Scandal Tom Wills - not a good guy?

[Ron The Bear]

Australia has an incredibly problematic history and there needs to be some unilateral approach to face it head on.

It inevitably becomes an approximate numbers exercise as the casualties were nameless and faceless. As is the case here.

 

[Kwality]

Will be interesting to hear what Martin Flanagan has to say about it.

Seems completely awful and very believable.

I wish we knew more about colonial massacres and violence. It should be more prominent in our country's conscience.

How hard have you tried ? Google it & look, all you need is curiosity.

Tom Wills : His Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories

'This is the story of Tom Wills - flawed genius, sporting libertine, fearless leader and agitator, and the man most often credited with creating the...

www.austlit.edu.au

Australian Historical Studies | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories

Discover biographical, bibliographical, and critical information about Australian writers, writing, and publishing.

www.austlit.edu.au

Let the truth come out.
This scenario is plausible as massacres were not uncommon at that time.
If it's true you have to get rid of his statue.

Let the truth come out - its there for all to see IF you looked. Sure someone threw the first blow, as is the desire to protect your own family.
Why this article chose to be so poorly researched needs to be questioned by ABC management as the timing of its release.
'"In later years he became an alcoholic, and in 1880 he committed suicide with a bayonet".

Thomas Wentworth Wills

Thomas Wentworth Wills was Australia's first celebrity sportsman, one of Australia's greatest cricketers and founder of Australian rules football. He was the ma

www.onlymelbourne.com.au

 

[Kwality]

I live near Port Philip bay.

After a robbery, Governor Philip (generally considered one of the more 'fair' colonials) demanded the heads of five Aboriginal people - any Aboriginal people regardless of whether they committed the act - as punishment.

Australia has an incredibly problematic history and there needs to be some unilateral approach to face it head on.

It sounds like Tom Wills later became a pioneer for Aboriginal sportsmen, and then died due to clinical insanity. There’s a lot to unpack here but ultimately it’s awfully confronting to read the article.

Suicide.

 

[Tulip]

It inevitably becomes an approximate numbers exercise as the casualties were nameless and faceless. As is the case here.

Well a large part of the issue is precisely this. As a nation, we’re far more interested in scrubbing the history books and trying to forget than we are acknowledging the victims and trying to give them the identity they deserve. Left and right are both guilty of this. Pulling down Wills’ statue is only worth something if we put a statue up to honour the massacred.

 

[Ron The Bear]

Well a large part of the issue is precisely this. As a nation, we’re far more interested in scrubbing the history books and trying to forget than we are acknowledging the victims and trying to give them the identity they deserve. Left and right are both guilty of this. Pulling down Wills’ statue is only worth something if we put a statue up to honour the massacred.

There is no call or justification to pull down Wills' statue.

There has been no scrubbing of history. Knowledge is limited by the lack of permanent indigenous records. What was recorded has been preserved and is available to the interested. I suggest not too many are interested.

 

[Tulip]

There is no call or justification to pull down Wills' statue.

There has been no scrubbing of history. Knowledge is limited by the lack of permanent indigenous records. What was recorded has been preserved and is available to the interested. I suggest not too many are interested.

This info may be outdated, but I’ve read there’s no memorial at Myall Creek

 

[Ron The Bear]

This info may be outdated, but I’ve read there’s no memorial at Myall Creek

Seems to be a simple marker at each site.

 

[terrybull]

I don’t think future generations will look at us so fondly…

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Sure, but what if you're faced with a "kill or be killed" situation? What would you have done? Laid down your arms and let them murder you?

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but that doesn’t mean that this new revelation doesn’t change the way we should remember Tom Wills.

 

[jwikked]

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but that doesn’t mean that this new revelation doesn’t change the way we should remember Tom Wills.

We remember him as the guy who invented the sport. Him doing something some see as evil, maybe it was, doesn’t change that fact.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

pure speculation. You can't convict on no evidence

No-one's convicting him. People just want to know the truth. Don't you?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

The world has gone mad when we continue to apply some moralistic standard today for something that was said or happened 10, 20, 30, 500 years ago.

If we are to study history it is impossible to not study it through the lense of today's standards. Taking your argument on face value we should drop historical research altogether. I'm sure you're not saying that. We all understand things were different back then, but people who don't want to poke hornets' nests need to understand that things are also different now.

Sure, tear down a statue if it makes you feel better, but history cannot be re-written through childish petulance.

Again, your posts show your humanity and strong sense of justice, so it's clear your intentions are good, but I see little evidence of "childish petulance" anywhere here.

A startling revelation has come to light which may cause us to re-examine how we remember a key figure in the history of our great sport, and people are discussing exactly what form that should take. No big drama. Hopefully we're all adults here.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

We remember him as the guy who invented the sport. Him doing something some see as evil, maybe it was, doesn’t change that fact.

Well actually, we remember him as far more than that. For starters, we remember him as someone who took an all-Aboriginal cricket team to England, despite members of his family being slaughtered only a few years before.

And a key part of that until now has been this widespread belief that Wills took no part in reprisals. That may have changed.

 

[Pippen94]

I haven't seen anything stating that Wills wasn't present, only Gillian Hibbins putting forward the idea that because there was no 'documentary evidence', therefore Marngrook wasn't played in the Grampian areas. However, as is well known, Indigenous communities weren't exactly documenting their livelihoods through the written word. Storytelling, singing and dancing were favourable in conveying information for these communities. Etchings have also been found in northern Victoria detailing Marngrook being played (S. Farnsworth, 2007). Sketches from the 1840s by W.A. Cawthorne outline Marngrook's prevalence in what is now the southern region between Victoria and South Australia.

So essentially, Marngrook was being played in and around the Grampians area, the one that Wills grew up in. Very unlikely Wills wasn't exposed to the game.

Historians say there's no evidence of this or Wills even witnessing a game. There's further evidence that Wills influence on the creation of the sport is in fact minimal.
This whole thing is a very recent connection by afl to gloss over a terrible record of treating ppl of non Anglo background.
Fact protagonist is now linked to these claims is fitting beyond belief

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

In one hand yes, but in the other...you never go forward if you keep looking back, it's what happens in the present that is important

Better tell that to all those people that want us to keep commemorating Anzac Day. (I'm one of them, but I also believe we should continue to question everything about our military history.)

Good history is warts 'n all.

 

[Pippen94]

I live near Port Philip bay.

After a robbery, Governor Philip (generally considered one of the more 'fair' colonials) demanded the heads of five Aboriginal people - any Aboriginal people regardless of whether they committed the act - as punishment.

Australia has an incredibly problematic history and there needs to be some unilateral approach to face it head on.

It sounds like Tom Wills later became a pioneer for Aboriginal sportsmen, and then died due to clinical insanity. There’s a lot to unpack here but ultimately it’s awfully confronting to read the article.

Pioneer is one take. Exploiter is another

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

For reference, here is the relevant tract preceding the one published by the ABC. It forms part of a longer, rambling screed that is disparaging of Australians in general and clearly written by a visitor. I won't post the writer's description of Aboriginals as it will no doubt be highly offensive to those seeking to demonise Wills. Look it up for yourself if you want - Chicago Tribune, 27/1/1895 p.34.

Those who know a little of Wills will note the glaring inaccuracies in this fanciful flight of imagination.
Small wonder the ABC omitted this part. But those without the time or inclination to investigate further will no doubt be inclined to accept the interpretations of activists at face value.

Those who bothered to read the ABC articles will note that numerous references to those glaring inaccuracies were made, by a number of people quoted.

Of course, you're not an "activist", no, of course not.

 

[I Dont Care]

Better tell that to all those people that want us to keep commemorating Anzac Day. (I'm one of them, but I also believe we should continue to question everything about our military history.)

Good history is warts 'n all.

History is the one thing that never tells lies, only people do

 

[Some Idiot]

It's a good reminder that all nations tend to write their own history and we are not immune to that. We're not so different to Islamic countries not teaching about the persecution of Jewish people in WW2 or the Americans covering up their own war crimes etc. After all.

 

[Ron The Bear]

Those who bothered to read the ABC articles will note that numerous references to those glaring inaccuracies were made, by a number of people quoted.

Of course, you're not an "activist", no, of course not.

And then ignored them? What's the point of that?

It's unverifiable hearsay that reads like a tall tale and contains damning factual inaccuracies.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

What other acknowledgements can there be apart from the elected Prime Minister apologizing?

Sheesh, the poster mentioned the Uluru Statement in the very post you were replying to. How about we table that, for starters.

Do you want every white person in Australia to come out and apologize for the crimes of other white people?

No-one is saying that.

But a lot of people are saying that people are saying that.

How odd.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

And then ignored them? What's the point of that?

It's unverifiable hearsay that reads like a tall tale and contains damning factual inaccuracies.

The point is nuance, but I'm not at all sure nuance is your strong point.

From the second article alone:

Russell Jackson, the article's author:

"Although the 126-year-old article contains numerous errors and exaggerations, quoting Wills in the loosest sense, experts agree that the author's account contains telling material that only someone intimately familiar with Wills could know."

Martin Flanagan:

"My reaction to the document was exactly the same as Gary Fearon's, in that it's full of inaccuracies and the guy who wrote it is clearly a proud, brazen, triumphant racist of a certain 19th century American kind," Flanagan says.

"But what arrested me was this detail about the I Zingari cricket coat. Wills wore that coat on his first appearance at the MCG after he got back from England. He wore it to make an impression. That coat clearly meant something to him. It's too remarkable to dismiss. It suggests to me that there is some manner of truth here."

"It got to the point, when I wrote The Call, that I knew a lot and I knew that it was an incredibly important Australian story. But I also knew Wills had written that he would shoot any black person who came back onto the property. So, there was always a possibility he was involved in some of the shootings up there. At the end of the day, I'm a lawyer by education and I'm a journalist. If someone comes to me with what appears to be a credible piece of evidence, I'm obliged to look at it."

Greg de Moore, author of the highly respected biography of Wills:

"If you look at the material, there are so many inconsistencies, but that doesn't mean the story is wrong. It's in that grey zone that a lot of people don't like to inhabit, but that is the reality of historical research.

"I always keep an open mind. Often the story gets caught up in politics, but I've always tried to look at this as carefully and objectively as possible, even if it ran against the grain of what I might subjectively like to find.

"If you're asking me if there is a thread of truth in this, yes, of course there could be. There will be other people who know Tom's story who will say it's nonsense, but I think you've got to look at the evidence.

"There are lots of errors here, but I think there could be a thread of truth."

All three acknowledge there are huge inaccuracies, like you, but all three are also capable of asking "what is there in this discovery that is accurate, and what fresh light does this cast on our understanding of Wills?"

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

History is the one thing that never tells lies, only people do

That's a problem, given history can only be told by people.

My point is, historical interpretations change all the time. That's no big deal.

 

[Ron The Bear]

"Although the 126-year-old article contains numerous errors and exaggerations, quoting Wills in the loosest sense, experts agree that the author's account contains telling material that only someone intimately familiar with Wills could know."

The only "telling material" is the reference to the I Zingari jacket. Wills mentioned in desptaches that Zingari shirts were stolen.

If we're going to accept Bruce Pascoe-style selective history then you can't criticise anyone who chooses to value the author's observation that Aboriginals are of less use than kangaroos, because at least the latter "do make splendid soup". They're also compared to wombats - "a miserable Australian animal of no use that I know of".

Have a read of the whole thing and report back.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

The only "telling material" is the reference to the I Zingari jacket. Wills mentioned in desptaches that Zingari shirts were stolen.

If we're going to accept Bruce Pascoe-style selective history then you can't criticise anyone who chooses to value the author's observation that Aboriginals are of less use than kangaroos, because at least the latter "do make splendid soup". They're also compared to wombats - "a miserable Australian animal of no use that I know of".

Have a read of the whole thing and report back.

I have read the whole thing. My only interest in this matter is that it expands our picture of Tom Wills. Everyone involved has acknowledged that it doesn't prove anything yet.

Seems it's you that is triggered by it, eg trying to turn it all into a swipe at the ABC.

But of course you're not an "activist".