Item #58407 Report of Commission ... to inquire into the Management of the Northern Territory Expedition. Northern Territory.

Report of Commission ... to inquire into the Management of the Northern Territory Expedition ...

Adelaide, Government Printer, 1866.

Foolscap folio, xxviii, 112, xlii pages.

Recent cloth with the title in gilt on the front cover; title page very slightly marked; last page slightly marked and discoloured, with a tiny piece missing from the bottom corner tip; an excellent copy.

South Australian Parliamentary Paper Number 17 of 1866. Boyle Travers Finniss (1807-1893) became the first Premier of South Australia in 1857; in 1864 he was appointed the first Government Resident in the Northern Territory. 'The hastily organized and poorly planned survey party under his command was instructed to examine the Adelaide River and near-by coast and to select a capital site. Against the advice of his subordinates, Finnis chose Adam Bay and began marking out sections on its mosquito-infested mud flats. Bitter dissensions followed with his assistants who complained to Adelaide. Finniss was recalled to face a Royal Commission which condemned him for poor judgment and for spending some £40,000 of public funds on a hopeless venture' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography'). Not least of the charges brought against him was 'That in sending away an armed party for the express purpose of "retaliating" upon the blacks on the 8th day of September, 1864, he caused the death of a defenceless prisoner, and violated the principles which have hitherto actuated this Government in their treatment of the natives, thereby bringing the Colony into disrepute'. A very detailed Royal Commission report, laying bare the nuts and bolts of colonization.

Item #58407

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