Hi Steele,

I don't disagree with you on most of that: once someone has checked the School Roll, we can establish conclusively that the three girls mentioned in Neville's letter were in fact the three girls of the book and film. I'm assuming so. Whether they got much further than past New Norcia twenty miles from Moore River, is another story. The Roll might help.

Just to correct you on one point: they caught a rabbit but couldn't gut it or skin it, and had nothing to cook it with. So, no, they didn't eat game meat, no from the available evidence anyway. Nor did they pass human habitations undetected. So what did they eat, even in their first week, let alone the entire three months or so ?

Actually ...... if they WERE caught and brought back, THEN they would have been put on the School Roll. And of course, if they did get back to the Pilbara, but were brought back down again, THEN they would also have been put back on the Roll. So what we probably arguing about is: were they on the Roll, attending school, from, say, late August 1931, for the rest of the year, and in later years ?

And of course, correspondence between Neal and Neville would clinch it too: if the Story were true, there would have been a flurry of letters. I hope that it is possible to view those letters in the State Archives.

A thousand miles: wow ! That's like from Adelaide to Broken Hill to Sydney, plus up the Coast a bit. Phenomenal !

Cheers,

Joe

Joe (Loudmouth),

Again, very useful and I am digging away somewhere ATM. For historical interest.

Here is something for you of which you would be aware, Russell's Teapot. For that poster with the rude remarks.

I am referring of course to the duty incumbent on those who make extreme claims, such as are in The Rabbit Proof Fence, that they should also go to extreme lengths to prove their claim/s.

The duty is not upon the skeptic to prove anything.

Dear Loudmouth,

So this is how you have decided that there was no Stolen Generation.

You make each case jump over a bar so high or you delve so into minutia that need to be verified that none have a chance of qualifying in your eyes.

'You say you were stolen? I say you were rescued. Show me papers that say you weren't neglected. What? Nothing? You are a liar and a scammer for perpetuating the Stolen Generation Myth!'

Highly toxic position and one that displays a singular lack of empathy for the suffering of so many half caste children who were ripped from their families.

Hi Steele,

So we move from the RPF to the SG ?

I suppose the same rules for proof apply: get the evidence for any claims and don't rely on any hand-on-heart statements. If any SG claim is genuine, the proof will be there, in each case, a thick file somewhere in the relevant State Archives.

How many cases have been demonstrated in court, where this would logically end up ? One. He was my late wife's second cousin: well, they would share cousins. I knew his mum and her boyfriend's family. It has to be said that they were drinkers, so (really get stuck into me now) it's just possible that the poor bloke in that case had FASD, which of course wasn't diagnosed as such back then in the fifties and sixties.

If someone has a case, they take it to court. If it stands up, they should be entitled to compensation.

And no, I would never say that someone lied about their case (although that's possible), but more like they have to put the best interpretation on being taken into care, which exonerates their parents from neglect or any blame, especially as the mists of time soften their memories.

People misremember, reshape their memories, drop stuff out, add stuff, especially their experiences as very young children - and who would want to blame their own parents for being put into care ? My mum got a court order against our father when I was maybe four, on the grounds of his drunken violence; I don't ever remember any of that, but it seemed to have happened. Grog's a killer.

Cheers,

Joe

Aboriginal issues certainly stir the emotions in some, even to the point of anger among many of the hard right , bigoted racists with a "How dare they!" attitude to any issues concerning indigenous people.

If the bases of this story is questionable, then should not many other unsubstantiated accounts by other Australians involving horrific ordeals, or acts of heroism, particularly during times of war, also be questioned, rather than simply be taken on face value as many often are.

Seems we will apply a double standard when it suits the chosen narrative.

Along comes Paul1405 to try to out-do SteeleRedux at argumentum ad Ignorantiam.

"Argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance stands for "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa)." [Wikipedia]

Paul1405 adds an association fallacy, a red herring, as usual. Irrelevant.

No evidence has been tendered to support the RPF fable.

The RPF novel was a clever insertion into the primary and secondary school syllabuses. Because it is there, some will be likely to swallow it. Then there is the extra opportunity for activists to add more spin. Leftist politics in education. To think that the Jesuits had such a bad rap for trying to mould young minds.