Aboriginal Questions

Nicolas Rothwell (at present the Australian’s man in the Northern Territory) sometimes touches a philosophical depth or a profundity of insight a little deeper than one commonly finds in daily journalism. One of his recent pieces suggests that Australia doesn’t have an Aboriginal “problem” or “question”. Nor do we need an Aboriginal “policy” to deal with it. What we really have is a whole group of largely distinct problems, and we need a corresponding group of separate policies to meet them. At this stage of history, a “one-size-fits-all” policy is likely to fail the needs of all those who deserve help, and who could benefit from it.

Well, it’s a thought, and it certainly set me thinking.

An early notion was to ask myself just what and how much I knew about Australian Aborigines. The humbling quality of the answer is revealed by the fact that the following few paragraphs suffice to sum up my total knowledge.

At age about seven, I saw in the Victorian National Museum at the top end of Swanston Street, sealed within a glass case, a life-size tableau of a scene from Aboriginal life. The man, bearded, tall and powerful, stood erect holding his spear. Near him, his equally full-sized wife squatted on the ground, surrounded by the utensils and artefacts of Aboriginal domestic use. I was fascinated, and went home to tell my startled parents that I had seen some stuffed Aborigines. Well, how was I to know? In another glass case only a few yards away stood the tall chestnut hide of noble Phar Lap, undeniably stuffed.

In the coarser discourse of our own later age, it would certainly be true to call those Aborigines “stuffed”. The poor devils were stuffed then, and remain stuffed today and for eternity, unless some late miracle can retrieve them. 

At about ten, with five or six other kids, I spent a holiday week at the timber-and-tourist town of Healesville, in the hills not far from Melbourne. On a spread of rather barren nearby acres was the Aboriginal “reserve” of Coranderrk, burial place of Barak, last survivor of the Yarra-Yarra tribe. We kids decided to walk our way out along the Dalry Road to Coranderrk and “look at the Aborigines”. This seemed to be an adventure of great danger and daring, though of what we were so scared I cannot imagine. Did we run the risk of being speared and cooked in a pot for some Aborigines’ lunch? Something diabolical, certainly. Our little bare legs carried us to Coranderrk’s rough bush gate, through which we peered, and in the distance could see five or six children playing on the ground in front of some huts—very much as we might have been ourselves. They were too far away for us to tell even the colour of their faces. But honour was satisfied, and we set off on the long walk back to our guesthouse. We had seen the Aborigines!

There was an improvement—brief—at about thirteen. Our superb history master, Gordon (“Cactus”) Connell, told the class about David Unaipon (1873–1967; since 1995 the portrait of this South Australian Aborigine has honoured the Australian fifty-dollar banknote). An experimental physicist, Unaipon did research in other natural sciences, wrote two learned books, and was an accomplished musician—an all-round intellectual personality. No Malvern Grammar boy who paid attention to “Cactus” that morning could possibly have continued through life under the delusion that an Aboriginal brain was of necessity “primitive”, inferior or “different”, and destined to condemn its owner to remain stuck in the lower ranks of Australian national life. 

At eighteen, I joined the Army for nearly five years during the Second World War. I met (so far as I know) not one Aborigine. Here is a fair sample of conversation in the ranks: “You know the Abos are dying out, don’t you, Bill? And the way things are headed, it may turn out to be the kindest way for all concerned.” “Aw, that’s a bit hard, Fred. I know a couple of boongs out Coonamble way who are first-rate blokes—real white men, I’d call them.”

After the war, I read Eleanor Dark’s 1941 novel The Timeless Land, and was deeply impressed by her understanding portrait of Bennelong, that hapless “caught-in-the-middle” Aborigine who accompanied Governor Phillip on his return voyage to England.  

I was aged well into my sixties before I met and enjoyed a fruitful conversation with an Australian Aborigine. I don’t think this reflects a cloistered life on my part. On the contrary, inquiry at large among my acquaintance suggests that it is pretty average for ordinary Australians over the last half-century. To cite an example close to home, my wife, Davey, was for twenty years deeply engaged in the affairs of the Red Cross and the Country Women’s Association over a wide stretch of Central Victoria. She does not recall meeting one Aborigine.

From the 1930s, at least one well-informed serious thinker was considering the future path for Aborigines. Partly as a reporter on the staff of the West Australian, Paul Hasluck travelled far and wide among the remote tribes of his state, listening and thinking. His book Black Australians was published in 1942; in the early 1960s it was judged to be so cogent and useful as to require a new edition. He wrote other books on Aboriginal subjects. Hasluck’s general conclusion (here brutally condensed) was that the right path for the Aborigines was for them to join in and become part of mainstream Australia; we should offer them encouragement in such a course, but the step should be taken only when they themselves, as individuals, requested it of their own free will.

Alas, things went otherwise.

Two unfortunate creations of government, one in 1968 and one in 1976, proved about as helpful to Aboriginal flourishing as the smallpox visitations which had so cut them down in Sydney’s earliest years. First came Dr “Nugget” Coombs’s Council for Aboriginal Affairs; there followed the Commonwealth Government’s Department of Aboriginal Affairs. It may have been unintended, but both seemed to proclaim a separation of Aborigines from mainstream Australia. The indigenous people seemed more and more to populate an invisible enclave, still on the Australian continent, but with its own separate existence and interests. As any substantial reform or new development could only be funded by the taxpayers, it was not a shrewd move. Or was it?

There sprang up like mushrooms university departments, foundations, centres, institutes, study groups, research bodies, endowed lectures, seminars and you name it, all proclaiming their dedication to the Aboriginal cause. Their costs, with premises, back-up staff and overheads, were enormous. Overwhelmingly, this lush “Aboriginal” funding went into white, not black pockets. Grant, if you like, the sincerity of the intentions; but for me, many of the reported results read like harebrained trivia.

The increasingly astronomical sums provided by governments and by private philanthropy became a huge pork barrel or gravy train at which fed (or upon which travelled, first-class) lawyers, judges, doctors, administrators, clergymen, linguists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, economists and every other imaginable variety of academic. I stress that much of this was sincerely intended, and some of it proved useful. But much else was aimed at getting someone an income, at academic promotion, the enhancement of professional reputation and the swelling of CVs, ready access to funded travel and the sweets of life in general.

But much of the scholarship was bogus and boring, and swiftly fell before the sharper critical swords of better scholars, such as Keith Windschuttle.

Meanwhile, strictly rational consideration of Aboriginal matters by the general public seemed to slide away under a false and blackmailing sentimental mysticism. It became a stage upon which our do-gooders and bien pensants at large could display the infinitely refined qualities of their minds and hearts. “Sorry Days” of embarrassing phoniness went hand in hand with newly-invented conventions, under which no suburban prawn night or sausage sizzle might begin without the company “honouring the first inhabitants”. Even in town halls one’s eyes might sting from the acrid smoke of burning gum leaves.

And so, at last, to my late-in-life eventual and so far only meeting with an Australian Aborigine.

I was called on to advise, if I could, on further career prospects for certain Aborigines, most of whom had won a meritorious university qualification, and who had either been admitted to a learned profession, or who stood on the threshold. They were not exactly youthful, and their faces reflected the battles and impediments they had already overcome in getting as far as they had. I had never had such visitors before, and in my simplicity I began by assuming they could look for special understanding and help from the Melbourne Aboriginal community, including the Aboriginal Legal Service. My callers maintained perfect good manners, but the looks they exchanged showed plainly enough their opinion that I could offer them nothing useful. Gently, they explained that they looked for nothing from that quarter, and that such an association could only be a handicap: they wanted out. As we chatted on, it was I who learned and they who taught.

Clearly, a substantial section of the Aboriginal leadership was merely a burden on other Aborigines’ backs. There was a clear analogy with some trade unions, where the rank and file no longer need protection against The Boss; they are being cheated by their own rorting officials. I gained the disappointing knowledge that, all too often, a battling Aborigine’s worst enemy might be his own corrupt leader.

Likewise, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin builds some new houses for Aborigines in Alice Springs, and renovates some more, which had been smashed into slums. Almost overnight, drunken Aboriginal no-hopers drift in uninvited, prostituting as justification “ancient tribal laws of hospitality”. Rubbish! Black or white, a bludger is a bludger, and out with him.

It is now that Noel Pearson’s North Queensland plan is so important. It is not something decreed by whitey, but Aboriginal in its genesis; enforcement of the rules is strict. There is no guarantee that Pearson’s scheme will succeed, but it’s the only gleam on the horizon we have. Any government, state or federal, which pulls the plug on it for the sake of a few paltry millions has ceased to operate in Australia’s national interest.