April 10:
“…seem to accept such violence as their lot in life…”
The camp dogs around here are unlike dogs I’ve ever seen anywhere else. They are apparently in-bred mongrels. They have no hair and they behave strangely. I think they are mad. No one bothers to feed them. They arrange themselves in packs and go bush at night to hunt kangaroos, birds, or anything vaguely edible. They are given no attention or affection by the Aboriginal people. Often the kids are very cruel to them, throwing stones at them, hitting them with sticks, kicking them, etc. Of course, they are completely untrained and have no road sense. If a white employee accidentally runs over a dog and kills it, one of the Aboriginal men will knock at his door and demand fifty dollars, claiming the dead dog as his own. If more than one “owner” knocks on the door demanding recompense, only the first claimant gets paid, while the others are informed someone has previously claimed ownership and there can’t be more than one owner. This reason is accepted without argument. As long as someone was paid for the dead dog.
Usually at night I used to hear anguished cat cries outside. I thought it must be a feral cat looking for food. One weekend while sitting quietly on the back step of the house I saw a cat, little more than a kitten, that came out from under the house dragging its hind quarters. The poor thing, I guessed, had a broken back, probably run over by a vehicle, and it had been living under the house, half starved, for who knows how long. I later shot the poor cat with a borrowed rifle., relieving its misery. The Aborigines said the injured cat had been living under my house for a long time, but they did nothing about it.
Most of the Aboriginal girls and women have scar tissue all over their faces. They get bashed by the men on a fairly regular basis. Many attend the clinic each morning with swollen eyes, split lips, facial and body bruising and cuts from knives, rocks or fists. They just shrug and seem to accept such violence as their lot in life. Rape is acceptable behaviour, I’m told by the old women. Pregnant women often get kicked in the stomach and spontaneously abort. The Royal Flying Doctor plane is frequently coming in to pick up such casualties for hospital attention in Alice Springs. Some of the old men have confided that tribal law is quickly breaking down and the younger ones are often becoming involved in illicit relationships. In the old days such offences would have meant death to the offenders without any questions being asked. Nowadays, anything goes. The result: like their dogs, many are in-bred.
The old women told me of a young girl who had been dragged out into the bush and flogged by her jealous husband because he suspected her of flirting with a younger man in the main camp. We located the girl in thick bush near a dried billabong. She was naked and her entire body was covered with welts and cuts. Having belted her, the man left her semi-conscious in the bush. When I asked the girl what had happened, her reaction surprised me greatly.
She said words to the effect: “My old man get properly jealous. He must love me a lot to get like that, eh?”
She interpreted his insane jealousy, plus his brutality, as evidence of his love for her! Work that one out. Does it then follow that had he murdered her, this would be proof positive of his love? I can’t get used to such mentalities.
One of the police hierarchy from Adelaide came by with his entourage to make enquiries about the effectiveness of police aides – Aboriginal men employed by the police to act as a liaison between Aborigines and European lawmen. We boiled the billy and I told him frankly of my observations.
Police aides were largely useless and ineffective, I said. I have seen one sitting on the steps of a house deliberately looking the other way when a woman was being bashed and viciously kicked by a man, probably her husband. When I later asked the police aide why he hadn’t intervened, he replied: “I didn’t see anything. Me been looking other way.”
Yes, quite deliberately. There are none so blind, as the saying goes, as those who do not want to see.
It was later pointed out to me by one of my elderly woman informants that the bashed girl was the police aide’s tribal cousin. Cousins can’t look at or speak to each other. The same no-contact law applies to potential mothers-in-law, brothers-in-law and sisters. Therefore, if a police aide’s taboo relative is in any way in trouble, he cannot do anything about it – just look away and pretend he did not see anything. Thus, the essential ineffectiveness of police aides in tribal or semi-tribal environments.
In another area, I’ve even heard of a male police aide ignoring a female cousins cries for help when she was drowning in a deep rock pool. He turned his back to the pool while the young girl helplessly drowned. These are aspects of the police aide system that whites rarely know or understand. Another misunderstood aspect is the unfortunate reality that in tribal communities the female is without status. She has no rights or privileges and has very little recourse to justice. In one tribal area up north the word used for females translates into “rubbish.”
Up in Arnhem Land I remember an old tribal woman saying: “It was the best thing when white man police come here. Before then, them mans can kill womans or kids and that was okay. No other man say anything, if he big law man. When white man police come, he can’t kill womans anymore or he go to gaol. We womans like them white man police.”
