My colleague Alistair Crooks and I have published a summary of findings from the Annual Reports of the Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, covering the period from 1837 to the late 1950s, some fifteen hundred pages. They run parallel to the nine thousand letters (up to 1912), cracking out at two and a half thousand pages. In each annual report, the numbers of Aboriginal people were carefully enumerated; employment, health, housing and other major issues were described.

Our book, "Voices from the Past", (available on Amazon and Book Depository) canvasses all of the major issues of the Conventional Narrative: massacres; people being driven off their lands; people being herded onto Missions; stolen children, and so on. There doesn't appear to be any mention of such atrocities in either the Reports or the Letters. Perhaps somebody else can find evidence. But in the meantime, we're reconciled to work with what is there.

Perhaps we're wrong, duped by bureaucracy, suckered into believing that what the various protectors wrote was close to reality.

Let's take each of these in turn:

* the right to use the land for hunting, fishing and gathering: from the outset, after the 'Great, Primal Crime' of Occupation, usufructuary rights were recognised, written into the Proclamation, underwritten by the British Colonial Office. Those rights were legislated in 1851, with a detailed clause included in every pastoral lease. Those rights continue.

* massacres: apart from a few massacres of passengers and crew of the ship-wrecked 'Maria' in 1840, and of some white families on Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas, one major battle took place in 1841, when several hundred warriors and thirty-odd police and volunteers fought on the Rufus River, just over the border in New South Wales, following the massacre of a party of overlanders and the theft of five thousand sheep. Officially, that's it.

* as for people being driven off their land: one pastoralist, in 1876, declared an intention to do so, but was reminded that he would be breaching his lease. End of.

* people being herded onto Missions ?

[to be continued]

[continued]

* people being herded onto missions ? No evidence whatsoever. Mission staff usually consisted of the missionary, the farm supervisor and and the teacher. often the missionary was all three. Not much time to round up anybody, if it were even possible, and no evidence that they did, or even wanted to. End of.

* stolen children: apart from the fact that it was neither legal nor contemplated by any Protector, numbers of children taken into care as abandoned, orphaned, etc. were surprisingly few. One gets the inpression that Aboriginal family structure was amazingly coherent. At one Mission, only seven or eight children were taken there in the nineteenth century, mostly foundlings, boys brought down by stockmen and survey teams from the North, and abandoned. On one occasion two boys were brought to Pt McLeay with their single mother, and a total of only forty seven out of a school roll totalling eight hundred between 1880 and 1960 were ever taken away from the Mission, usually for a matter of months or a year or so, ofgten after a parent had died.

* what else ? Missionaries stopping people speaking their languages ? Never: the missionaries were usually the very people who recorded the languages, and struggled to teach in them. Where all children were of the same language group, as at Killalpannina in the North-East, schooling was always in the local language, in this case Diyari. Of course, where children came from many parts, such as at Point Pearce or Koonibba, English was their only common language, so it was used instead of a local language.

So we're at a loss to uncover what atrocities and crucial issues any Protector avoided writing about. Perhaps he, and everybody else, had some elaborate conspiracy between themselves (devilishly cunning) not to mention some events, but that's up to someone else to ferret out, because after a total of eight years, we couldn't find them.

We tentatively look forward to Aboriginal researchers enthusiastically uncovering a different story and exposing us as a couple of ratbags.

G'day Joe,
In the absence of any contrary evidence, that seems to put paid to any allegations of the 'stolen generation' as far as SA is concerned.

I say well done to you pair for your diligence and hard work. I hope similar research can be done by others in other states.

Merry Christmas.

Dear Joe,

There's an interesting link:

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/politics/a-guide-to-australias-stolen-generations

Also - are you familiar with the "Bringing Them Home Report?"

My dearest Foxy,

Of course. I'm also familiar with the fact that only one person has ever been found to have been 'stolen', my wife's sort-of-step-second-cousin, Bruce Trevorrow: some of his cousins were my wife's, through her step-father and their mother, brother and sister.

So perhaps we should be talking about a Stolen One, don't you think ?

One.

Children were taken into care, of course, just like white kids. Our grandmother wanted our mum to put u into care after she ran away from our abusive father. In Aboriginal settlements and Missions, mothers died - forty at Pt McLeay between 1880 and 960, leaving 140 school-age kids. Fathers died, mothers remarried and put their daughters into training institutions. Some parents were boozers, some were just utterly neglectful, and some still are. No real mysteries.

One.

Sorry, dear Foxy, but you raised the topic :)

Love however,

Joe

Thanks Loudmouth. Your writings are consistent with some missionaries I know that were helping out these guys in the 50's. Fake news is not new, it has been embraced by the left for decades. Foxy demonstrates that fact.