Hi Big Nana,

My limited understanding about the pastoral pay situation was that the workers also demanded housing accommodation - the logic went: since single white pastoral workers got accommodation provided free, why couldn't the families of the Aboriginal pastoral workers get free accommodation as well ?

I typed up the transcripts (colour-coded) of conferences through the sixties of Aboriginal welfare officers and ministers, so I'm just going on memory here :). Anyway, they would be on www.firstsources.info , on the Royal Commissions and Conferences Page.

Harry Giese would have been in the thick of things: I think he remarked that Aboriginal pastoral workers were, on the whole, already getting award-level wages by 1967, but were also seeking those accommodation benefits.

Joe

Deaths in custody
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi033
Of the deaths in custody since 1997 of that 1600 have been in prison and 985 in Police custody. There have been 500 indigenous and 2,104 non indigenous. Many in road chases and of natural causes. 97% of aboriginal deaths have been from natural causes, not Police brutality.

Big Nana,

It was about 36 years ago that I ran across that article so my memory of it might be a bit faulty. If I recall correctly the article was written by Peter Yu.

Thanks for letting me in on the facts

Here's the story of Vincent Lingiari - the tale of
a true hero in which the great Australian song writer
Paul Kelly has immortalised in his song, "From Little
Things, Big Things Grow". Vincent Lingiari was a living
legend whose story merits singing to future generations
for as long as this country endures.

Vincent was born in 1919, a member of the Gurindji
people of the Victoria River region of the Northern
Territory. Vincent's parents worked on the Wave Hill
cattle station, 600km south of Darwin, and even further
away from any actual city. It was a starkly remote
place in the middle of some of the world's most
unforgiving country, seemingly designed less to raise
cattle than to punish them for their sins.

At the time of Lingiari's birth, Wave Hill was owned by
William Vestey, the employer of Lingiari's parents, and
later the boss of Vincent himself, when the boy was put
to work at the age of 12 at the Wave Hill stock camps.

Today it might seem appalling that a 12 year old could be
forced to work mustering cattle, but these were different
times, when child labour was a cherished part of everyday
life.

Forcing Aboriginal people to work for them was a longstanding
tradition for the Vesteys and the Wave Hill station. Like
many Aboriginal nations, the Gurindji had found their
traditional way of life somewhat squeezed by white settlers.

An inquiry found that the Vesteys were paying its Aboriginal
wokers less than five shillings a day - the minimum legal wage
for Aboriginal people while non-Aboriginal male workers earned
two pounds eight shillings. At the time it was actually
illegal to pay Aboriginal workers more than a specified amount
so the Vesteys were falling short of the standards set.

Moreover the little money the Gurindji did receive from
government benefits was paid direclty into company accounts
which the Aboriginals did not control.

Besides the almost heroically unjust pay grades, gurindji
employees at Wave Hill were living in corrugated iron
humpies whith no lighing, plumbing, furniture or floors -
literally no floors.

cont'd ...

cont'd ...

There must always come a limit to how much people
will stand, and the Gurindji finally approached it.
The tipping point came when Vincent Lingiari, who had
begun work on Wave Hill at the age of 12 and had continued
working for a pathetic pittance in inhuman conditions for
35 years became leader by his Gurindji brethren in 1966.

He called upon his people to refuse to accept the Vesteys'
abuses and with two hundred other Indigenous Wave Hill
employees and their families, walked off the station.

They set up camp at Wattle Creek, called Daguragu by the
Gurindji.

Lingiari's actions caused uproar. Lingiari demanded better
pay and rations, and protection of the Aboriginal women.

To make a long story short - he had something bigger in mind.
He wanted the return of Gurindji lands to their rightful
owners. He ended up getting support from prominent
Australians such as novelist Frank Hardy, and trade union
leader Brian Manning, he pushed Vesteys to give back the
stolen property they were squatting on.

In any case if anyone is interested in the full story its
available on the web. Vincent Lingiari died in 1988, in
his late sixties. The battles he inspired, for justice
and respect, live on.

His name is indelible in the story of Australia, a
reminder of the time a poor stockman led a couple of
hundred folk off their worksite, and stared down
millionaires and ministers until they gave in.

For Vincent Lingiari knew where he stood, and big things grew
from it. His name is borne by the federal electorate of
Lingiari in the Northern Territory.

Foxy, why are you lamenting 12 year old black kids doing farm work, something all white farm kids are expected to do, when in England 6 year old white kids were being sent down into mines to work 12 hour shifts.
I live in hope of a post decrying the horrific treatment of convicts and white children back in that era.