Reverend Edward Fuller (1836-1895)
Cambridgeshire-born Methodist missionary Reverend Edward Fuller arrived in Brisbane in January 1865 after serving with the 60th Royal Rifles in military campaigns in South Africa, India, and China. After spending time with the Primitive Methodist Church in Adelaide Street, Brisbane and Ipswich, he turned his attention to missionary work among Queensland's Aboriginal people, establishing short-lived missions at Fraser Island (1870) and Lake Weyba, near Noose (1872), he mover north to establish a mission to the Wargamaygan Biyaygiri people on Hinchinbrook Island in 1874.
Despite the dire predictions of Cardwell's European residents, Fuller returned from the island after nine months without sighting a single potential convert.
the people about Cardwell were almost horrified at the idea of our going to start our mission on Hinchinbrook Island, as they seemed to think that we had only to land there to be murdered and perhaps cooked and eaten ... having got on to the island, which is about 30 miles long and 5 or 6 broad) and pitched our tent on one of the black's camping grounds, we proceeded to push forward the temporal part of the work by felling timber, clearing the ground, fencing it in, getting it under cultivation, &c., &c., expecting every day to have the natives come around us, but month after month passed away and no natives made their appearance, and our rations disappeared, hunger pressed heavily upon us; when our little daughter cried for bread we had none to give her, and frequently our meals consisted of a cup of tea, and some green seaweeds that grew along the coast. We had to knock off work, and hunt about "a la blackfellow'' for something herewith to keep body and soul together.
We became weak and Inez my dear partner said she felt as if a good puff of wind would have blown her away; at this time rats or snakes would have been eaten greedily and thankfully, but, as is often the case, those gentlemen are not to caught when most required. ... After a while we got out supplies, and continued to hope on, and went forward with such work as our hands found to do. Mrs. F. had to get into harness and help me with the handbarrow, at the grindstone, and other things that required two to execute and engaged in many things that don't generally fall to the lot of a minister's wife, and to which she was a stranger until she was unfortunate enough to became the wife of a poor non-salaried Queensland Missionary. But, to make a long story short, and a short one as short as possible, after labouring, toiling, and hoping on for between eight and nine months, we had to again break up our home, and abandon the Mission for this simple reason, not a solitary black would venture to come near us, or rather they were not there to come. It was not until we had been some time on the Island that we ascertained (from Europeans) that the same island had been the scene of murderous conflicts between the blacks and whites, or between the troopers and the natives, and that the very spot on which we had started the mission was one of those scenes of slaughter. Just before we left the island we had a visit from a fisherman, who had been employed fishing about the neighbourhood for some time past, and he gave us to understand that the police had been employed for about three days in shooting down the blacks at the south end of the island, and assured us that we might stay where we were then located until we were greyheaded, the blacks would not come to us, simply because they were not there to come.
The troopers' and the white man's bullets had done more than we could undo or rectify, for according to what we saw and heard there was only a few old folks left that really belonged to the island, and these poor creatures took care to keep several miles of country between us and them. The natives were represented as being numerous on the island, and no doubt they were previous to the police being let loose among them, but as a rule, it seems to me that the public generally are only partly acquainted with the murderous conduct of the troopers among the blacks, in indiscriminately shooting them down like native dogs. We had good land and good water on the island and the place seemed suitable for a mission, but as we could not get a single black to come near us for good or evil, of course our mission work there was at an end. (Toowoomba Chronicle and Queensland Advertiser, 10 October 1874, p. 3]
Fuller subsequently returned to the mainland, establishing another mission at Bellenden Plains. And acting as the first superintendent of the Deebing Creek mission near Ipswich (1892 to 1895).
