Fast Fact Tag: Aboriginal Warfare

The immediate source of the Wallabies’ 1908 war cry was Newtown Rugby Club, not a documented Aboriginal ceremony.

Wallabies captain Herbert “Paddy” Moran wrote during the voyage to Britain that the team had “decided to appropriate the New town war-cry”. Newtown had already been using the routine in Sydney in 1908.

That establishes the first step in the chain: Newtown Rugby Club to the Wallabies. It does not establish the earlier provenance of the words, rhythm or movements. Later rugby history says Newtown’s president obtained the “basis” of a cry at La Perouse and had it put into rhythmic form, but the original source behind that specific claim has not yet been located.

The safest historical description is that the Wallabies performed a recently adopted rugby routine copied from Newtown. Given the variability associated with the war cry between different tribes, whether Newtown’s routine preserved genuine Aboriginal material from a specific tribe is a separate question that still requires proof.

The evidence strongly supports the sporting and commercial context. By 1908 the success of New Zealand’s Haka had created an expectation that touring teams would provide a distinctive pre-match spectacle.

Australian rugby had a problem: the historical record shows different Aboriginal groups using different war cries and war songs, not one national “Aboriginal war cry” that could simply become Australia’s equivalent of the Haka.

The Wallabies instead adopted Newtown Rugby Club’s recently used routine. Moran later said the Rugby Union’s final argument for continuing it was its “box-office value”. That is direct evidence that audience appeal formed part of the justification for the performance.

Was it fabricated? That remains unclear. What is clear is that the need for a spectacle does explain why a local or supposedly local Aboriginal-derived performance could have been adapted and promoted as a national Australian sporting spectacle.

No. Nineteenth-century sources show that some Aboriginal groups used war cries and war songs, but they do not support one common Australia-wide “Aboriginal war cry”.

The clearest evidence is from the 1841 Rufus River inquiry. Protector Matthew Moorhouse said a noise he heard might have been the local group’s war cry, but added that “it was different from the war-cry of the Adelaide natives”. That is direct evidence that different groups could have different cries.

Other early accounts use similarly local language. An 1838 Moreton Bay report described Molrooben “singing the war-song of his tribe”, while Carl Lumholtz later recorded a particular war cry and war-song in the Herbert River district. Charles Sturt also recorded an armed group moving to what he called a war song in 1829.

The historical position is therefore more precise than the modern shorthand. Aboriginal war cries and war songs existed in some groups, but the evidence points to local or tribal practices rather than a single national Indigenous performance comparable with one standard haka.