English sailor part of tribe
A look back at significant moments in the North’s history
IN April 1846, an English sailor on a ship called the Peruvian named James Morrill washed up on Cape Cleveland.
Morrill’s journey to Cape Cleveland’s shores had already been a dramatic and traumatic experience, but the Englishman’s challenge was just beginning.
Morrill’s ship had sunk near New Caledonia on March 7 and he and 22 other crew and passengers clambered aboard a ramshackle raft.
By the time the little raft drifted across the Pacific Ocean and made landfall at Cape Cleveland, 16 of the survivors had died of exposure and starvation.
Three more died soon after the harrowing journey, leaving Morrill, captain George Pitkethley and his wife Alice, and apprentice James Wilson to live on dried shark meat, rock oysters and fresh water until they were rescued about two weeks later by Aborigines.
Eventually only Morrill remained, leaving him completely at the mercy of his new surroundings.
The people who rescued Morrill and his companions have since been identified as a clan of the Wulgurukaba tribe, and he spent 17 years living with the Wulgurukaba people around Mount Elliot and Cleveland Bay.
In those 17 years, he learned to live off the land and immersed himself in Wulgurukaba culture, so much so that he later reminisced that returning to “civilised life” had been difficult.
He watched for several years the advance of white settlement northwest from Port Denison, and his first contact with stockmen near Bowen had been triggered by the slaughter of 15 Aboriginal men known to him, according to an account he gave to Brisbane printer Edmund Gregory.
Morrill promised his Aboriginal friends he would stand up for them as the spread of civilisation continued along the coastal country.
In January 1863 he returned to white society in Bowen, and feared being mistaken for an Aboriginal and being shot, given how sun-scarred he had become.
“The remembrance of their past kindness came full upon me and quite overpowered me – there was a short struggle between the feeling of love I had for my own companions and the desire once more to live a civilised life,” Morrill said in his memoir, which he helped put together with Gregory.
Morrill was given a job as customs officer and also worked as an interpreter for George Dalrymple’s expedition to Rockingham Bay in January 1864.
Morrill married Eliza Ann Ross in October 1864 and their son James was born the following year.
Morrill died just three after James was born.
He was 41 years old and his death was attributed to rheumatic fever and a leg infection that he apparently dismissed as a scratch from a crocodile during his time with the Wulgurukaba.
Union Jacks flew at half mast in Bowen on the day of Morrill’s funeral, and the Port Denison Times paid tribute to his abstemious and orderly conduct since settling in town. months
*There are said to be more than 100 of James Morrill’s descendants around the North and also in the United States.
Some members of the family met in n Townsville in 2011 and were shown n around Wulgurukaba country by Aboriginal elder Russell Butler.
The visit made an impression on Tony Ford and his cousin Ken O’donnell, who argued Morrill should be honoured in Townsville as he was in Bowen and Burdekin.
“There is a lot said about John Melton Black as Townsville’s founder, but neither he nor Robert Towns were nice characters,” Mr O’donnell said.
“They were blackbirders and mistreated Aboriginal people.
“Jimmy Morrill lived at peace with them.”