CECIL NGAKA' EBSWORTH Wangkumara Man of the Corner

113 CECIL NGAKA' EBSWORTH Wangkumara Man of the Corner Country by David Huggonson In the early summer of 1919 Rose Hines gave birth to a son on the banks of Ngakanuru Waterhole situated along the watercourse of Cooper Creek in South-West Queensland. This was Rose's fourth son to the stockman and drover, Albert Ebsworth. The midwife at the birth was a tribal woman known affectionately as "Mum Hagar". She spoke little or no English, but could relate stories in Wangkumara about her childhood memories of the Victorian Exploring Expedition led by the Police Superintendent Robert O'Hara Burke. Genealogical calculations by Janet Mathews and Lorna Dixon show that Mum Hagar, Ngaka's great-grandmother, would have been a centenarian when she died in 1936.' Little is written in school history books about Wright's supply column to the expedition, particularly their killing of a score of tribesmen at Koorbatta waterhole on the BuUoo in 1861 because they appeared hostile.^. The tribesmen were Albert Ebsworth's people, although his biological father was a European bookkeeper who worked on the BuUoo Downs Station for a time.^ The Wangkumara people who, according to the anthropologist, R.H. Mathews, included the KuUalli, Bunthamurra, Yanderawantha, Yowera, Warrika, as well as the Wangkumara, not only had the same names for the two intermarrying divisions, but spoke dialects of the same language.'*. During the pastoral occupation of their tribal lands the Wangkumara people suffered at the hands of the Mounted Native Police. In June 1877 a detachment of native police under Sub- Inspector Cheeke was stationed at William Campbell's Chastleton Station. The property is now known as Baryulah outstation at the junction of Cooper Creek and the Wilson River. Ngaka's birthplace, Ngakanuru waterhole, is located near this outstation.'. Documents show that the killings of Welford, on the Barcoo River, and John Dowling, at what is now Wangetta Station, led to a number of punitive expeditions during which massacres took place under the official euphemism, "dispersal"*. Ngaka knows of a massacre site on Mt Leonard Station halfway between Windorah and Birdsville, where he was able to examine skulls with lead bullets still embedded in them. George Farwell also refers to this massacre in his book "Land of Mirage"^ Rose, like Albert, was of mixed parentage, her natural father being a white, blade shearer and her mother a Wangkumara woman. 114 Charlotte Hines from Nappa Merrie Station. The lack of European women in the outback, coupled with the dominant position and attitudes of the itinerant pastoral workers and property owners, often lead to exploitative relationships characterised by the coUoquial expression "Black Velvet" for Aboriginal women.^ Albert Ebsworth was employed as a stockman on A.C. MacDonald's property "Naryilico" at the time of Ngaka's birth, and was later to have his own droving plant and 8 c^i E cattle brand, but he never owned any property in the European sense. In the year of Ngaka's birth the "Spanish" influenza epidemic decimated the Aboriginal people of the corner country and the economic recession of 1921 put added strain on the Ebsworth family, living by this time on Naryilico's Piehuppa Lake outstation in a pise house with a thatched roof of cane grass. Like many Aboriginal men in the 1920's, Albert Ebsworth was forced to work for rations and some pocket money at Christmas time. The Australian Workers' Union was unable to have even white station hands included in the Pastoral Award until 1917. The award gave boundary-riders 40 shillings per week, and "found", but the claim to limit working hours to 48 hours per week was rejected. The union tried for years to have "full blood" Aborigines included in the award but was unsuccessful with this claim until 1966. The sons of Albert Ebsworth were to develop a reputation in later years for demanding equal conditions with white workers. "Alby", who died in 1983, was notorious for his fight on this issue. It was below "Alby's" dignity to eat his meals on any station's wood heap.' The Queensland Government had introduced a compulsory saving scheme for Aboriginal workers in 1915. Under this scheme the meagre wages of Aboriginal workers were deposited in saving accounts controlled by the local police, who were also deemed the district Protectors of Aborigines. The writings of Frank Stevens spell out in meticulous detail how the Trust Account system was used to defraud Aboriginal workers of their wages.'" A mysterious fire at Noccundra Police station which destroyed all the saving books was one instance which directly effected the Aboriginal stockmen of the Channel Country. They were never fully paid the amounts recorded in their saving accounts. The Queensland Labour Governments of the 1920's forcibly removed many Aborigines, who had become expert stockmen, from cattle stations in their home territories to Cherbourg reservation, on the generally erroneous contention that they were depriving white men of jobs." Parliamentary records show that the explorer Augustus Gregory, by then Surveyor General and a Conservative Member of Legislative Council in Queensland, was one of the few opponents of the policy 115 of concentration. He fully appreciated the impact that the policy would have on Aboriginal people because of the spiritual attachment to their tribal country. Augustus Gregory had passed through the country of the Wangkumara during his 1858 expedition. To enable Ngaka to attend school, Albert and Rose left him in the care of Charlotte Hines and Scottie Clayton at their camp on Thompson's Creek on the southern outskirts of Tibooburra. Scottie was a former Police tracker from Nocundra, west of Thargomindah, and was respected because of his ability to read and write English. During this time Ngaka acquired many mythological stories, but in particular the legend relating to the Three Brothers rock formation, which is a sacred site of the Wangkumara at Tibooburra.'^ Ngaka managed to obtain a few years of schooling with the sympathetic teacher of Tibooburra Public School, Mrs Gaiter. However, economic necessity forced Ngaka to start work as a station hand on Wonaminta Station before he completed Primary School. During his early 'teens', Ngaka obtained cash by trapping dingoes for scalp money and riding as a jockey for station owners at bush race meetings. After weathering the hard times of the depression years, disaster struck the Wangkumara people of Tibooburra in 1938. Due to constant petitioning by a sole white parent, the Aborigines Protection Board forcibly removed the entire population of the Thompson's Creek camp to the Board's Aboriginal Station at Brewarrina.'^ It appears that Aboriginal children were not regarded as worthy classmates for white children at Tibooburra school and so they were required to attend the segregated Protection Board School operated by the Aboriginal Station manager and his wife.'" The N.S.W. Education Department officially aUowed Aboriginal children into public schools in 1944; and then it was conditional on their parents obtaining honorary white status by being granted a certificate of exemption from the conditions of the Aborigines Protection Act." The concentration of Aboriginal people of different tribal groupings onto centraUsed reserves may have been cost efficient for the Protection Boards of N.S.W. and Queensland, but the psychological impact on tribal customs and practices was devastating.'* The forced removal to Brewarrina was made easier for the Government officers, because the majority of Wangkumara men were working on outlying stations and only the old people and young children were in the camp at the time. They were loaded onto a large truck for removal to the State controlled reservation. The men followed their families when word reached them of the unannounced actions of the Government officers. The administration of Brewarrina 116 Aboriginal Station left a lot to be desired as the 1938 inquiry into the Aboriginal Protection Board demonstrated. A report in the Sydney Morning Herald of 8th January 1938 stated that the Manager admitted he habitually carried and fired a revolver to frighten the 'blacks'. The Manager also broke any strike action by stopping all rations to Aboriginal men and their families who refused to work or carry out his instructions. Historically, the conditions on Brewarrina Aboriginal Station had more in common with the Nazi concentration camp than a government operated reserve for the "protection of Aborigines". The powers and duties of the Aborigines Protection Board of N.S.W. in 1937 are listed in the N.S.W. ParUamentary Papers, Volume 7 of 1938-39-40. The informed and concerted attack on the Aborigines Protection Board by BiU Ferguson of Dubbo at a Parliamentary Select Committee of Inquiry, which heard evidence from 17 November 1937 to 17 February 1938, as weU as the newspaper coverage of the Day-of-Mourning demonstration, which coincided with the 150th anniversary celebrations of British settlement, secured the leading members of the Aborigines Progress Association a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Interior.'\ In February 1939 the Commonwealth Government announced a new policy towards Aborigines. Aborigines were to be educated for full citizenship, and, through training and welfare, were to be given equal opportunities wherever possible. These equal opportunities were to extend to "nomadic or dependent natives", because they were excluded from the benefits of the ChUd Endowment Act when it was passed by the Federal Parliament in 1941. The N.S.W. Government changed its poUcy from segregation to assimilation. The change was embodied in the 1940 amendment to the Aborigines Protection Act. Under the new policy Aborigines, especially those on reserves or stations, were to become self- supporting members of society. In light of this policy shift the forced removal of the Wangkumara from their largely self-sufficient niche at Tibooburra to ration dependency at Brewarrina, in hindsight, seems mystifying.

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