The greatest inequality is really in effort for money ! Those who do virtually the least, get paid the most !

Alan B,
If you were somewhere where there isn't a shop to buy food etc. would you rather be paid in money or in food, tobacco etc ?
The bulk of Cane workers were legitimate visa applicants (see SL Archives) but yes, in the very early days black birding was a very bad part of the history here as were the massacres of shipwrecked people the retaliation of which is now seen as racism.
The worst quoters of history are those who judge it with hindsight ! They're usually University indoctrinated !

Been in places where there were no shops, but travelling storekeepers and mail order suppliers.

As for those paying their workers in a monthly bare minimum of flour, sugar, tea and tobacco? Where did they get their supplies?

As always, there are some folk who comment here, who think things they would never ever accept for themselves, their kids or their kid's kids, are ok for the least well off!

Big Nana is correct about the evidence of slavery in many races. And common practice even in the days when Jesus walked the earth.

However as new energy sources (water wheels etc) were discovered and put to work, this practice diminished somewhat.

So, when carbon became our slave, millions of oppressed humans were released from a life of endless dawn to dark endeavour. None more demanding than that experienced in northern cane fields.

Therefore, when we obtained affordable washing machines and water pumps, millions of women around the world, around a third of them to date, were released from a life of familial servitude!

No idea why all this was considered women's work!? But was and is to this day in some cultures, who have not progressed much past the stone age. And where myth and legend are the tools that maintain this inequality!

The key to a greater level of real equality rather than the bogus versions preferred by some posters, is inherent in truly affordable energy. TBC.
Alan B.

Where did they get their supplies?
Alan B,
It was brought in at great expense, effort & had to be most carefully managed for long periods.
Alan B,
you need to stop looking at the past through hindsight ! I can sort of relate to such conditions when I lived on islands with no power & cargo being brought twice a month.
The people who preceded me only had cargo once a month & they remarked how lucky I was.
The island people worked in gardens & many were engaged in house building. All that progress came to a sudden stop when Labor got into power.

Come on Alan. time to grow up, get the chip off your shoulder, open your eyes & see the truth some time.

My father & a thousands of other Sydney types was paid to ring bark trees & clear land during the depression. It was the only work going. The standard rate was flour, sugar tea, a tent & 5 bob, [shillings] a week. He spent 2 years at that, getting back to Sydney & family only once in that time.

If your so called slaves were getting 10 bob a week they were on very high wages for the time.

Hi Alan,

Where did pastoral stations get their rations from ? They bought them from the suppliers in the cities, and the suppliers sent them up, by ship, road (bullock teams) and/or rail. Transport costs often were higher than the original cost of goods.

In SA, which is all I know much about, missions and pastoral stations would send in requests for rations for Aboriginal people under their care, and the Protector would arrange with providers (flour mills, the Government Storekeeper, etc.) to send provisions to the transport points. At first, these were shipping companies and carting contractors, then the railways.

In the early days, before the railways were built, it could take a year for camel trains to get provisions from Adelaide up to the north-east missions such as Killalpaninna and Kopperamanna. The transport costs - until rail was extended to Marree, and then in 1889 to Oodnadatta - were often much higher than the cost of the goods. After 1889, with rail across most of the colony, the costs for the 'Aborigines Department', i.e. the one-man Department, i.e. the Protector, declined drastically.

The range of rations extended from the basic flour, tea, tobacco, sugar, rice, sago, fishing lines, hooks and netting twine, to clothing material and thread, and a surprisingly wide range of goods. In much of SA, although perhaps not in other colonies, free medical services were paid for by the colonial government, decades before the supposedly-first free public health service, the NHS in Britain. And of course, Aboriginal people were given free travel passes by rail and coach for legitimate business.

I've transcribed the nine thousand-or-so letters of the Protector between 1837 and 1912, all on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

Joe

I recall reading the magistrate reports from a northern Australian settlement in which it stated the frequent delays of supplies by up to six months.
Imagine if all these accusations of whites shooting Aborigines as if it were Sport were actually as true as the hindsight do-gooders try to make it sound.
Ammunition was vital for defence & if I were in a situation of running out of supplies & ammunition I most certainly would not go around expending it if it wasn't absolutely vital for my survival !
The provisions give to Aborigines working were payment & it was accepted as sufficient then but this not acceptable now by people who never have to put in an effort to make it through life in above average comfort nowadays !