Broken Spear: The untold story of Black Tom Birch, the man who sparked Australia’s bloodiest war
Australians are gradually discovering and appreciating their frontier war history. These dark but fascinating events form the birth of our nation, and the lived experience of our ancestors. Even so, they have been sidestepped for decades, in the hope of presenting our continent’s past as uniquely bloodless.
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Broken Spear: The untold story of Black Tom Birch,
the man who sparked Australia’s bloodiest war
Robert Cox | 2021
Robert Cox’s Broken Spear graphically presents the tragic to-and-fro of the Tasmanian Black War. This is achieved through the lens of a singular biography: that of the under-rated figure of Kikatapula (known as Black Tom Birch).
It is difficult to overstate the importance of a biography of this type. Easily a century behind similar attempts in the United States, Australians are only now beginning to tell the stories of their Indigenous resistance leaders. Until recently, only small articles and chapters but no fully referenced works had been written about Aboriginal resistance leaders. Cox’s work is the very first definitive biography of Kikatapula. It comes hot on the heels of Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements’ similarly ‘first’ biography of another Tasmanian war leader: Tongerlongeter. Such works are filling a major gap for a society increasingly keen to know more about its dramatic origins, and especially its ‘main players’.
In Broken Spear, Robert Cox builds on his lengthy career in journalism, editing and writing, especially on crime (one of his other works is a history of Australia’s earliest serial killers: A Compulsion to Kill). He offers a very clear and readable narrative. In this regard, many will find Broken Spear much easier to digest than most equivalent works on the Tasmanian Black War.
This is not to suggest that Cox lacks precision. Rather, it is notable that he manages to present his material in strictly chronological order, and with an admirable flow. The story rolls from one event to the next, each engagingly retold. Here and there, Cox pauses to add context: detailing the background of main proponents, geographic aspects, or local resources.
To his credit, Cox has not allowed his imagination run wild. He generally keeps to the core of what is known and convincingly weaves even contradictory accounts into balanced summaries, whilst acknowledging the various possibilities. This enables the narrative to move ahead smoothly, never becoming mired in the many debates and mysteries that inevitably surround aspects of Kikatapula’s activities. It also means Cox’s opening chapters on the Tasmania of Kikatapula’s youth avoid the speculative reconstructions that plague other works.
A good portion of the latter part of Broken Spear is dedicated to Kikatapula’s wanderings with George Robinson, appointed ‘conciliator to the Aborigines’ in 1829, as this constitutes the bulk of detailed material on the topic. Cox manages to retell Robinson’s mission in a manner relatable to 21st-century audiences, without using either Robinson or Kikatapula as a polemic against or for any particular theory. In these final chapters, Cox highlights both the complexity of Kikatapula’s character and the inescapable predicament he faced as he at first sabotaged but eventually, ‘as a realist’ (Cox’s words), steered remnants of his people to their tragic new home on Flinders Island.
Broken Spear is built around solidly Tasmanian source materials including – impressively – the involvement of relevant Palawa families, and advice and assessment from virtually every academic luminary in the field of Tasmanian Frontier War studies. It is a carefully balanced yet detailed work that creates a cohesive story from the chaos of Tasmania’s invasion, building a scholarly biography from a galaxy of confusing fragments. It also includes very useful appendices on various sites relating to Kikatapula’s life, and associated cases and trials. Broken Spearsucceeds in its mission of adding Kikatapula to the ranks of Australia’s resistance leaders, elucidating his role in both sparking and ending Tasmania’s ‘Killing Times.’
Reviewer: Dr Ray Kerkhove, PHA (Qld)
Broken Spear is published by Wakefield Press.