Dear Joe,

Sorry mate but not buying it.

Here is why.

Firstly on TB and overcrowding;

“Poor living conditions and overcrowding often go together and both increase TB risk. Hostels, student halls, prisons, refuges and rented housing with many people living together are all places where TB can spread more easily.”

“Poor nutrition can weaken your immune system so your body is less likely to kill TB bacteria if you breathe them in. You are at higher risk of getting ill with tuberculosis. It is easier to get TB if you have no heating and live in damp, dark or dusty conditions. TB bacteria can live in damp and dusty air for longer. If it’s dark, TB bacteria don’t get killed by sunlight. TB bacteria hang around in the room if there is no fresh air.”
http://www.thetruthabouttb.org/am-i-at-risk/living-conditions

The authorities actually had a good handle on the problem years before.

Here is a link to a report from the Board for Protection of Aborigines done in 1879 (nearly 2 decades before the deaths I mentioned earlier) titled;

Report and Correspondence Relative To The Mortality Amongst The Residents Of The Aboriginal Stations Of Victoria.

This is probably the most damning document I have read in a long, long time.

The first piece of correspondence cited was from the Vice Chairman of the Aboriginal Board to the Chief Secretary.

Written on the 12th June 1879 it begins;

“Sir,

I have the honor to inform you that the Board for the protection of Aborigines has recently had under its serious consideration the advisability of concentrating the natives on fewer stations than at present. It is a painful fact that the Aborigines throughout Victoria are rapidly decreasing in numbers, the total numbers being now probably not more than 800, including half-castes.”

The letter then goes on to recommend the closure of Corandderrk and Framlingham, the first because of the cold, wet climate but both because of the 'grave reason' of the proximity to townships with the existing populations moved on to the remaining reserves.

Cont...

Cont...

One gets the true reason a couple of paragraphs further on.

“The reserves of Coranderrk, 4,800 acres, and Framlingham, 3,500 acres, which the Board wish to hand over to the government, are of great commercial value, and would probably realise by auction an average of $4 per acre, or $33,200.”

The solution, ship them off to Gippsland. Never mind the cold and wet there. The board acknowledged that 8,000 acres would need to be purchased at lake Tyers but while “the land is of very inferior description” it was “suitable for the purpose required”.

Good god!

This paragraph was particularly chilling;

“The Board anticipates that ultimately the last of the Victorian natives will be gathered to these two stations, Ebenezer and lake Tyers.”

In a second letter from Vice Chairman to the Secretary similarly dated states;

“It is with much regret we find the steps which have been taken to arrest the terrible death rate prevalent for many years on our stations have proved completely futile.”

Further down the letter relates “We have further the honor to bring under your notice the very important fact that death in most cases is the result of a disease of the lungs peculiar to the natives”

He goes on the extort the Secretary “having under our care the lives of several hundred human beings, we have thought it our duty to bring the matter under your notice, and to urge that it should be remitted with the least delay possible for inquiry.”

Well the good Secretary did his job and wrote to the colony's Chief Medical Officer, one W. McCrae the following day. He replied on the 26th.

I reproduce it here in its entirety because it is so damning, notwithstanding its Victorian eloquence.

Cont...

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The Chief Medical Officer to the Honorable The Chief Secretary
Medical Department, Melbourne, 26th June 1879

Sir,

In obedience to your minute of the 13th instant asking me to suggest what steps should be taken to investigate the nature of the disease which causes the terrible death rate among the aborigines of this colony, and to ascertain some popular remedial course of treatment, I have the honor to inform you that this subject was brought prominently under my notice in 1876, when I proceeded to Coranderrk. There I minutely investigated the conditions under which the aborigines were living, as well as the surrounding locality, and had no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion as to what were the causes of the mortality which at that time decimated the natives. I enclose a printed copy of the report I made on that occasion, in which I pointed out the sanitary defects which, in my opinion, were the cause of excessive mortality.

In the first paragraph of my report I have alluded to the site as insalubrious. I would now repeat that allusion, and recommend the site be changed to a more healthy one; with this exception, I see nothing to add to the report of 1876.

Since the date of that report, though two years and three months have elapsed, six only out of the thirty-two new huts have been built, and these have not been drained. Their walls have been lined with boards for six feet of height only, and the roofs not lined with calico. Drains have been cut in front and behind the old huts, and the floors of these huts have been boarded, but no further improvements have been made in them. Separate rooms for children over eleven have not been built, but female children sleep in the school-room. Skillions have not been built, nor have earth closets been provided. Neither new kitchen nor hospital has been built.

Cont...

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The Aborigines Board allege as an excuse for these necessary changes having not been carried out that they had not been provided with funds for the purpose. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the health of the Aborigines did not improve; but if the recommendations of my report were carried out in their entirety, I have no doubt but their influence on the health of the natives will be very great and beneficial.

I have, &c.,

W. McCrea
Chief Medical Officer

The good Doctor McCrae appended his earlier report and it is well worth reading. These are just some of his quotes;

“The natives complain greatly of the cold and the wet in winter, and I have no doubt that the situation of the establishment contributes not a little to the development of chest diseases.”

“The huts of the natives are built on a street which runs north and south across the face of the slope, instead of up and down it, the natural advantage of the fall of the ground for drainage being thus lost”

“There are few closets of a common description, covering mere holes in the ground, scattered about irregularly over the establishment, insufficient in number for the wants and decency of the population.”

“The construction of the huts is, in a sanitary point of view, the worst possible; the walls are of slab, paling, or bark, mostly the latter, with openings in them so numerous that they may fitly be compared to bird cages.”

“The floors are clay and are damp even at the driest season of the year, whilst in winter the natives complain the water rises to the surface of the floors after every shower of rain.”

“In wretched hovels like these it is no wonder the mortality is excessive.”

The Board's response?

Well McCrae only visited one of the settlements. “That the Board differs with Dr. McCrae in his conclusion as to the cause of the excess morality.” That it was “a peculiar of chest disease that carried off so many natives”.

Cont...

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These death rates were still unchecked nearly two decades later.

It is hard not to conclude there was neglect, waste, profiteering, and a lack of any real desire by the Board to improve the desperate lot of the few hundred remaining Victorian aborigines. Moreover there was sense of just managing their ultimate disappearence. This document shows the circumstances to be far more dire than I had imagined and puts to bed any notion that the native population were looked after.

The only two emotions I can muster are of deep pity for the indigenous people at that time and deep anger at the Board.

So I am asking of you Joe that you be circumspect about attributing these deaths to insufficient 'levels of immunity', certainly in Victoria. This has all the appearance of a managed genocide and our forefathers who organised it, or participated in it, or even just condoned it, should stand condemned, even by the standards of the time.

http://archive.aiatsis.gov.au/removeprotect/24778.pd

Hi C. Steele,

No, you misunderstand me - I'm certainly not saying that a high mortality rate was due only to a lack of immunity to introduced diseases alone - there were probably many reasons why people died from various diseases, as well as lack of immunity. No cure, anywhere in the world, for one - TB was 'incurable' until the middle of last century, for example. Polio too, and it killed. Blood-poisoning killed many women in child-birth until penicillin was used to treat it (or was that streptomycin?)

As well, working life was far more physical and rural, with medical attention often far away, and therefore rural work was doubly dangerous. Working men died from accidents, snake-bite, horses rolling on them (my great-grandfather for one, after two weeks, Braidwood, 1900), even thirst. They were comparatively hard times for Black and White both.

Check out any old graveyard, say going back into the mid-nineteenth century -check out the number of young children buried there, who perhaps 'failed to thrive', or died of marasmus, malnutrition etc. (I saw a mother the other day on the bus giving her 18-month-old a bottle with just sugar-water in it). People died or were disabled by adulterated food and grog. Life expectancy in 1900, after all, was barely into the fifties.

And yes, I take your point about wanting to sell off Coranderrk and Framlingham (still in Aboriginal hands) and restricting people to comparatively barren tracts like Lake Tyers. I suspect that in each case, the full story is much more complicated. But that's for somebody else to check out :)

Cheers,

Joe