Yes, thanks Paul. I feel like I've been rope-a-doped by Loudmouth. I actually thought he was interested in the topic and wanted to learn something. Ah well. You live and learn. Ignorance is always lamentable, but wilful ignorance, well, that's something else entirely. It's an untreatable condition.

[continued]

Further on this subject of the veracity of oral history, e.g. the Rabbit-Proof Fence:

* And Neville would have been writing to his three staff all the time about this issue, not to mention being badgered for a transfer of funds to the Police and Rabbit Departments - there would be records of these issues;

* Moore River records would show if these three girls had gone missing, if and when they did, just as Jigalong ration station records would have shown them turning up. Correct me if I'm ewrong, but i recall that two of the girls were in Moore River at the time they turned eighteen ?

Coincidentally, Arthur Upfield set one of his earliest 'Bony' detective novels, Mr Jelley's Business, published in 1937, on the Fence, at Burracoppin (yes, there is such a place), with the action taking place precisely in November, 1931. I checked it out again and couldn't find any mention of anything hinting at some sort of trouble further north along the Fence. This lack of any mention must be an exception, but after all, it's only a novel.

So there would be plenty of documentation of this particular historical event which, after all, ranks pretty highly in epic stories, along with Mao's Long March, Mungo Park's journeys through West Africa, and Lewis and Clark's journey across the US to the north-west coast.

And so it would be for any other genuine oral account: plenty of genuine documentation to corrobrate an apocryphal story.

Yes, Ngarmada, some of it it was probably faked, and some genuine information suppressed (the stock paranoid response) but perhaps not all of it.

Oral accounts can, and should, be backed up with some independent corroboration, the more diverse the better. Yes ? No ?

Yes, Individual, many wrongs were done to the Aboriginal people, neglect and exclusion primarily, but a 'stolen generation' wasn't one of them.

Morning Everyone,

Here's another extract from The Last Protector:

On 3 July 1911, W.G. South, ex-policeman and Protector of Aborigines, was
alerted to the fact that a nine-year-old ‘quarter-caste’ girl, Rose Latham, was at
Nilpena Station. South enlisted police officers to remove Rose from the station
while her mother was away. She was brought before a court, charged with being
a neglected child and sent to Edwardstown Industrial School, to remain there
until she turned 18. South visited Rose a month later and argued:

She is almost white and has scarcely a trace of Aboriginal features. To have left her
to the inevitable fate of all half-caste girls brought up in the blacks camp in the
interior would have been, to say the least of it, cruel.
The half-castes and quadroons are steadily replacing the blacks, who are slowly
but surely dying out, and if they are left in the camps it will not be long before we
shall have a race of nearly white people living like the Aborigines.

Just days before this report was submitted, the manager of Nilpena Station
wrote to the Port Augusta police, requesting the return of Rose:
The mother (who is also a half caste) was away at Hergott at the time and didn’t know anything about it until she returned to Stuarts Creek a few days later. She is now in a terrible state of mind over the loss of her child, and she came to me in a most pitiable manner to ask me to get her child back.
This affair has caused great consternation amongst the blacks in the camp
here, and on that account, & the sorrowing mother, I ask you respectfully to use
your influence in getting the child returned to its mother.

South refused this request, advising the manager that Rose’s mother could ‘rest
assured that the child is in good hands and well cared for’.

Pages 17 to 18 of The Last Protector. Click on the link in the essay to find the book on the Wakefield Press website.

so the mother abandoned her child and the child was "saved" .. correct?

Why don't you publish your book online?

If you really care about the narrative, and the people, and not the money.

Or is it all for profit that you attack Keith Windshuttle and off the back of his work try to stir up controversy to sell your own?

none of this shows there was a government policy to "steal" children, or "steal" a generation - there may have been some people acting illegally, or as they saw it, in the best interests of the child and applying the morals and ethics of society AT THAT TIME.

Any way, they were not supported by government policy, but by personal drives - isn't that the heart of Keith Windshuttle's work?

People were doing what they could and cared for children who were in danger, abandoned children, like your most recent example - how old was this child, NINE YEARS OLD, why did her mother abandon her? if that was today, most likely the same thing would have happened - the child was in danger and someone acted.

She was in danger, she was almost white in an environment where the blacks were totally racist against half castes and whites, so she was in mortal danger being abandoned there - this is awful!

"To have left her to the inevitable fate of all half-caste girls brought up in the blacks camp in the interior would have been, to say the least of it, cruel." What was that fate? Rape, murder?

Dear god a nine year old, abandoned today, jeez you'd be lucky not to be charged.

Thank goodness someone had the balls to save her! The child was probably grateful to be out of danger.

I'm not going to buy your book - it is patently obvious this is all a rambling advertisement, no wonder Keith Windshuttle ignores you, you have no relevance since all your data is about children being saved from danger and nothing to do with government policy nor a conspiracy to "steal" a generation of children.

The funny thing is, I tend to agree with Windschuttle on some of the main points in this debate. What points? The trick is to read what I've written carefully and not make any assumptions about my views.
This may be too hard for those people on this forum who are clearly interested only in shouting everyone down.
They will have to work it out for themselves.
Cheers,
Cameron

Hi Cameron,

Thank you for your best shot. Can we put the sequence of events into some sort of order:

* Rose Latham's mother abandoned her, a nine-year-old at the mercy of station-hands and stockmen, at Nilpena Station, south of what is now Copley, probably in late June, 1911, and went to Hergott (Hergott Springs: Marree), 200 km away by dirt track;

* South was informed of Rose's situation (no father, no mother) in early July, 1911;

* Rose was taken into care as a neglected child and taken to Edwardstown Industrial School through the month of July, 1911;

* Rose's mother returned to Stuart Creek (Copley) some time in late July, 1911 (not to Nilpena), and appealed to the manager of Nilpena to help her get her daughter back;

* South refused, on the grounds that the child had been neglected and exposed to the risk of 'the inevitable fate of all half-caste girls brought up in the blacks camp', i.e. being sexually interfered with by white station-workers, (a fate that had probably happened to her mother as a young girl ?)

I'm sorry, Cameron, what is your case ? Was the girl neglected and at risk or not ? Sexual abuse of nine-year-old girls was by no means unheard of at remote stations, so what were the obligations of the state in this situation, if not to protect the girl by taking her into care ?

By the way, what happened to her after she left Edwardstown ? Did she leave the School with an education and skills ? Did she return to the Flinders ?

Do you have any case which might be stronger than this one ? Remember: 'he who asserts must prove'.

Joe :)