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14.1MUNGOREPORTtheStatement of Significance of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area toAboriginal People of Western New South Walesstatements contributed between 1985 and 1991update to 2017production and editorial content by Western Heritage GroupCHAPTER 4INVASION AND RESPONSE34.24.3INVASION AND RESPONSEWhen I think of my forefathers, the way they lived in harmony. To me it was like the Garden of Eden. Then white man came and destroyed. Marie Lawson (Buronga,1991)Chapter 4ContentsInvasionCoexistenceIncreasing Government ControlRacismAsserting Connections with Land and Heritage54.44.5INVASIONThey were poisoned and shot. It went on everywhere, you know that. The shooting went on before my time, but I heard about some going on. It was against the law to shoot them, you know.Angus Waugh, born 1900 (Clare station, 1985)We were scared of all whitefellas when I was a kid. And if we saw anybody with a camera, we’d reckon, “They goin’ to shoot us!” and run off and hide. That was a gun, we thought. Liza Kennedy (Albury,1990)My tribe was poisoned and massacred. They talk about the people who fought in the wars. Our forefathers went to the wars too - against the white man!Alice Kelly (Balranald, 1986)Frontier ViolenceDeadly Diseases Came FirstDevastating new diseases such as smallpox preceded the arrival of invaders in western New South Wales.‘… a violent cutaneous disease raged throughout the tribe, that was sweeping them off in great numbers. …Nothing could exceed the anxiety of [the old chief’s] explanations, or the mild and soothing tone in which he addressed his people, and it really pained me that I could not assist him in his distress.’Charles Sturt, 5th February 1829, on the Darling River near Bourke74.64.7Our land - it’s something that somebody took, didn’t pay for, and got no rights to having it anyway! And that somebody is the government itself, which took the land from the Aboriginal people, and got no rights to having it.You know, the memories of Aboriginal people are the things that they did have. White men came along and they changed just about everything that the Aboriginal people wanted. They changed Australia completely.You’re reading a book about Australia, how it used to be - it is not like that any more! Why has it changed? Because the white man changed it - completely.Johnny Quayle (Wilcannia, 1985)The dispossession of Aboriginal land didn’t only have the effect of cutting off social, religious and economic ties with the land, but also the history. History was passed on through the oral tradition in the form of ceremonies, songs, art and stories, which formed an unbroken link with the past, and was passed on through each following generation. They were linked with creation and the world and the Aboriginal place in it, and also with events that occurred over time. That was all passed on through these mediums.So when Aboriginal people lost their land base, much of that knowledge was severely fragmented.Wayne Atkinson (Melbourne, 1986)DispossessionAbout every dozen miles water was seen in comparative abundance, and native wells were of constant occurrence. These wells consisted of holes about six feet deep, over the mouths of which were crossed sticks, supported bark coverings; the water in them appeared to keep very cool, and evaporation was was effectually prevented by the roofing.This Aboriginal road became a stock route, and is now the Cobb Highway.The stock invasion made Aboriginal life in the dry country precarious, because stock used and defiled the water holes, small swamps and wells that were vital for Aboriginal survival. An Aboriginal road ran from the Lachlan River to the Darling River, through the country to the east of the Willandra Lakes. The finding of this road by invaders in 1859 was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald of 10th March 1860 (page 5):94.84.9COEXISTENCEThe New RealityStock was at first under the care of shepherds. The gold rush of the 1850s saw many white workers desert the region, so the squatters came to depend on Aboriginal labour. By 1873 all the stations around the Willandra Lakes had been fenced, imposing white terms on the land. Some aspects of this working relationship continued into the 20th century. Aboriginal people liked the work and had a preference for bush food. The downside was that pastoralists usually underpaid the Aboriginal workers. Rations were often used to pay individual workers into the 20th century.Tolarno Station 1865When Dad and Grandfather were working out on Manfred and Kilfera, our mother used to go out with a long stick and come back with a lot of rabbits. She’d be out nearly all day, tracking. And we used to have a mob of greyhound dogs to catch meat. Uncle Red Tank Jacky used to be pretty good at tracking porcupine, he was a champion. He used to get right to the burrow and dig ‘em out with a stick with a sharp point. Our old mother used to do that too.Joe Smith (Merbein,1985)...and us kids used to go out with our mother, too, and she’d teach us to dig rabbits. Mamie Whyman (Dareton, 1985)Harry Mitchell worked on Nulla station for years.He was real good to his kiddies, they always had a feed of kangaroo or rabbit, and they were real hard times for living.Gertie Johnson (Wilcannia,1985)Oh, they got rations. We always gave them the guts when we killed a bullock.Angus Waugh, speaking of the period before World War One. (Clare Station, 1985) With a relatively low stock density, some degree of compatibility was possible between Aboriginal and European economic and cultural land use within the boundaries of any one property. A mechanism was developed in the pastoral industry for the exploitation of Aboriginal labour which can be described as internal colonialism. If a whole social group of Aboriginal people could be coerced or encouraged to settle permanently on a pastoral run, some or all of the costs of the labour of the Aborigines employed by the pastoralist could continue to be borne by subsistence activities of the non-employed members of the group. So long as this labour force continued to be defined as ‘nomadic hunters and gatherers’ or as in some other way different from European employees, their ‘indirect wages’, such as the cost of accommodation and education of dependents, could be ignored altogether. From Heather Goodall’s thesis, ‘Aboriginal Communities in New South Wales, 1909 - 1939’114.104.11Whenever you did a bit of work in my young days, you got paid in rations, not money.Clive Atkinson (Robinvale, 1986)Our mob was called the Keewong push. It was a big mob of people... there’d be a lot, all camping together. It was all our relations and friends we had. We never went near stations if we could help it. When I was a kid, some of my uncles had little bits of jobs, fencing and that, but mainly they was just with us and their families, camping. My grandfather, Jimmy Keewong, was a real old-timer. He never worked on the stations. He just lived his own way. But I remember one old fella who was old enough to be my grandfather - Moolbong Johnson, his name was. He used to do a lot of station work. He was a person who got on in the world a bit. Liza Kennedy (Albury,1990)My father used to live in a little mia mia. Mum and us kids used to live in a tent, but Dad used to have a mia mia. He put leaves and that over it, and mud all over the top. And he had his little fire in there. Oh, it was warm! Wouldn’t matter how much rain and wind, it was warm inside! Oh, it was nice!Dad’d go into town and cut a bit of wood for them and they’d give him some old clothes. And he’d go to the Police Station and get government blankets, and old shirts, pants and boots like the government used to give. Only he never got the boots much, because he never used to bother about wearing boots. He didn’t like ‘em.Jack Melrose (Rankins Springs, 1985)There are a couple of areas where there are camp site remains that are no more than 100 years old. These are at the Prungle Lakes area, and at Lake Mungo, where there’s one site, and probably a few at lakes further north. These sites contain tools made from glass bottles. This proves that Aboriginal people were living in the area when the first Europeans arrived, irrespective of whether the glass was traded in from outside or obtained direct from pastoralists.Peter Clarke, archaeologist (Buronga, 1985)We built huts for them [Aboriginal workers on Clare], but they wouldn’t live in them. They used them for locking their dogs in. Angus Waugh (Clare station, 1985)134.124.13New ways of Naming PeopleMy grandfather was Jimmy Keewong. His country was all around Keewong, Kaleno and Paddington Stations.Liza Kennedy (Wagga Wagga, 1986)Our mob used to wander round here, there and everywhere, but always end up back at old Carowra Tank. That was the main camping spot, where the rations came in. Our people would know by the moon when it was time to go back and get rations. Liza Kennedy (Wagga Wagga, 1986)They had this way of naming people after the men they used to work for. There was two brothers that I remember who had different names, because they worked for different men, one was Eddison and one was Smith. And they had this other way, they used to name the people by the station. There was an old chap named after Bookara station, old Bookara Bob - but he had his tribal name too. And I remember Tolarno Tommy. And there was a chap whose tribal name was Piirintji - but the people he worked for couldn’t pronounce it, so they called him Jack Perry.Elsie Jones (Wilcannia, 1985)Dad was born on Melrose station. His name was Melrose Jacky.Jack Melrose (Rankins Springs, 1985)There was a Mr. Dan Foley, manager of Kajuligah and he named all the Aboriginal babies out there till about 1930. Angus Waugh (Clare station, 1985) INCREASING GOVERNMENT CONTROLBeginning in the 1880s, the Aborigines Protection Board issued monthly government rations, nominating certain stations from which rations were distributed. 154.144.15Map showing some of the ration stations in the region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.The Aborigines Protection Board frequently forced people to move.I don’t know why they couldn’t leave our people where they were, they’d always been out there. Old Geordie’s mob, specially, was a little wild mob, they were used to being left alone, out in their own country around Marfield. They just stuck to themselves, didn’t bother anyone. They were lovely people. All they wanted was to live their own way.Liza Kennedy (Wagga Wagga, 1986)They forced them to come in to Carowra, then they trucked them down to that flaming mission, [at Menindee] and that’s where they all died, poor things, except for one or two.Liza Kennedy (Wagga Wagga, 1986)When they brought Sugarloaf and the rest of Geordie’s mob in to Carowra, they locked them in the school house, because they didn’t want to stay at the mission, they wanted to go back out to where they’d come from. I remember that.Joe Smith (Merbein,1986)There was a good few living down at Pooncarie when I was a kid. There was the O’Donnells, there was the Johnsons, and Dad’s family used to travel up and down in a boat - you know, they had two or three big boats. They used to travel from Bourke down to Pooncarie, old Granny Moisey and the eldest ones of her family. But they moved the whole lot of the Pooncarie mob up to Menindee. In them days, they just shifted Aboriginal people as if we was cattle. I was only a kid when they shifted us up from Pooncarie to Menindee Mission, but I remember. We missed Pooncarie - of course we did. It was the old, original place. I still think about Pooncarie today. I think more about Pooncarie than I do about Menindee - yet Menindee was better set up.Amy Quayle (Wilcannia,1985)174.164.17They trucked us up from Pooncarie to that mission as if we were a mob of sheep. When we got there in the middle of the night there was nowhere to sleep. Fancy moving people in the night! But Granny Kate Bugmy was there when we got there, with lovely buns she’d cooked.My mother died when we were on Menindee Mission. They came and took us away to the Homes, eight children in our family they took. And no one could stop them, the families had no choice. My old father, he was very sad. He wanted to fight the Welfare people but he knew there was nothing he could do - all our people knew this. You come back and try and pick up the pieces, but it’s never the same.Irene Mitchell (Dareton, 1985)Tibby Briar (Wilcannia, 1986)The houses on missions - it’s only just like a handful of wheat that was given back by white people. What our people wanted was our land - the land we belong to. But they shifted our people for their own reasons, and thought they could just give us a mission and a handful of wheat in return. A handful of wheat that might just make us a few johnnycakes! What did happen to our people should never have happened. Johnny Quayle (Wilcannia, 1987)The Aborigines Protection Board also intensified the painful practice of taking children away.Discrimination and PaternalismRACISMMy mother was forced to move to Menindee Mission with us kids, and leave her bloke in Pooncarie, because they weren’t legally married.The old fellow worried about us, he couldn’t eat for months. He came up and found out that she could come back to Pooncarie if they were married. So they went to the Police Station, and I looked after the little ones while they were married.So we stayed at home, didn’t have to live on the mission then.Irene Mitchell (Dareton, 1985)Some of the station owners were real mean old whitefellas.I remember the manager of Moolah, he’d follow us right to the boundary, sometimes, to make sure we didn’t camp on his station.Liza Kennedy (Albury,1990)Next >