You're busy tonight, Prompete :)

Now that you mention the Rabbit-Proof Fence story, it raises issues of evidence and 'proof': IF that had happened as it was supposed to, what would one need as evidence ?

At the time, WA had a Conservative government, but the main newspaper was Labor-oriented. In WA, there was a Rabbit Department (really).

As it happens, Arthur Upfield set one of his first 'Boney' detective novels at a place called Burracoppin, on the fence, where Boney had to work under cover to solve a murder. The story is set in 1931 or 1932. He has a stretch of about seven miles of fence to keep clear and replace the posts, etc. Along the entire Fence (or Fences, actually) there must have been many hundred of employees.

IF the story was true, and three little girls made their way along a thousand-mile fence, across moonscapes, then police and Rabbit Department staff would have been alerted all along the track, once it was clear that the girls were following the fence. Hotels would have been booked out by police, Rabbit Department staff would have been alerted and even called in to assist the police. The local newspapers would have twigged pretty soon. And so the 'West Australian' would have become involved: it would have had a field day.

An election saw a change of government between 1932 and 1933. The new Labor Government held a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Affairs (the Moseley Commission), but there seems to have been no mention of this incident at the Royal Commission.

[TBC]

[cont.]

The Protector, A. O. Neville, had an enormous thorn in his side in the person of Mrs Mary Bennett, a very progressive and passionate defender of Aboriginal rights, and a prolific writer. I don't think she ever wrote anything about girls escaping from Moore river to go north along the rabbit-proof fence.

When Neville died in 1949, by the way, there were supposed to be a thousand Aboriginal people at his funeral, many from the Coorbaroo Club which he had helped indirectly to form.

When I was kid, I asked my grandfather how I was born - he told me that I was found under a cabbage. Grandparents have a funny sense of humour.

Joe