Outback Teacher by Freda Nicholls

Author:Freda Nicholls [Nicholls, Freda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761065347
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

32

THE PINDAN MOB

By August 1959 I applied to go back up north, anywhere, the following year. Within a couple of weeks I had a reply, saying the Education Department wanted to start a new staging school for Aboriginal kids in Port Hedland. The aim of the school was to bring twenty Aboriginal kids from the Pindan mob, who had no experience of a contemporary school, up to an academic level where they could integrate into the local school. I of course said, ‘Yes’—and then found out that they wanted me to start the following term, not quite two weeks away!

The Pindan mob originally came together during the 1946 Pilbara Aboriginal strike, when hundreds of men, women and children left the various stations where they worked for rations, to strike for better conditions and wages. With the help of a white supporter, prospector Don McLeod, a cooperative was set up, with the aim of pooling everyone’s work and money, sustaining cultural traditions, educating the kids and looking after the elderly. Alcohol was strictly forbidden in the camps, and traditional law and ceremonies were to be maintained. Right from the start, the strikers considered education of the kids to be a top priority.

One of the literate Aboriginal strikers, an old man by the name of Tommy Sampi, had started a bush school for the strikers’ kids in 1946. If I remember rightly, he grew up on a Catholic mission near Broome and was taught by Irish or Scottish nuns, and I think he was educated to the end of standard 4 (Grade 5) and could read and write English quite well. Tommy battled on for a while with his little school but, lacking government support, it eventually folded. Tommy apparently then left the group in 1950 and went back to work as a cook at a station near Port Hedland. Since then, no government-funded schooling had been available for the kids, and most adults in the mob were illiterate.

The strike was resolved three years after it started, with better conditions and pay for Aboriginal workers, so eventually they succeeded. Though they were no longer paid in rations, their wages were still not equal to white workers. Some of the Pindan mob, like Tommy Sampi, went back to the stations and their previous jobs if they were available. Others continued on as a mob in their traditional ways in the cooperative.

The mob earnt money by selling kangaroo hides, plaited stockwhips and carved pearl shells, and by mining for various alluvial minerals—beryllium, tantalite and manganese. Soil would be dug out, collected and taken back to the camps, where it would be placed in a modified wooden coolamon, which was normally used to carry babies around. The soil would be rocked back and forth to yandy—to separate the different minerals. This rocking would go on for hours at a time to get enough ore together to be sold, with the money going back to the mob. They also built workshops at the coastal camps and made the fibreglass boats and rafts they used to collect and then carve pearl shells.

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