Information

The Border Police were introduced in 1839 to oversee the squatters as they spread ‘beyond the limits of colonisation’, to collect stock grazing fees, check cedar-cutting licenses, and control the ever-increasing conflict between the determined squatters and the Indigenous peoples. After free settlement, the Moreton Bay Border Police Station stood (from 1843-47) at the junction of Woogaroo Creek and the Brisbane River (on the same site as Oxley’s landing 20 years earlier). Lands Commissioner Dr Stephen Simpson chose this central location because it was half way between Brisbane and Ipswich, at the southernmost point of the river, and where the Ipswich track and the Logan track met the river. The Border Police office and Lands Commissioner’s Cottage were built by eight convicts, including runaways Davis (Duramboi) and Bracewell (Wondai), who was killed there by a falling tree. The Border Police men (6 then 10) were convicts, military prisoners (from South Africa) plus an Aboriginal man from the Ipswich clan – perhaps the only free man. Inevitably, the Force was not effective – and nor was it popular. In 1847 the Border Police Force was disbanded and replaced by the Native Police.

Citations

Vicki Mynott, ‘Wacol, Wolston, Woogaroo (1823-2014) Vol 1’, Inala Heights: Richlands, Inala and Suburbs History Group Inc., 2014; Peter Stanley, ‘The Remote Garrison: the British Army in Australia 1788-1870’, Brisbane: Kangaroo Press, 1986.

Image Citations

Duramboi 1893′, by Oscar Friström. A portrait of James Davis, who helped to build the Border Police office at Woogaroo. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery.

Map References

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