Lancelot Threlkeld in his later years and one of the volumes of his reminiscences
Lancelot Threlkeld’s labour of language
When Christian missionary Lancelot Threlkeld first arrived in the colony of New South Wales he observed that many whites insisted that the Blacks had no actual language but simply made noises. He remarked that: This was a convenient assumption, for if it could be proved that the Aborigines of New South Wales were only a species of wild beasts, there could be no guilt attributed to those who shot them off or poisoned them as cumberers of the earth. While he was at Newcastle Threlkeld borrowed a tent in which, every day at first, he met…
