'Marks of civilisation': A social history of the law in the Rockhampton district, 1858-1878

Historical studies investigating the interrelationships between the law and the society in which it operates have burgeoned over the past two decades. Earlier works tended to consider the operation of the law as a discrete area, best examined in biographies of judicial figures or in analyses of specific laws over time. More recent studies recognise that the complex interaction between the operation of the law and the life of the community in which it is applied is an important area of research. Nevertheless, the idea that colonial Australian law was wholly dependent upon English law and tradition is not long dead, and more attention is required regarding how law was shaped by its application in regional and frontier Australian colonial communities. Indeed, regional studies are vital to establish how the law was adopted or adapted to suit diverse Australian colonial conditions. This dissertation investigates the establishment and operation of the law in Rockhampton and district, Central Queensland, in the twenty years from the proclamation of the town in 1858. It examines a variety of aspects of the development and application of law in the region, including proceedings of the higher courts that visited the town and the lower petty courts controlled by local honorary and stipendiary magistrates; the functioning of the town police and local detachments of the native mounted police force; the development and administration of municipal law; and the responses of the Rockhampton community to the law as it was perceived in the regional setting. The frequently tense and fraught relationship between the community and colonial law-makers is analysed; an expectation in Rockhampton that the law should evolve in a manner that best suited the progress of the town caused friction with the capital. The dissertation also focuses on how the law was applied to the vulnerable and marginalised, in particular wives, children, morally suspect women, Aborigines, immigrants and servants. The idea that the law should serve progress and respond flexibly to circumstances had damaging consequences for those regarded as detrimental to the 'civilised' social and economic development of town and district.