Hi AC,

Were they ? No ? Then what's your point ? Was poverty prevalent for Indigenous people until recent times ? Yes, indeed. My late wife grew up in what was just a shed, in a small country town, up between the dump and the cemetery. Still, she ended up as a senior lecturer at a university.

But if, say, university graduate numbers or home ownership are very rough guides to how people are doing, i would suggest that, since the fifties, a middle-class has grown to make up around 30 % of the Indigenous population, and growing at about 3 % p.a. There's still a long road ahead, but many Indigenous people have taken it already, and many more will in the near future.

Joe

Hey Loudmouth,
My point quite simply is that kids need not have ever been taken for families to be affected; in this respect I didn't really like you playing it all down.

Hi AC,

I certainly didn't mean to look like I was playing it down, as you suggest. I'm too bloody aware of the threats that poverty can bring to people in dire situations, my mother was under intense pressure to put us kids up for adoption back in the late forties after she had our father put under an order to stay away, as far as I can tell now, but what does six-year-old know ? Except the terror and dread of the very real unknown. At least these days, not too many people have to live on potatoes week after week. Yes, I agree, real poverty certainly is no joke. I don't think it ever leaves you.

But in your case, it's indicative that your great-grandmother DIDN'T lose her kids, she must have fought like buggery to keep them and she did. I have to admit that some families that I have known were very, very different; one woman I sort of knew, if you could call it that, was always, always pissed, i never saw her sober, usually at the tottering stage. One of my late wife's cousins (she never knew this) died of starvation in 1955, while her parents were on the piss. A couple of those cousins were taken into care until the mother gave up the grog. Actually, Bruce Trevorrow, the one-and-only-Stolen-Generation kid, was a sort of second cousin: her father's sister had married Bruce's uncle. I think the poor kid has Foetal Alcohol Syndrome long before it was ever described. That's how life was back then.

So I certainly apologise if you thought I was having a go at your wonderful great-grandmother: she must have been a real battler. And there were many, many strong and wonderful people like her back then. And their descendants take life seriously; I'll bet many of them have gone on to graduate from university. I think they and THEIR kids will drive the future for Indigenous people in the next couple of decades.

It's fascinating how discussions drift away from their original thread topic, ay ?

Cheers,

Joe

It wasn't just aboriginals Joe, but most of us.

When men were demobbed after the war with a cheep civy suit & 10 quid it took them a while to get on their feet. Money did not help all that much, materials were just not available.

By 1950 my family had enough to buy a block of land on the outskirts of Bathurst, & build a dirt floor tin shed. WE lived in it for 3 years while gathering enough money & building materials to build 3 rooms of a 3 bedroom house.

I did not feel deprived as 40 other families were doing the same thing in that area. It was normal. Things were not available for years after the war. It took 2 years for us to get a small water tank, & another year to get a big, [2000 gallon for god sake] water tank.

The people three tin sheds down the road were aboriginals I was told, but who cared, they looked like us with a bit of a sun tan. The son played left prop, when I was hooker in the school rugby union team. We called him Toughie, because he had to play barefoot, even in the snow. He was not alone in that, but I at least had sand shoes.

Most people under 60 today have no idea of what life like was in the 40s & 50s. We had one thing in our favour. Even with 45 kids in a class we got a damn sight better education than the kids today are getting.

We moved to Young, but I ran into Toughie in Sydney 7 years later. We were both doing engineering, but at different universities. Those were the days when universities were full fee only, so us poor kids had to get a scholarship to get in. It took at least 2 first class honours & 3 "A"s in those days of real externally set exams, to get an engineering scholarship, so Toughie had pretty well from his tin shed.

Hi Has been,

I agree with you. I'm not Indigenous, but plenty of people were in poverty after the War, well into the fifties. Around Chullora and Bass Hill where I partly grew up, there were no two-story mansions.

And yes, all through primary school, I was never in a class with fewer than forty kids - usually closer to forty eight. Luckily we had some very good teachers back then, teaching us the basics and enthusing us to learn, learn, learn.

Actually, in Bass Hill, an itinerant green-grocer used to take his horse and cart around the streets, I remember him as a very nice man, with two pretty daughters. One lent me her comb for my feral rats'-tails and I probably gave her nits in return. They were Aboriginal.

Cheers,

Joe

Notable that Loudmouth Joe still keeps pushing his South Australian 'research' as some sort of wide ranging example of things that were nationwide. Well Joe, you're more full of it than a sewerage pond.

Go and look at the results of various 'Protection Acts' that created 'Protection Boards' and subsequent 'absorptionist policies' had for Aboriginal people. "...people called them 'Destruction Boards' for they broke up families in a racist policy which operated dependant on the colour of one's skin." Broome 2010, p.96

Then there is the research of Peter Read who found that between 1909 - 1940 in NSW up to 5000 children removed and one reason was 'for just being Aboriginal'. Broome 2010, p.97

The argument against Stolen Generations based on a lack of court cases is a straw man. If there were no policies, and policies don't have to be official legislation, to take children of Aboriginal descent then there can't have been a Royal Commission and so many apologies from governments. Oh hang on...

To keep on coming out with so much sh!t proves one thing...got your head up your ar$e Joe.