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The Disputatious Protector - William le Souëf: A History
Dr Ian D. Clark
Synopsis "The Disputatious Protector - William le Souëf: A History"
William Le Souëf was the fifth and final person to be appointed an assistant protector in the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate when he replaced James Dredge in the Goulburn River District in July 1840. Despite some procrastination by the Chief Protector, George Augustus Robinson, but with the urging of the Superintendent of the Port Phillip District, Charles Joseph La Trobe, Le Souëf filled the vacancy created by Dredge’s resignation. Yet by the end of the year, Le Souëf’s superordinates were in agreement that he was unfit for service. This book is the first detailed biography of William Le Souëf and, amongst other things, explores his relationships with Aboriginal people and with his superiors - Robinson and La Trobe – when he was employed as assistant protector. It does this using the qualitative research methodologies of interpretive biography and thick description. It makes use of contemporary publications, protectorate records, personal diaries, family records, and newspaper articles. Michael Christie’s assessment of Le Souëf is that he was a failed protector, who had been poorly chosen, whose lack of expertise, and personal failings adversely affected his work and led to friction within the Protectorate. He considered that Le Souëf did not share Dredge’s missionary zeal, and saw his job more as that of protecting settler interests than caring for Aboriginal people. Susan Priestley, in her history of South Melbourne, noted that ‘William Le Souef was always uneasy in his role of Assistant Protector, his fear giving rise to unwarranted harshness’. In attempting to understand William Le Souëf, as a person, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he had a tendency towards superciliousness and arrogance, and that he had lordly pretensions, as seen in his quip that he should have been the superintendent of the Port Phillip District, and not La Trobe. Some contemporary observers suggested he suffered from some kind of mental illness, with the Goulburn protectorate station’s medical officer, Neil Campbell, considering that on one occasion he was ‘unfit to have charge of his own affairs’. Le Souëf’s behaviours and interpersonal relationships reveal that he was a difficult man to get along with – one newspaper editor described him as ‘peculiarly minded’. Descriptions such as disputatious, bellicose, and truculent, seem to be fitting epithets of his character and personality. Yet, when his application to manage the Victorian Industrial Society was successful, one contemporary, Edward Wilson, the editor of the Argus, lauded the appointment and described Le Souëf as ‘a gentleman of great natural ability, of very considerable attainments, of an active and energetic temperament, and of gentlemanly manners’. These strengths were best demonstrated in his public commitment to animal welfare, ornithology, and zoology. Nevertheless, a consideration of his statements and those of his superior officers and his employees, about his attitudes towards and treatment of Aboriginal people, William Le Souëf’s unsuitability for the role of Assistant Protector is starkly obvious. Le Souëf would certainly have been better suited to a different part of the public service, where his aggressive behaviour and lack of interpersonal skills would not have been called into play - perhaps in the office of births, deaths, and marriages, given his earlier interest in civil registration. Perhaps he ought to have pursued a career in journalism, as he regularly demonstrated a penchant for writing. William Le Souëf never achieved the social recognition in Victoria that he desired – indeed, it was his youngest son, Albert Le Souëf, who was feted in Melbourne’s scientific community as an authority on Aboriginal people based on his personal experiences in the Protectorate and the pastoral frontier.
