Joe: You are quite right, Grant and Throsby should have known the meaning of terra nullius. I suspect a lot of people are (still!) confused about this, but as journalists they should get it right.

Land tenure history is interesting - your account is right re most books though there are some that take a more complex view. I find it interesting that a lot of early Australian land policies (at least for NSW / Vic, the areas I know well) were based on the view that pastoralism was to be frowned on, and the push was for closer settlement and agriculture even in wildly unsuitable regions. It's quite significant that the word 'cultivated' means refers to both agriculture and civilised behaviour. Pastoralists and nomadic workers (drovers) were 'uncultivated' in both senses of the word, at least until they made lots of money.

And, yes, SA was always way ahead of the rest of the country - all women got there first.

Hi Cossomby,

We lived for some years in a 'community' on the Murray, and occasionally young blokes would turn up in very flash cars. They'd drive them around for a while, then do wheelies near a high river bank and when they got tired of that, push them over the edge. Sure enough, the frog squad would turn up and fish them out. One time, the kids pinched a really flash car, maybe a Merc or Volvo, drove it around for a bit then went back to the city and, reportedly, parked it a block away from where they found it. What larks !

Depot ledgers from last century may have been a way of keeping track of people, OR simply a record of what sorts of goods had been provided to whom - it depends on whether one want to tap one's inner paranoia, or simply read the record. After all, if, say, a 15-ft boat was provided to an old bloke on the river, it would be necessary to make sure nobody has pinched it from him and sold it on, or left it abandoned in the reeds - even now, such a boat would cost well over a thousand dollars.

In SA, according to depot ledgers (on my web-site: www.firstsources.info), occasionally if a bloke had a lease of land, at peppercorn rent, he might be supplied with fencing wire and posts, which may cost well in the thousands. The Protector, or later the Protection Board, would have been required to keep track of that sort of expenditure.

[TBC]

[continued]

By the way, a recent ad from the Queensland Government told of a young woman who had been forced to go to work as a domestic servant when she was fifteen, a century or so ago. Fifteen ? So did everybody. When I went through high school in the fifties, three-quarters of the kids were gone by the time they reached fourteen or fifteen.

And she worked as a domestic ? So ? My wife worked as a domestic in the sixties, as her mother and aunt had done. After all, until the War, what jobs were available for single women ? For middle-class girls: teacher, nurse, governess. For working-class girls: domestic servant or seamstress. And for indigenous women more or less confined to the countryside: domestics. No wonder women married early.

It's funny how we forget that back in those days, social welfare was almost non-existent, anywhere in the world. It's easy to assume that what is available now, has always been available.

Cheers,

Joe

Cossomby, Saturday, 19 March 2016 7:08:22 PM

The police example you gave shows you reacting to 'authority', oppositional even and predisposed to draw negative motivation (on behalf of the police), instead of the reasonable and simple explanation.

To take the example of one of my children's friends who was stopped and questioned by police in a vehicle, while he was walking on a pavement minding his own business.

At the AFL schools comp the following day I happened to be talking with a couple of police parents and as expected, one of them knew the story. She said they (she being one of the two police in the vehicle) had stopped and questioned the youth because it was mid-morning in school term and he looked so disheveled, confused with his school pack over his shoulder. The police were NOT interested in harassing a youth nor a possible drug bust. The police were concerned he looked so lost and depressed.

The simpler, practical explanation is usually right where police are involved. They would much prefer to be relaxed, shooting the breeze with indigenous youth.

Cossomby,

What about trying to foster some communication? The police, especially in those 'hard' areas you frequent (and I'm not sure why your role is so secret) are always trying to build a relationship with indigenous youth in particular and for a good end.

I have helped put at the PCYC in the past and you might encourage indigenous youth to go along. Car some there yourself and be amazed at the positive change and how it multiplies given a chance.

Hi Cossomby & OTB,

About Aboriginal people and police. In the early sixties, Aboriginal acquaintances used to come around after six o'clock and get me to go with them to a sly-grog shop, a bloke with a huge fridge in his back-yard.

They could have bought grog at usual prices before closing time (it was legal by then in SA for Aboriginal people to buy grog), but they waited until after closing time, just for the sheer fun of it, even if they had to pay a lot more to the sly-grogger. Hey, I didn't mind, I got free grog out of it, as sort of the cockatoo.

There was a famous sly-grogger down on the community on the Lakes who used to sell over the back fence of the 12,000-acre 'mission'. He ripped them off once and they belted the daylights out of him.

Cat and mouse, which is which ? - the police, and whites generally, may think they are in some sort of control, the masters, that they have absolute power - but not really from the Aboriginal point of view. Sometimes it's all just a delightful game, outwitting the cops, the social worker, etc.

If you think of Aboriginal people as cats, not sheep, or as the Joker - the Monkey in Chinese legend - rather than as puppets, you're nearly there. Don't forget that traditionally, almost everywhere, a favourite pastime was fighting, dodging spears and war boomerangs. What larks !

Cheers,

Joe.

What part of Stan Grant is aboriginal? He used to be as white as I am, but his face is now an unusal yellowy-tan colour. Perhaps he has had the same treament as Michael Jackson, but in reverse. Aboriginality, like homosexuality, has become trendy.