To Phil W

I’ve had a look at the 1911 Act (Act) and, with respect, believe you should re-examine it with proper regard to the rules of statutory interpretation.

The Act makes provision for certain controls but mandates few.

It certainly does not evidence a flaw in the author’s work. Indeed many of the “protective” measures seem consistent with the article.

Just wondering, in all the wonderful work you are doing, is there one comment that say why the people returned.

Maybe there was no need for fences, as there was nowhere they could go.

Maybe their lands were already out of their reach.

Hi drgal1,

I'm not the 'author' of all this, merely the recorder, the transcriber of about six thousand pages. I've put it all on a web-site: www.firstsources.info

A friend is about to launch a commentary.

Suse,

I have transcribed as much as possible, word for word. I haven't made up a 'load of tosh': it's there, have a look if you have the courage, and then come back.

Growly,

I'm pretty confident that SA was some sort of exception, although I don't know for sure, and unless somebody has done a similar job on their particular state's first-hand data, then they don't know either.

In those early days forty years ago, I assumed, like most people, either that the material didn't exist any more, or never had, or those 'b@stards' had deliberately destroyed it, or that it would be impossible to find it. Not so. Five minutes registering at the public library here, and half an hour waiting, and bingo ! there's your material. With State Records, it might be half a day, no big deal.

And there's mountains of it, maybe, across Australia, in all the depositories, it measures in the kilometres. So nobody can say it isn't there.

As anybody who has tried it knows, when you transcribe, you read the same stuff over and over half a dozen times, first in the record itself, making sure you have understood what the writer, with his good or bad handwriting, has been trying to say, then for your own spelling mistakes, then to turn off that bloody Caps Lock key and re-do a couple of lines, then to format, then to perhaps index, then to double-check.

But I haven't modified any of what I've transcribed (what would be the point?), or 'interpreted' it, or in any way 'creatively' re-fashioned it. What the writers write, that's what you get.

So shoot the messenger if you like, it makes no difference to what they actually wrote. It's there for all time.

Thanks to all commentators,

Cheers,

Joe

Joe,
You made a good point in saying that "we are them and they are us", the more I look into the "past" the more It becomes apparent that people haven't changed, the words of people one hundred or two hundred years ago rarely need to be interpreted or put into context.
The "Black Armband" narrators will always interpret everything literally and regard an absence of information as a sign of guilt or evidence of a cover up but there's nothing to be done about people who see history as "story time".
The vast majority of White Australians today are sympathetic toward Aborigines, based on the evidence there's no reason to take it for granted that our ancestors thought or behaved any differently.
Whoever mentioned "oral history" needs to realise that firstly eyewitness testimony is not reliable and that people lie about things all the time, especially White "do gooders" and Anti Racists. Were there White "do gooders" back then fabricating atrocity stories like they do today? Of course there were.

JoM, I have never put much store in the oral history of anything,from anyone of any colour, especially something like the bible.

However, when some concrete evidence, like old human remains dug up and found to be Aboriginal, with obvious damage to the skeletons that could only have been caused by European invaders of the day, then I tend to believe it.

How about you?

Suse,

Exactly ! If something 'happened', then there should be actual evidence of it: evidence, as we surely know from thousands of hours of murder mysteries, is very hard to completely erase.

On the other hand, rumour is dead easy. Oral history, 'Chinese whispers', rumours, suspicions, slander, &c., is just as likely to be puffery. Some newspapers love the sensationalist stories which take time to disprove, but they are nothing new in Australia.

That's why I'm focussing on what the Protector actually wrote, what were his words and actions, what did he do in his position, and what didn't he do that nowadays, we may suspect he did. But didn't. Especially what he not only didn't do but didn't approve of.

Genuine history is full of surprises.

Cheers,

Joe