Legends, George Taplin friend of the Ngarrindjeri
Taplin, George (1831–1879) was born on 24 August 1831 at Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, England.
Committed Christian and Congregationalist, from the age of 15 he had desired to become an overseas missionary.
He arrived in Adelaide in the Anna Maria on 12 October 1849 and worked as a labourer and as a lawyer’s clerk.
June 1851 Taplin came under the attention of Rev T Q Stow and was recruited for the ministry by Rev. T. Q. Stow (come to SA in 1837 to the newly formed Colonial Missionary Society – planted church on North Terrace and opened a daily classical academy, the beginning of higher education in SA. Buried in west terrace cemetery).
On 28 February 1853 at Payneham Taplin married Martha Burnell, a servant of Stow’s who also aspired to missionary work.
October went to Currency Creek and later to Port Elliot where in February 1854 Taplin opened a school where he remained as a teacher until 1859.
That year the Aborigines Friends Association appointed him as their first missionary-teacher to work in the lower Murray districts @ 200pds pa.
Aborigines Friends Association 1857 – mostly made up of Protestant clergy – goals both gospel driven/humanitarian. Over 100 years. First resolution:
“That in the opinion of this meeting, some further efforts should be made with a view to ameliorate the physical and spiritual welfare of the Aboriginal inhabitants of this colony.”

Taplin was a missionary and teacher in an era that had declared Australia as Terra Nullius – “a land belonging to no-one.” (a decision overturned in the High Court’s Mabo judgment in 1992).

The Times
It was an era when the Church Missionary Society 1824 – “The natives are, I verily believe, the poorest objects on the habitable globe… to enter into details of their habits and customs would not only be tedious but exceedingly offensive…”