individual,

You are truly an individual............... You are truly the great Oneness of the Universe.

Mr Opinion, I don’t know which land councils you have worked with but up here in the north life is very different to down south. Even as I write now, the Kimberley, an area twice the size of Victoria, only has a population of 35,000 . 50% indigenous, 50% non indigenous. Vast areas have never been seen by white people. My aboriginal father in law was raised in one of the most remote missions on record, available only by sea, , and set up in 1912 amongst indigenous people who had ever seen whites before a white married couple and their fellow missionary dragged themselves through the mangroves and started to build a paper bark hut for themselves.
There hasn’t been the massive land loss up here that was seen down south, nor was there much in the way of governing bodies to keep check on happenings.
My husbands family, including some extended family, back to the late 1800s always got paid in money, not rations. My husbands grandfather was a half caste man who was skipper of a lugger that took provisions up the Kimberley coast, my father in law a ships engineer on the pearling luggers. Their family history is not unique here. When I arrived in 1970 nearly all the work was done by aboriginal people, they basically ran all the infrastructure in the Kimberley, plus drove all the trucks that brought in supplies. Even then many owned their own block of land in towns which they built homes on. The few whites were the professionals, doctors, nurses, school teachers etc. And a small police force.
So, the north of the country wasn’t seen as a food supply for England, the crown barely knew the north existed.

Thank you Big Nana for a most interesting recount of your husbands family history. Attitudes towards Aboriginality today are far different from the attitudes of more than a hundred years ago. My first cousin on my mothers side, has after much research into things, things I already knew or suspected, obtained Aboriginal status for herself. For reason of respectability this is something that has been suppressed in our family for about 120 years. When she told me the "news" I said "good for you" As for me, I don't identify as Aboriginal, although I am as Aboriginal as my cousin.

Big Nana,

Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in getting an assignment and loss interest and went off to do another degree in something completely different. I was registered with Councils across the country and I'm sure one was with your region.

I'm assuming you are of an age to remember local events back in the 1960s. Do you recall the events occurring at Fitzroy Crossing when thousands of displaced Aboriginal workers from the large cattle stations in the region camped outside the town?

when thousands of displaced Aboriginal workers from the large cattle stations in the region camped outside the town?
Mr Opinion,
And how did that come about ?

individual,

The bottom fell out of the world meat market and the owners of the cattle stations in Western Australia just stopped operations and moved back home to Perth leaving their Aboriginal workers on the stations without food supplies. Unable to fend for themselves they drifted towards Fitzroy Crossing. The report I read said they numbered about 5,000.

They camped outside the town and the United Nations declared it a refugee situation. The WA govt and Commonwealth govt were so embarrassed that that suppressed reporting of the situation in newspapers.

These 5,000 people were all adults who worked on the cattle stations as stockmen, trackers, cooks, maids, handymen, etc., etc. They were the wage slaves of their white entrepreneurial masters who held the leaseholds over former Aboriginal lands that had been taken possession of by the government.

So there must have been lots of children there too? you ask. No, the children had been removed from their families and institutionalised in missionary schools with the aim of leaving their parents free of raising children in order to extract their time for labouring for their white masters.