El juego desde Huizinga

Natives (not aboriginal, though there is often very little difference between the two), and those who have been brought up in this colony,

445

Bell’s Life in Sydney, 2 March 1867, p. 2. Also, Hamilton Spectator, 26 December 1866 p. 3. Taken from Ballarat Post, ‘The men are all remarkably careful in their play, and hit freely, seeming to copy from Mr Wills’s style. The bowling, or what little we saw of it, is also similar to that of the captain’. It is difficult to know from the limited information whether this was an exaggerated but understandable comparison to make or if there was an implicit belief that the aborigines were incapable of having an independent style. Mullagh certainly was drawn in clear counterpoint to the Wills’ style. See Bell’s Life in Victoria, 29 December 1866, p. 2, several of the aborigines adopted Wills’ peculiarities of batting and fielding. Weekly Age, 4 January 1867, p. 12, ‘Bullocky … his style very much resembles Wills’s’.

446

For example, See Australasian, 15 December 1866, pp. 1163-4. His capacity to excite and endear himself to the public was unchanged. ‘Wills created some fun as last man in running all sorts of runs, keeping the spectators in roars of laughter’. Argus, 15 December 1866, p. 5. ‘Mr. Wills caused much merriment amongst the spectators while he was at the wickets in making short runs, being ably backed up by his able brethren’.

447

Australasian, 16 February 1867, p. 203. Letter from Hayman about ‘where the blacks first learnt the game’. Also, Hamilton Spectator, 6 February 1867, p. 2, Hamilton Spectator, 23 February 1867, p. 3,

have a very vague idea if any at all, of the state of society at home, and the broad line of demarcation that exists between classes …448

It is instructive to examine the question of whether Wills was seen as a separate European member of the team or whether he was identified more closely with the aboriginal players. What were the prevailing attitudes to, and motives attributed to Wills by the public? To what extent was the tour viewed as a novelty act?

Cricket was the English national game, a game of refined masculinity. This was an article of faith in the leading editorials of the day. For those not burdened by complexity, the game of cricket mirrored civilisation. Newspapers blurred race, colour, culture and pre-Mendelian genetics. The incongruity of the imperial game played by noble savages provoked curiosity. The western district team came to symbolise an experiment of what could become of aborigines in others domains of life.449

Although there is a temptation to define all that was written about the team within a racist template, there was a breadth of writing that defies narrow categorisation. The tour provoked divergent reactions. Some regarded the team as mere objects of zoological curiosity while others proclaimed cricket as the gilded pathway to aboriginal salvation. Some views were openly contemptuous, while others were more subtle in their smug expectation of failure. Popular opinion rode the back of the underdog without sacrificing an inherent sense of European superiority.450 It would be an error to assume that all critiques of this tour dismissed it as an inconsequential novelty. There were deeper reflections on how the tour may have bridged the hitherto unbridgeable between black and white. For these observers, the game of cricket as played by the aboriginal team sang a powerful symbolic message. The Victorian populace basked in the success of the team and proudly identified them as Victorian. The pride and pleasure

448

William Hammersley, Bell’s Life in Victoria, 20 May 1865, p. 2.

449

See ‘Home Letter’ Geelong Register, 26 October 1867, p. 2. See Webb and Enstice, Aliens and Savages, 1998), p. 67 for a broader comment on these issues. For a more recent general assessment of the place of aborigines within the history of Australian sport see, Richard Cashman, Paradise of Sport: The Rise of Organised Sport in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 131-50.

450

For example, see Geelong Register, 4 December 1866, p. 3. The Imperial Review, June 1882, pp. 78-80. In the Australasian, 6 April 1867, pp. 427-8, Hammersley dismissed the cricket season and the aborigines as a novelty.

in this team provoked pangs of an unwelcome past. The conscience of European settlement was challenged.451

Cricket became the centre around which past colonial misdeeds towards aboriginal people surfaced; the better the team performed the more discomforting was the reflection. These awkward reflections were based on a moral ambiguity. How was it possible to enjoy, and feel at one with this team of Victorians knowing that Melbourne society owed its existence to the destruction of aboriginal life? For some observers this self-reflection rebounded as public displays of guilt and anger at European cruelty. For others, the discomfort was too confronting and it never reached the surface of their thoughts. Rather than confront their own discomfort, they banished the team from conscious thought by attacking them with defensive ridicule. Others took refuge in restating a sense of European superiority. They employed time-honoured lines of self- deception. This self-deception did not invoke any overt ridicule towards the team but rather it allowed any personal guilt to be tidied and packaged away out of reach of one’s conscience.452

Wills rapidly became the single point through which public opinion, informed or otherwise, was refracted. His name through dint of his captaincy was forever wedded with the aboriginal team in the mind’s eye of the population:453

It has no doubt, been at considerable trouble and by perseverance that Mr Wills has brought his team to such an advanced stage of proficiency in the game of cricket, and if equal trouble were taken to elevate them? Higher in the scale of civilisation a result similarly favourable would no doubt be the result. The progress that these natives have made under careful tuition shows clearly that this

451

See Sydney Mail, 23 February 1867, p. 4. The games were a powerful symbolic message. ‘Fellow cricketers must be recognised as fellow men, and it may be discovered, even through the medium of an amusement, that colour does not destroy humanity, and that “blackfellow” is fit for something better than to be shot down or killed by the vices of civilisation’. For more severe criticism of European society see, Geelong Register, 7 January 1867, p. 2.

452

See for example, Bell’s Life in Sydney, 23 February 1867, p. 2 for a high handed approach.

453

Sydney Sporting Life, 9 February 1867, p. 2, ‘As far as the Australian Eleven is concerned the case stands very differently; for not only are they the only cricketers of their race, but they are the first and only ones who have ever made any proficiency in this purely British game. Moreover, they go to England captained by T. W. Wills, who, although educated in Europe, is himself an Australian; and we look upon their trip as one of no small international moment’. Also, Empire, 25 February 1867, p. 4. ‘Mr Wills has done service to the race by showing, in the instance of these cricketers, how they may be made willing scholars in the acquirement of arts unknown to their fathers. The reputation they have won, under his tuition, will exert a wholesome influence in their favour’.

aboriginal natives of this continent have been ‘more sinned against than sinning.’454

Evidence of frank racism was rarely documented. There was an isolated accusation of a prominent Geelong player refusing to take the field which he denied in a public letter.455

It is also quite possible that the idea of an aboriginal team travelling to England prompted a hurried meeting in Sydney at the time of the 1866 intercolonial cricket match to promote an all white team to tour England.456