Cherbourg: history, survival and self-determination

This is a carefully sourced introduction for a general audience, not a substitute for Cherbourg people telling their own history. Readers should read it alongside the work of Cherbourg community organisations, Elders, families and the Ration Shed Museum.

Cherbourg is a living Aboriginal community in the South Burnett of south-east Queensland, near Murgon, on the traditional lands of the Wakka Wakka people. Queensland Government history notes that the area lies near the traditional boundary with Gubbi Gubbi Country; the Federal Court’s 2022 recognition of Wakka Wakka native title included the town of Cherbourg within the determined area. Queensland Government community history ABC News report on the Wakka Wakka determination

The history of Cherbourg is inseparable from colonisation, dispossession and the Queensland system commonly described as “protection”. It is also a history of families and communities maintaining connection, creating new forms of kinship, and pursuing control over their own lives. A public account should hold those realities together without treating hardship as the whole of Cherbourg’s identity, or presenting outside research as more authoritative than community knowledge.

From Barambah to Cherbourg

The place people now call Cherbourg developed through a reserve and mission system that the Queensland colonial state imposed. In 1899, Salvation Army member William John Thompson began discussions with the government about establishing an Aboriginal mission in the Nanango district. On 24 March 1900, the government gazetted 1,280 acres at Barambah as an Aboriginal reserve. The government later revoked that designation; on 23 February 1901, it gazetted 7,000 acres at a new site three miles away for the reserve. Queensland Government community history

The first arrivals included people from the Nanango area and people brought from the Durundur reserve near Woodford and Kilkivan. The Queensland Government records that early arrivals faced a place without buildings or facilities, which forced them to live in bark humpies; the first school was a rough bush hut with a dirt floor. Queensland Government community history

In 1905, the Ipswich Aboriginal Protection Society handed control of Barambah to the Queensland Government. The transition was connected with the closure of Durundur: government history records that authorities forced 61 people to walk to Barambah and took another 115 there by train in February 1905. Queensland Government community history

Sources differ over the year in which the administrative name changed from Barambah to Cherbourg. The Queensland Government community history says the change was official in 1931, while Find & Connect and Cherbourg Council history use 1932 and associate it with confusion between the settlement and nearby Barambah pastoral station. Rather than present a disputed precise date as settled fact, this essay uses both names where historical context requires it and recognises that Cherbourg is the community’s present name. Queensland Government community history Find & Connect Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council

Removal, control and the making of a community

Queensland’s Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 and later legislation gave authorities extensive power over Aboriginal people’s residence, movement, work and family life. Authorities brought large numbers of people from across Queensland and northern New South Wales to Barambah/Cherbourg under this system. The Queensland Government’s community history records approximately 2,079 documented removals to Barambah between 1905 and 1939, followed by 546 documented government removals to Cherbourg between 1940 and 1971. Queensland Government community history Find & Connect

These figures are records of state action, not a complete measure of the consequences for people and families. People whom authorities brought to Cherbourg came with their own Countries, languages, family histories and cultural responsibilities. The settlement therefore became a place in which diverse Aboriginal families had to make community under conditions they had not chosen. The Ration Shed Museum describes how the government administration moved people from numerous clans and tribes across Queensland and northern New South Wales to Cherbourg, and identifies its control over language, food, clothing, movement, work and, in some cases, marriage. Ration Shed Museum, Cherbourg Historical Precinct

The record also contains evidence of people acting within and against those constraints: sustaining family relationships, culture and community despite policy designed to regulate daily life. This is not a story of passive victimhood. Nor should public accounts use resilience to soften the responsibility of governments for the harms of removal and control.

Dormitories and family separation

The dormitory system was central to the settlement regime. The first girls’ dormitory at Barambah was built in 1909 and a boys’ dormitory was completed in 1910. Queensland Government history records that the first dormitories had no beds or mattresses and that children slept on the floor. Queensland Government community history

Dormitories expanded over time and housed children, young people, and in some periods women and mothers with young children. Government staff strictly controlled residents. Find & Connect records that staff separated boys and girls from other residents; the girls’ dormitory accommodated unmarried women and girls over 12, and the boys’ dormitory mainly housed younger boys. It also describes tightly controlled contact, routines of bells, cleaning duties and inspections. Find & Connect

The national Bringing Them Home report documents the broader use of dormitories in Queensland to control children’s lives. It notes that about 70 children were still living in the Cherbourg dormitory in 1966, and that dormitories continued on some missions and settlements into the 1970s. Australian Human Rights Commission, Bringing Them Home

For many individuals and families, this history is personal, intergenerational and potentially distressing. Public writing should not extract or sensationalise survivor testimony. Any future version that uses named people’s accounts, photographs, family histories or stories of abuse should do so only with appropriate permissions and community guidance.

Labour, wages and rations

Cherbourg residents contributed labour to the settlement and to the regional economy. Settlement authorities sent men to work for landholders, and women were employed in domestic service; the settlement also trained boys for farm work. Find & Connect

Under Queensland’s protection legislation, government administrators controlled Aboriginal workers’ wages at Barambah. The Queensland Government community history states that they restricted workers’ access to savings accounts and deducted money from wages for a settlement maintenance fund. Queensland Government community history

This local history sits within the wider Queensland history known as Stolen Wages. In 2019, the Queensland Government agreed in principle to a $190 million settlement in Pearson v State of Queensland, a class action in which claimants alleged that wages had gone unpaid between 1939 and 1972 and which involved about 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The essay should not represent the statewide settlement as a calculation of money owed specifically to Cherbourg people; it does, however, recognise the scale and continuing significance of the issue. ABC News, $190 million settlement over unpaid wages

Rations were also part of the settlement economy and administration. The Ration Shed Museum records that the government issued weekly rations including flour, sugar and meat from the building now preserved as the Ration Shed. The museum’s existence makes clear that these are not abstract policy settings: they are part of Cherbourg’s lived and remembered history. Ration Shed Museum, Cherbourg Historical Precinct

Health, loss and careful remembrance

Cherbourg experienced the effects of inadequate conditions as well as epidemics. The 1919 influenza pandemic was catastrophic. A peer-reviewed study by Kelsey M. Lowe and Eric Law AM estimates that influenza caused the loss of about 15 per cent of Cherbourg’s population; deaths occurred so quickly that coffins were not built in some cases and trench or mass graves were used alongside individual graves. Lowe and Law, Queensland Archaeological Research

The same research combined geophysical methods with oral histories and Indigenous knowledge to identify three mass graves associated with the pandemic. Its purpose included supporting the concerns of Cherbourg Elders, who wanted people to remember and memorialise those affected by the 1919 outbreak. Lowe and Law, Queensland Archaeological Research

Different historical sources give different exact death totals for 1919. That is a reason for care, not for minimising the event. This essay therefore does not present a single disputed figure as definitive. Any discussion of cemetery locations, burial sites or commemorative practice must remain subject to the direction of Cherbourg community representatives and relevant families.

From state administration to self-governance

Earlier systems imposed restrictions that did not disappear at once. Change came through decades of advocacy and community action, and its milestones matter. In 1965, Queensland legislation eased some restrictions and allowed the first Cherbourg community council to form in 1966. Queensland Government community history

On 30 March 1985, Cherbourg people elected five councillors to constitute an autonomous Cherbourg Aboriginal Council under the Community Services (Aborigines) Act 1984. On 28 August 1986, the Queensland Government transferred the reserve to the trusteeship of the council under a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT). Queensland Government community history

These milestones did not undo earlier dispossession, removals, separation, wage control or loss. They were nevertheless important steps in restoring local authority and creating the basis for Cherbourg’s present-day governance.

Cherbourg today

Cherbourg is not a historical exhibit. It is home to families, Elders, young people, organisations, artists, workers and leaders. The 2021 Census recorded 1,194 people in the Cherbourg local government area, including 1,151 people—96.4 per cent of residents—who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census QuickStats

The Ration Shed Museum and Cherbourg Historical, Cultural and Community Precinct are central places for community-led history and cultural work. The Cherbourg Historical, Cultural and Community Precinct Group controls the museum, and a board of Cherbourg community members governs it; it presents Elder-guided tours, exhibitions and community stories. Ration Shed Museum

That leadership is the appropriate frame for anyone seeking to learn about Cherbourg. Responsible visitors and readers should begin with community institutions and community voices, acknowledge the continuing authority of Traditional Owners and families, and understand that not every story belongs in a public website.

Closing reflection

No administrative timeline can reduce Cherbourg’s history. It includes the forced movement of people to Barambah/Cherbourg, the control that law and institutions exercised, separation in dormitories, wage restrictions and the devastating losses of disease. It also includes the relationships, knowledge, cultural life and determination through which people made and remade community.

The most responsible public account is therefore a modest one: accurate where records are clear, transparent where sources conflict, and accountable to Cherbourg people in all that it chooses to say. This essay serves only as a starting point for that conversation.

Sources and further reading

• Queensland Government, Cherbourg community history.
• Find & Connect, Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement.
• Australian Human Rights Commission, Bringing Them Home report.
• Kelsey M. Lowe and Eric Law AM, “Location of historic mass graves from the 1919 Spanish Influenza in the Aboriginal community of Cherbourg using geophysics”, Queensland Archaeological Research (2022).
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census QuickStats: Cherbourg.
• ABC News, “Justice has been done”: $190 million settlement over unpaid wages.
• ABC News, Wakka Wakka native title determination.
• Ration Shed Museum, Cherbourg Historical Precinct and The Museum.
• Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council, Our History.