This Whispering in Our Hearts Revisited by Reynolds Henry;

Author:Reynolds, Henry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New South Wales Press
Published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

9

MODERN MASSACRE

Forrest River and Coniston, 1926 –28

The two decades between the world wars were a time of rapid change in many aspects of race relations in Australia. It was also a period of sharp conflict and intense political debate. For all that, much remained the same. Continuity was particularly apparent in the remote areas of the continent. In urban Australia change accelerated. The great gap in perception and behaviour between the coastal towns and the distant hinterland, which had opened up as early as the 1820s, had grown wider. It was partly a result of distance and remoteness. Few urban Australians were able to travel into the remote reaches of the continent. Fewer still wished to. In the bush there were people who had grown up there while others had left the cities behind. By 1939, radio and aeroplanes had only just begun to ease the isolation, which was both physical and cultural.

Life was hard. Economic success was elusive. The monsoonal climate of the north was very different from that experienced in the cities of the southern littoral. Demography was different too. The European population was sparse almost everywhere. The empty north was a catchcry with compelling force. Even in the small towns, the white race, as it was characteristically described, was often outnumbered by Asian settlers and resident Indigenous Australians. Men far outnumbered women. Out on the sprawling pastoral frontier, the Aboriginal workers and their kin outnumbered European bosses. In many districts, European settlement was still recent and insecure. Many Aboriginal people continued to live on their own country, practised traditional ways and sought to avoid the white men as much as possible. There were still many tribal people who had never seen a white man.

The frontiersmen were the inheritors of traditions that dated back generations. Their folklore abounded with invincible prejudices about ‘the niggers’, who could never be completely trusted. Their savage instincts could well up and spill over with threatening suddenness. Latent hostility was always to be feared. Attacks were common enough to perpetuate ancestral anxiety. The white man had to assert his superiority and punish disobedience or lack of deference with stockwhip, boot or fist. Confederacy of like-minded settlers provided security, reassurance and confirmation of the necessity for judicious violence. It was also the first line of defence against the legal system and threatened action by meddling outsiders who didn’t understand the mores of the bush.

But the world was changing. The League of Nations and its offshoot the International Labour Organization were investigating living and working conditions, and there was much talk about trusteeship. The British Empire took up the cause and welcomed new thinking about dependent people. Australian humanitarians found succour that had rarely been there before. The new popu-larity of anthropology began to project profoundly different ideas about tribal societies. At much the same time, increasing numbers of authorities began to undermine the idea that the Aboriginal Australians were a uniquely primitive people. And most important of all was the growing realisation that the

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