Dear Loudmouth,

"the grass had been pulled, to a great extent, and piled in hayricks, so that the aspect of the desert was softened into the agreeable semblance of a hayfield ... we found the rick, or hay-cocks, extending for miles . . . the grass was of one kind, a species of Panicum . . . and not a spike of it was left in the soil, over the whole of the ground . . . The grass was beautifully green beneath the heaps and full of seed"

How many aborigines did it take to form 'hayricks' extending for miles?

I am rather disinclined to engage with your pathological skepticism as the last time it took many posts to have you finally admit the impossible; that the girls that the film the Rabbit Proof Fence was based on did indeed make the journey described despite your absolute conviction that it never happened.

Further I am certainly going to take the views of Gamage and Pascoe over anything you may offer. I am also going to take the written accounts of early settlers speaking of extensive cultivated murnong fields of SW Victoria or the terraced hills around Melbourne, or the grain stores found by Mitchell along the Darling.

Hi Steele,

About the Rabbit Fence story, I was sceptical that it happened in the way that either the film or the 'story' of it went. I think that, yes, of course, three girls escaped on their first day at Moore River, that they struggled to find the Fence, but probably went back to the Meekatharra Road and hitch-hiked from there to Jigalong, rather than followed the Fence itself - the book certainly gives that impression. Of course, at its top end, there was a branching off into number of Fences, so which one to follow ?

That didn't seem to worry the author of the book in her ten-page account (out of 145 pages) of being somewhere near the Fence, giving rise to my suspicion that they weren't actually following the Fence at all, but the Meekatharra Road. Also there was seemingly no awareness that the Rabbit Department stationed a fence-worker every seven miles or so, yet the author was oblivious of this.

Also I'm puzzled why there was no evidence of any actual pursuit by the evil Mr Neville, not like in the film. I still think there is a lot more to find out about that event. Plus how to explain that the girls were left alone once they had arrived at Jigalong. And yet at least one of them still spent her 18th birthday back at Moore River.

As for your account of ricks extending for miles, one is forced to ask - what then ? Was the grass winnowed for the seed ? Was the seed taken back to the camps to be ground by the women (it's always the women, isn't it, who do all the work). But you haven't explained whether or not the ground was cultivated and fenced, i.e. farmed ? Or was the heaped grass gathered by the women as and when they needed the seed ? i.e. 'gathered', not in any way farmed ? In fact, was the 'crop' grown by cultivation, i.e. farmed, or was it gathered in situ, when it was needed, i.e. 'gathered' ?

Joe

Pascoe 'gathers' the 'farming' methods in this field . You can't make a horse drink and neither can I. Capt Cook drank from a creek but why believe him and his drunken sloppy notes? Probably couldn't drive a tractor or coal bark .

Anyway, to get back to the original thread: does the truth matter ? i.e. what really happened, how things really work ? Yes, of course they do. Can you build a Narrative on falsities ? Not just outright and conscious lies, but on well-intentioned fabrications and misunderstandings of the truth ? No, I don't think so.

Any Narrative which relies on falsities betrays itself. It leads its adherents into blind alleys. But if power is in the hands of such adherents, then the entire Cause is doomed. Any 'non-believers' must be 'neutralised', kept out of any positions of power, ostracised. And worse, if need be.

I've been a believer, at various times, in communism, Marxist socialism, Maoism, and in the Indigenous Cause. I've abandoned those pseudo-left forms of fascism long ago (well, maybe thirty years ago). (Fascism ? Yes: the song goes "We will walk behind the plough-share, we will put away the sword." Yes, I'm happy to walk behind the plough-share, but I know now that the 'powers' are always reluctant to put away the sword. And all revolutions come to rely on the sword; or the bullet in the back of the head).

But I will always believe in the Indigenous Cause as long as it builds on the truth, on evidence, on reality, no matter how uncomfortable and difficult to understand that may be. Currently, that doesn't give me much to go on, but I live in hope.

Joe

An interesting subject. Thinking about it, we all started at the same
point in time when exit from Africa started.
Those of us that ended up in Europe had to adapt quickly to cope with
the winters and that probably gave us a head start on those in milder
climates.
By the time people were arriving in Australia they had developed less
techniques for survival due to less need.
Then jump forward tens of thousands of years and us northerners arrived
in our wind powered canoes and people of different eras met face to face.
What has been going on here is probably unique as aborigines had
probably forgotten due to their isolation that the world is populated
by other peoples.
I know, I know the Maccasons visited the north but that knowledge
would not have been known further south.

We should all be proud that we have survived that tremendous adventure.

The Three Brothers - Planet Corroboree
https://planetcorroboree.com.au/blogs/culture-country/the-three-brothers
travelled from far across the sea, arriving on the Australian coast at the mouth of the Clarence River.

Murni Dhungang Jirrar - Living in the Illawarra - Office of Environment ...
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/illawarraAboriginalResourceUse.pdf
by MD Jirrar - ‎Related articles
of Lake Illawarra in canoes when the Ancestors were ... They brought the Dharawal or Cabbage Tree.Palm with them from the north and are named for this.