced to sign, with a pencil mark, a contract for life to dive for pearls, then were traded like slaves.

He instanced the Flying Foam massacre, a retaliatory raid in the Pilbara region at which many Aboriginal persons were slaughtered, partly corroborated by one David Carly.

[12] The Missions Committee viewed Gribble's "Letters to the Editor" detailing these events with "unqualified condemnation", and instructed him to have all his future correspondence vetted by them, a condition which offended his "Christian manhood".

[24] He proceeded to sue The West Australian and its publishers Harper and Hackett for £10,000 for libel (several tens of millions in today's money), having called him a "lying, canting humbug" and much else.

[27] He had used the fact of a dearth of half-caste children, despite the widespread intimacy between settlers and Aboriginal girls and women, as evidence of (widely rumoured) infanticide.

[28] At least one newspaper had a good word for Gribble, saying he might have lost in court, but had won admiration from much of the country, and had stirred government into tightening the laws regarding employment of native labour.

In June 1891 Gribble visited the Bellenden Ker Range with the aim of establishing an Anglican mission to the Aboriginals in the area, where he was well received by officials but encountered lassitude and great need among the original inhabitants.