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On Wednesday last a shepherd named Christian Ivors came in from Mr. Spry's station, on Natal Downs, where he had been much ill-treated by the blackfellows— indeed it is a matter for astonishment how he escaped with his life. The way this befell was as follows:—Ivors had left his hut to get some firewood, when the barking of his dog induced him to look round, and he saw several blackfellows behind him, and one—whom, from his superior stature, he believes to be the head man—in the act of throwing a waddy at him. The waddy came, and struck Ivors on the temple with such violence that it knocked him down, and, his skull being apparently made of pretty good stuff, the waddy itself flew into bits. Ivors then got another blow that cut his ear open, and several others—all about the head—that caused him to fall insensible. How long he remained in that state he does not know, but when he came to himself the blackfellows had disappeared, and he managed to crawl on his hands and knees to the water (a distance of 20 yards), and after a while to the head station, where he found his mate. Ivors' hut is close to the main road, and just before he was struck down Ivors remembers to have heard the sound of horses' feet in the distance, caused by a mob of horses that a stockman was driving in, and he supposes that it must have been the arrival of this stockman that frightened the blackfellows away, and prevented them from completing their work and killing him. Before they returned after the stockman had passed, Ivors must have crawled away down to the water, as they had evidently been looking for him but had not found him, as Ivors' hat, which he distinctly remembers to have left on the road where he fell, was found up at the hut which they had robbed. Ivors believes the blackfellows to have been lying in wait for him among a quantity of rocks that there are about the hut. This is the second escape Ivors has had from the same mob of blackfellows, having been taken prisoner by them about eight months ago on the Cape River, on a station also belonging to Mr. Spry. On this former occasion they did not in any way injure him, but poked fun at him, and lighted a large fire, at which Ivors believes they intended to roast him, had not they been interrupted and he rescued by the opportune arrival of some whites on the scene of action. The event, of which we have just given some of the particulars, took place about the 13th or 14th September, and at a hut on the main road, corroborating our statement of Wednesday last that police protection is urgently required in the interior of Northern Queensland. The Native Police, by the way, had passed Natal Downs on their road, we suppose, to the Flinders but a short time before the occurrence of this catastrophe. On that occasion they could see no traces whatever of this mob, indeed saw no blackfellows at all, except one solitary unarmed individual, whom, we are informed, they dispersed. If that is so, we think it may probably have had something to do with causing the outrage on Ivors and certainly
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causing the outrage on Ivors and certainly it does no [sic] seem to us to be in any way justifiable, or to tend in the remotest degree to the security of life in the bush, for the Native Police to shoot down single unarmed blackfellows. On the contrary, it is by no means surprising that the blackfellows should seek to retaliate by committing a similar outrage on the first defenceless white man they meet, and it is difficult to see how we can throw a stone at them for so doing, as it is precisely the policy that we adopt towards them ourselves, only that where they take one life we take say fifty, exacting not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but as many eyes or teeth as we can possibly get in exchange for each one that we lose.