Walter Bromley brings his enlightened work in Canada to being second protector of Adelaide's Kaurna people 1836-37
Walter Bromley as South Australia's second part-time protector of Aboriginals lived with the Kaurna people in the “native location” on the north side of Adelaide’s River Torrens near the sappers’ (military engineers) barracks. This became known as Pirtlawodli (inset shows location in modern context) meaning "tailed possum home".
Maps courtesy Rhondda Harris, "Archaeology and post-contact Indigenous Adelaide". Unpublished honours thesis for Flinders University 1999
Walter Bromley, whose attitudes were “singularly enlightened for his day” was South Australia’s second part-time Aboriginal protector. Previously, in Nova Scotia, Canada, Bromley had shown he totally dismissed the idea that native people were naturally inferior and set out to help them through settlement, agriculture, education and their pride through his own study of their languages.
Walter Bromley was originally a soldier, rising to the rank of captain with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who saw overseas action including Nova Scotia (1808-10),
In 1813, he returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he founded the Royal Acadian School that offered education for middle- and low-income families, including girls, black and immigrant children. The school was controversial with some of its biggest supporters came from the Nova Scotia elite.
Bromley also started the Poor Man’s Friend Society and devoted himself to Mi'kmaq indigenous people among the poor of Halifax and in the rural communities.
Bromley’s schemes didn't succeed and he returned to England. He arrived in South Australia with its colonial first fleet aboard the Tam O’Shanter in 1836.
Bromley had come to South Australia for the British and Foreign Bible Society and was the colony’s first school teacher on Kangaroo Island. His brief term (1836-37) as South Australia’s part-time protector, when he lived among the Aboriginals and learned their language, was cut short after he was criticised in the Register newspaper as a bad choice for the position.
The Register’s editor, George Stevenson, had been the first part-time protector who had applied to British colonies secretary Lord Glenelg for the position, citing his experience with North American “Indians” and his benevolence. (In 1848, in the SA Gazette and Mining Journal, Stevenson argued that "physically and mentally inferior: Aboriginal race should be superseded by the "superior" white civilisation.)
Bromley was found drowned in the River Torrens in 1838. The Register’s opposition, The Southern Australian newspaper, felt Bromley had been treated unfairly and had done more for the Aboriginals than his successor William Wyatt.