Unbranded by Herb Wharton

Author:Herb Wharton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2023-04-13T05:03:36+00:00

Around the arena next day gathered the huge crowd of this true multi-cultural city. Only the Aborigines seemed out of place amidst the evidence of prosperity. They were the only losers, aliens in their homeland as they wandered, often barefoot, in the city streets or woke from drunken sleep in the dry river bed. To the white migrants they seemed part of the landscape, like kangaroos. None of the wealth from the great mines had flowed to these traditional owners of the tribal lands. They wandered homeless and disillusioned while day and night their mother earth gave up untold riches that allowed the largely migrant population of this northern city to enjoy a lifestyle undreamed of in their native lands.

That such poverty could exist in one race of people in the midst of all that wealth seemed beyond comprehension. Many people were fond of saying that the Aborigines could not be helped. But after all, there was nothing very smart about digging something from the ground. Could not the Aborigines have negotiated mineral royalties with the overseas buyers of the riches of their land? Once the minerals had all been taken, all that was left was a great big hole.

Mulga thought about these things even in the midst of the rodeo excitement. When all the minerals were mined – and all the land belonging to the huge pastoral leases was laid bare by the over-grazing of imported sheep and cattle – what would happen to the migrants’ prosperity then? The rate things were going, Australia’s natural resources would not last another two hundred years. It seemed to Mulga that those who exploited the land, both below and above the surface, owed some obligation to the true guardians of that land: at least a decent way of life and proper health standards. He felt sure it was not the right answer for the Aborigines to return to the bush to live in self-imposed segregation. There they were out of sight, out of mind … until a tourist bus pulled up, when they themselves were exploited, like the land, to benefit the white tourist industry. The camera clicks – ‘Smile, Jacky!’ A pat on the head – ‘You good black fella, you don’t complain like those other blacks, wanting money and education. You don’t need education out here. Your babies like crawling in the dirt, and the dogs lick out your pots and pans real good. What more do you want? – Oh, look, a kangaroo!’

Imagine, Mulga thought, the outcry from white Australians if all these Aboriginal people moved into the inland towns. What an uproar that would cause from those who claimed the Aborigines could not be helped or educated into the modern age while still retaining their own culture. Yet in the Isa, Mulga saw the clubs of the different nations keeping alive the cultures of the migrants’ homelands, even though they had forsaken their own countries for a better way of life. And at the same time, of course, they strove for even better living conditions and higher standards of education.

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