[continued]

Certainly, it had to start off with the initial Primal Crime, the occupation, or invasion, or colonisation, or 'contact': we're still wrestling with that - was it all-evil, was it a bumbling attempt to satisfy two competing sets of land-users, even - horrors - was it inevitable ? Would SA, and Australia as a whole, have been left alone until 2016 by a long line of would-be imperialist countries ?

Policy famously goes belly-up at the 'implementation' stage: in SA, a ration system was, at least officially, designed to complement foraging, not to replace it. But the people seemed not to see it that way: when there was a shortage of flour early in 1837, and attempts were made to give out rice, the people complained; they weren't going to eat maggots, they declared, and demanded the usual 'buppy'.

And, contrary to what I had always assumed, rations attracted people from far beyond the immediate groups receiving them: 'coming in', as even W. E. H. Stanner had to concede was a major disruptive force, occurred rapidly, at least in SA: River Murray people moved into Adelaide, battles were fought between them and an alliance between Adelaide and South Coast groups, until the Protector threatened to cut all rations for everybody. His solution, quite characteristic, was to set up a ration station on the Murray, under the explorer E. J. Eyre.

How to fit all this in a 'modified' conventional Narrative ? Early on, that started to seem impossible: a different narrative seemed to be operating, like it or not. After all, we can't write history backwards to fit our present-day perceptions, adding bits that we would like and dropping out bits that we don't.

We have to go back and see, as much as possible, 'what happened' (Childe), inconvenient truths and all (and its corollary, what not only didn't happen but couldn't have happened) and move forward, trying to explain what actually happened - forwards -as we go. History doesn't happen with an eye on the future. It doesn't dance to easy narrative.

So

[TBC]

[continued]

So this bumbling amateur has clumsily opened up a huge can of worms: I only hope they don't eat him alive. And I wanted a quiet life, slipping into a comfortable dotage. Not bloody likely.

Straws in the wind: In SA, Aboriginal people had ready, and legal, access to guns. If Aboriginal retaliation for violence against them had been expected, perhaps there would have been a ban on their right to use guns, at least for, say, a generation after the end of violence in any particular area.

Yet, in SA, Aboriginal people were always allowed to use guns - in fact, guns were provided either free, for people who couldn't work, or at half-price, for working people, after about 1870. Often Aboriginal men were employed on pastoral stations, well back in the nineteenth century, to shoot kangaroos and rabbits and dingoes.

As well, people were provided with boats, fifteen-ft 'canoes', i.e. (I suppose) pointed at both ends, each costing the equivalent of two or three months' pay, five and six pounds. One group on the South Coast received a much bigger boat, for sea-fishing with a six-man crew. Another group wanted one too and when the first group demanded to be paid to use the boat, it was given to the second group.

By the way, rations for Aboriginal people were the same as inmates of the Destitute Asylum, i.e. the refuge for unemployed, and of Jails received. Yes, prisoners' rations. The difference was that prisoners and the destitute had to work, prisoners for ten-hour days, for the same rations as Aboriginal people who didn't have to - and had the extra rights to hunt and fish, for which they were provided with fishing gear.

Yes, lines, hooks and netting twine were provided. One group were provided with netting twine to make one huge net, but they demanded that each man got his own twine, nobody wanted to carry those other blokes. A sharing economy, anyone ?

Looking at the maps of ration depots, one is struck

[TBC]

[continued]

one is struck by how every group seemed to be catered for, into the twentieth century, some 'country' having a number of depots. Of course, this kept labour near pastoral enterprises and, inevitably on people's own country. But not much inference of 'driving people off their land'.

Missions, with their staffs of one or two or three, often complained about too many people coming and wanting housing straightaway. Taplin, in his Journal, complained about the lack of room for new people. People came and went, as they pleased, and often in quite large numbers, but this put sudden strain on ration supplies, so Taplin sometimes had to borrow supplies from local farmers.

Schooling, in language, was a major purpose for Missions, and - at least in South Australia - moved as quickly as possible tob a standard-level curriculum. The Rev. Taplin was asked at the Select Committtee hearings on Aborigines in 1860 if the children showed any aptitude for arithmetic, on the assumption that of course it would be too difficult for them, they needed 'different', 'adapted', schooling. Taplin replied that, after barely four months of schooling in a tent while the school was being built, some children could add double numbers: i.e. 14 + 23. In SA, the Education Department monitored the three or four Aboriginal schools working to a standard curriculum, and sent inspectors regularly from about 1880.

Of course, the very act of settlement - and bringing hundreds, then thousands, of settlers to South Australia had the explicit purpose of occupying much of the land, the best land for farming, from the outset. Did authorities assume that co-existence was possible, that foraging and farming could proceed without any conflict ? Taking up land for farming logically took land away from foragers, and forever. Pastoral leases were a different proposition, since even now it is possible to pasture animals AND to forage on the same land: one station in the North-West is doing precisely that. Foraging rights are still recognised on pastoral leases in SA.

Lots of worms yet !

[TBC]