Shared lives on Nigena country: A joint Biography of Katie and Frank Rodriguez, 1944-1994.

Jacinta Solonec 20131828 M.A. Edith Cowan University, 2003., B.A. Edith Cowan University, 1994

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western

School of Humanities (Discipline – History) 2015

Abstract

On the 8th of December 1946 Katie Fraser and Frank Rodriguez married in the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Derby, . They spent the next forty-eight years together, living in the West Kimberley and making a home for themselves on Nigena country. These are Katie’s ancestral homelands, far from Frank’s birthplace in Galicia, Spain. This thesis offers an investigation into the social history of a West Kimberley couple and their family, a couple the likes of whom are rarely represented in the history books, who arguably typify the historic multiculturalism of the Kimberley community. Katie and Frank were seemingly ordinary people, who like many others at the time were socially and politically marginalised due to Katie being Aboriginal and Frank being a migrant from a non-English speaking background. Moreover in many respects their shared life experiences encapsulate the history of the Kimberley, and the experiences of many of its people who have been marginalised from history. Their lives were shaped by their shared faith and Katie’s family connections to the Catholic mission at Beagle Bay, the different governmental policies which sought to assimilate them into an Australian way of life, as well as their experiences working in the pastoral industry.

I argue that there is a significant gap in the region’s historiography that provides a need for academic research into how mixed-descent people conducted their lives during the mid 20th century. While this inquiry illuminates the ways in which European colonisers impacted on Katie’s Nigena family, her parents and their ancestors, Frank’s experience brings a different perspective to our understanding of migrant history which has focused on the establishment of migrant communities in Australia and their collective experience. In the absence of his heritage in the region, Frank did not mix with a Spanish community, so this research illuminates the ways in which a migrant individual forged new networks, among diverse groups especially Aboriginal people. Through analysis of archival records, secondary sources and interviews with people who had firsthand contact with the couple, namely their children, their extended families and associates, this thesis documents the impact on Kimberley peoples by colonisers beginning fewer than one hundred years earlier. The

1 cultural and ethnic frameworks that place the main characters as marginalised peoples are investigated against the dominant players who are the pastoralists, government authorities, missionaries and business people. Probed too, is the Nigena landscape to elucidate its people’s sense of place and to understand why the extended Fraser families have always had an attachment to the country around Willumbah, an outstation for Station. By exploring government policies of assimilation and integration during the research period the value of this research is addressed from an Aboriginal perspective.

2

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 1 Acknowledgements ...... 6

Introduction ...... 8 Chapter 1 Historical Background ...... 37 Chapter 2 Katie & Frank to 1946 ...... 77 Chapter 3 Early days at Liveringa: 1946 – 1953 ...... 106 Chapter 4 Debesa: 1953 – 1958 ...... 135 Chapter 5 Debesa: 1959 – 1969 ...... 157 Chapter 6 Beyond Debesa: 1970 – 1994 ...... 186 Chapter 7 Conclusion ...... 207 Epilogue ...... 212 Bibliography ...... 213

Figure 1 Katie and Frank Rodriguez (source unknown) ……...... …… 4

Figure 2 Key locations in Western Australia ……………………………….. 5

Figure 3 Kimberley Aboriginal cultural groups …………………...……….. 38

3 I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and I respect the laws and customs by forewarning, that deceased people’s names are mentioned and images depicted. I ask that individuals exercise caution when reading this thesis.

Katie & Frank Rodriguez

Figure 1. Katie & Frank Rodriguez (source unknown)

4 Drysdale River Mission Beagle Bay Mission Derby Mowanjum Mission Debesa Willumbah Looma Liveringa New Norcia

Figure 2. Key locations in Western Australia

5 Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the time and intellect of my chief supervisor Charlie Fox in guiding me through this study. My gratitude is extended to Andrea Gaynor and Shino Konishi who at different times, supervised my work and helped to develop a methodology and structure that fittingly accommodated my investigation. I am so pleased that Jane Lydon agreed to read some of my chapters and offer useful advice and scholarship. This project was challenging as I aimed to write from Aboriginal perspectives; now I am relieved to have fulfilled a desire to make a scholarly contribution to the social history of the West Kimberley.

I pay particular attention to the contribution of my parents Katie and Frank Rodriguez. I had interviewed Katie about her school days shortly before she passed in 1994; and Frank, as a young non-English speaking foreigner to the Kimberley in 1944 commenced a diary that became the chronological framework for this biographical study. He died during the writing of the thesis which left me unsettled, there is ‘unfinished business’. I have so much more to ask him. I may not have continued without the strong support of my husband Dieter, and the ongoing encouragement from our daughters Kylie and Tammy. Pepita Pregelj my sister read through the biographical chapters making comment and corrections, while both she and my brother Frank Rodriguez, who live in Broome and Kununurra respectively, responded enthusiastically to my many emails. I am indebted to my aunts Edna and Leena Fraser who kept me informed of relevant family history and Nigena culture.

This work would not have been possible without the oral histories gathered from noteworthy contributors over several years: Aggie Puertollano, Gertie AhMat, Jim Fraser, Frances Ward, Kerry McCarthy, Pat Bergmann, Cyril Puertollano, Shirley Rickerby, Dickie and Patsy Yambo, Tony Ozies, Dora Hunter, June and Henry Gooch, Akim and Gertrud Solonec, Fr Joe Kearney, Audrey Bullough, Keven Rose, Marie Megaw, Pat Begley, Fr David Barry, Fr Bernard Rooney and Fr Anscar McPhee. Relatives in Spain, Jackie Vasquez and Javier Gonzalez and from Sydney, Manuel Gonzalez clarified my email queries. Others included librarians, archivists and moral supporters: Graeme Rymill, Linda Papa, Peter Hocking, Roberta Cowan,

6 Ann Curthoys, Anne Poelina, Azra Tulic, Christine Choo, Loretta Dolan, Patsy Millet, Isaac Lorca Diez, Julie Andrews, Teresa De Castro and least of all my FaceBook friends. To be able to chat to and share information over social media, during what can be an isolating and unsociable time for PhD scholars, I am forever grateful.

Finally, my thanks to the University of Western Australia for the Scholarships that allowed me to study in a full-time capacity for a considerable period of my PhD journey.

7 Introduction

This thesis is a joint biography of Katie and Frank Rodriguez, my parents. Katie was a Nigena woman born at Beagle Bay Mission in 1920. Frank, born in 1921, was a Spanish migrant who arrived at New Norcia in Western Australia in 1937. The two met in 1946 at Liveringa Station in Katie’s Nigena ancestral homelands 110 kms southeast of the small West Kimberley town of Derby. They married that very same year and six years later they bought their own small pastoral lease nearby that they managed until 1969. My parents then spent the rest of their married life in Derby. This thesis primarily spans their family life to 1994 when Katie passed, exploring the life they made together in her country.

I began this thesis because I wanted to contribute to the West Kimberley’s social history with a critical account of mixed-descent people’s lifestyles in the region. To do this, I decided to investigate the experiences of one couple, that of my parents. My mother’s childhood experiences at Beagle Bay Mission, and both Katie and Frank’s enduring commitment to Catholicism especially intrigued me when I started to come to terms with the history of Australia, and in particular the colonisation of Aboriginal people and the role of the Catholic church in this process. In a sense then, this work begins with an autobiographical approach as I investigate my parents’ story. In 1989 at the age of thirty-six, after having graduated from Year 10 twenty years earlier, I commenced a university degree at Edith Cowan University through a block release program, studying Human Service Management.1 This course included units in Aboriginal studies. At the time, I was married with two teenage daughters and we lived wherever my husband’s employment as a communications technician with Telecom took us throughout the north of Western Australia.

I began my studies when we lived in the historic gold mining town of Marble Bar, where there was a high percentage of Aboriginal people, and continued on after we

1 A block release is a mixed-mode study program designed for students who cannot attend internal classes. Generally these students live in regional areas, but it also suited people with disabilities and those in fulltime work. Thrice in a semester, we attended a one week series of on-campus lectures; the remainder of our studies including assignments were executed externally.

8 moved to the iron ore town of Tom Price in the heart of the where few indigenous people lived at the time. As I learnt about the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal peoples, it dawned on me that I knew very little about Australia’s history. I wondered how different these histories would be if written from an Aboriginal point of view. In reading these Australian histories, I realised that my own experiences, and those of my family and the broader community in the West Kimberley, were not reflected in these texts. While Henry Reynolds may have wondered about our history ‘why weren’t we told?’, I instead pondered, ‘why aren’t we included?’2

I address this question in this thesis by investigating my parents’ lives, for their story in many respects encapsulates a quintessential social history of the West Kimberley while at the same time reflecting an Aboriginal history that is yet untold. It must be acknowledged that the history of the West Kimberley is very different to that of the southern parts of Australia. This is partly due to its comparatively late colonisation. While it was first explored in 1837 by George Grey, the region was not settled by non-indigenous peoples until the 1880s with the advent of pastoralism and the discovery of gold at Halls Creek in 1885.3 Further, throughout its colonial history the Kimberley remained predominately populated by Aboriginal people. Henry Reynolds notes that at Federation indigenous peoples comprised about 40% of the total population of the tropical North, and while the Anglo-Australian population may have been as high as 50% across the north, outside of the European hubs of Charters Towers, MacKay, Townsville and Cairns in Queensland the white population fell to approximately 10%.4 As recently as the 2011 census it was found that 40% of the population of the Kimberley identified as Aboriginal.5 Further, the Kimberley has been marked by a relative multiculturalism, with a large proportion of its population comprising single men from Asia who sought new economic opportunities as indentured labourers in the maritime industries as well as ‘Afghan’ cameleers from the Punjab and Sind who provided the main transport in the region by driving camel

2 Henry Reynolds, Why weren’t we told? A personal search for the truth about our History, Penguin, Sydney, 2000. 3 Mary Anne Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers, , WA, UWA Press, 2002, p. 4 & 27; Henry Reynolds, North Of Capricorn the Untold Story Of Australia’s North, Crows Nest, NSW, 2003, p. xv-xvi 4 Reynolds, p. xv-xvi. 5 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘2011 Census Quickstats: Kimberley’ [online], available at http://www.censusdata.abs.gov/census_services/getproduct.census/2011/quickstat/50804 ?opendocument&navpos=220 (accessed 16 June, 2015).

9 trains or serving as hawkers. At Federation the Asian population represented half of the non-indigenous population.6

The pastoral industry also played a major role in the development of the Kimberley. It shaped the lives of the many Aboriginal men, women and children who were drawn into the industry because it often enabled them to stay on their own country and its seasonal nature meant that pastoral workers had time and space for cultural ceremonies and obligations to country.7 This is not to say that Aboriginal people exercised full autonomy, for they were still subject to governmental control through the Masters and Servants Act (WA), 1892 and various Protection Acts, as well as surveillance by the police who often served the interests of the pastoral industry.8 The colonial control of Aboriginal people was also exercised through the missions which were established in the region from the 1890s and in many respects were instrumental in implementing the government’s dual aims of segregation and assimilation. Aboriginal experiences of mission life were shaped by domination and oppression, with Beagle Bay in particular playing a key role in the punishment and discipline of Western Australian Aboriginal women deemed to be trouble-makers.9

My own family history reflects this broader history of the Kimberley in many ways, but with some significant departures. Like many Aboriginal families in the Kimberley my mother’s Nigena grandmothers remained on their country, while also having significant interactions with various newcomers. My great grandmother Lucy Muninga lived with an Indian man, Jimmy Kassim, and in contrast to well-known experiences of Lallie Matbar, a Wongi girl from the Goldfields, and Jack Akbar, an Afghan hawker, did not face governmental persecution and Aboriginal opposition to

6 Reynolds, North of Capricorn, p. xv; and Peta Stephenson, Islam Dreaming: Indigenous Muslims in Australia, Sydney, UNSW Press, 2010. 7 Ann Curthoys, ‘Indigenous possession and pastoral employment in Western Australia in the 1880s: Implications for understanding colonial forms of genocide’, in Adhikari, M (ed.), Colonial Conflict Examined in Genocide on Settler Frontiers, UCT Press, 2014, p. 220. 8 Masters and Slaves Act (WA), 1892., see Ann Curthoys, ‘Indigenous possession and pastoral employment in Western Australia in the 1880s’; Anne Scrimgeour, 'Battlin’ for their rights: Aboriginal activism and the Leper Line', Aboriginal History, vol. 36, 2012, pp.43-65; Anne Scrimgeour, 'We only want our rights and freedom: The Pilbara pastoral workers strike, 1946–1949', History Australia, vol. 11, no. 2, 2014, pp.101-124. 9 Choo, Mission Girls, 2001; Patricia Dudgeon, Mothers of Sin: Aboriginal women's perceptions of their identity and sexuality, PhD Thesis, , 2007.

10 their relationship.10 Instead, my great grandfather Jimmy Kassim was accepted by her family and he was even able to live at the mission with his Aboriginal daughter in his twilight years. And like many single men who went to the Kimberley, my father had travelled to Australia following the wishes of his mother who did not want to see her youngest son embroiled in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War. Unlike the better- known histories of the tropical north explored by Henry Reynolds, Regina Ganter and Peta Stephenson, my immediate family history of migration does not stem from Asia, but instead from Spain. While Frank ended up in the pastoral industry, like many European men who went to the Kimberley, he went there via New Norcia where he first trained to be a Benedictine monk from 1937-1941.

My mother’s family also had strong connections to the Catholic faith through their ties to Beagle Bay. Like many Aboriginal families in the north, her family maintained connections to ‘bush life’ even though their daily lives were shaped by the dictates of ‘mission life’. And like many other Aboriginal families raised on missions they were Christians, but their Catholicism was not just nominal and imposed upon them by the missionaries, for they maintained a deep spirituality and commitment to the faith. Katie’s father, Fulgentius Fraser, embraced the faith, and like the better- known Moses Tjalkabotta who converted to Christianity and lived at Hermannsburg Mission in central Australia, served as a catechist, spreading Catholicism to other Aboriginal people.11

Finally, my parents’ relationship as a mixed-race couple was not unusual in the Kimberley, for as Regina Ganter in particular has shown, such unions were widespread throughout the north.12 However, it is the seeming ordinariness of their marriage which marked it as unusual. As historians have observed, many

10 Pamela Rajkowski, Linden Girl: the story of outlawed lives, Perth, WA, University of Western Australia Press, 1995. 11 Paul Albrecht, ‘Tjalkabotta, Moses (1869-1954)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography,tjalkbotta-moses-13219/text23937, published in hardcopy 2005, (accessed 16/06/2015) - published in hardcopy 2005; and Episode 4: Other Law, , dir. Rachel Perkins, in association with SBS, Screen Australia, New South Wales Film and Television Office, South Australian Film Corporation, ScreenWest and Lotterywest, 2008 [videorecording]. 12 Regina Ganter, Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 2006.

11 relationships between Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal men were not formalised marriages largely because, as Katherine Ellinghaus argues, racialised sexual politics meant that European men expected to have casual sexual encounters with Aboriginal women, while non-European men such as the aforementioned Jack Akbar were actively prevented by the government from formally marrying Aboriginal women.13 Thus the fact that Katie and Frank formally married provides new insights extending the prevailing historiography on colonial sexualities.

This thesis will show that Katie and Frank’s joint biography, in many respects, encapsulates the broader history of the West Kimberley as their lives were shaped by the same currents that swept through the Kimberley in the wake of colonisation. Yet, at the same time their experiences represent a history – of mixed-descent, full-descent and non-Aboriginal people – that have been represented by historians. This thesis signals a new approach, in exploring the microhistory of an ordinary mixed-descent family, whose lives were not necessarily easy, but at the same time were not marked by the frontier violence, brutal dispossession, and political oppression, nor the courageous triumph of Aboriginal individuals overcoming extreme hardships which often characterises Aboriginal historiography. It thus provides an important complement to the ground-breaking work of historians like Henry Reynolds on frontier violence, Lyndall Ryan on massacres, Peter Read on child removal, Ann McGrath on labour and agency, and John Maynard on political activism, all scholars whose research has shaped the field of Aboriginal history.14

13 Katherine Ellinghaus, Taking assimilation to heart: marriages of white women and indigenous men in the United States and America, 1887-1937, University of Nebraska Press, 2006; Ann McGrath, ‘Shamrock Aborigines: The Irish, the and their children’, [online], Aboriginal History, vol. 34, 2010, pp.55-84; Liz Conor, 'Black velvet and purple Indignation': Print responses to Japanese 'poaching of Aboriginal women, Aboriginal History vol. 37, 2013, pp.51-77; Larissa Behrendt, ‘Consent in a (neo) colonial society: Aboriginal women as sexual and legal 'other'’, Australian Feminist Studies , 2000, vol.15(33), p.353-356; Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, Made to Matter: White Fathers, , Sydney University Press, 2013. 14 Henry Reynolds, The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Ringwood, Vic, Penguin Books, 1990; Henry Reynolds, Frontier: Aborigines, settlers and land, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987; Lyndall Ryan and Philip G. Dwyer (eds.), Theatres of violence: massacre, mass killing, and atrocity throughout history, New York, Berghahn Books, 2012; Coral Edwards and Peter Read (eds.), The lost children: thirteen Australians taken from their Aboriginal families tell of the struggle to find their natural parents, Sydney, N.S.W, Doubleday, c1989; Peter Read, A rape of the soul so profound: the return of the stolen generations, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1999; Peter Read, Tripping over feathers: scenes in the life of Joy Janaka Wiradjuri Williams: a narrative of the Stolen Generations, Crawley, WA, UWA Publishing, 2009; Ann McGrath, Born in the cattle: Aborigines in cattle country, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987;

12

Yet, in saying this my parents’ life together was still shaped by structural marginalisation. While earlier sociological studies of marginalisation referred to ‘deviant’ populations excluded by society, this conception is now recognised by scholars such as Peter Sandiford and Peter Divers as too narrow.15 Now studies also include groups of people whose labour has become redundant in a globalized economy.16 I build on this more expansive notion of marginalisation, by considering how my parents, one being Aboriginal and the other a migrant from a non-English speaking background, experienced social and political marginalisation. As an Aboriginal person Katie was still not able to access the same freedoms that most Anglo-Australian people had, for instance she still had to apply to be exempt from the draconian Western Australian Aboriginal Protection Act.

Frank, as a peasant migrant from a non-English speaking background was also marginalised from the dominant Anglo-Australian culture at a time when, as Gwenda Tavan has demonstrated, the Australian government was actively attempting to assimilate new migrants from southern Europe in particular to the ‘Australian way of life’ through various programs aimed at coercing migrants to relinquish their former nationality and cultural mores.17 As Richard White points out, the concept of the ‘Australian way of life’ was aimed at preserving the Anglo-Australian status quo.18 Frank was particularly vulnerable to this assimilationist project, for unlike many postwar migrants (who came after Frank) he was not part of a close migrant community, within which he could still maintain and express his cultural mores and values.19 Frank arrived in Australia well after the first major wave of Spanish

John Maynard, Fight for liberty and freedom: the origins of Australian Aboriginal activism, , Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007. 15 Peter John Sandiford & Peter Divers, ‘The public house and its role in society’s margins’, International Journal of Critical Hospitality Management, vol. 30, 2011, pp.765-766. 16 Helen Sampson, ‘Globalisation, Labour Market Transformation and Migrant Marginalisaton: the Example of Transmigrant Seafarers in Germany’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, vol. 14, no. 4, 2013, pp.752-754. 17 Gwenda Tavan, ‘Good Neighbours: community organisations, migrant assimilation and Australian society and culture, 1950-61’, Australian Historical Studies, vol.27, no. 109, 1997, p.86. 18 Richard White, ‘The Australian way of life’, Australian Historical Studies, vol.18, no.73, 1979, pp.528-545. 19 Monica Boyd, ‘Family and personal networks in International migration: recent developments and agendas’, International Migration Review, vol. 23, no.3, Autumn 1989, pp.638-670.

13 migrants in the 19th century who followed the Gold Rushes and formed an ‘extremely close and supportive community’, and before the second major wave in the 60s and 70s following the signing of the 1958 Assisted Passage Agreement between Australia and Spain.20 Instead, upon leaving the monastery walls, he struck out alone into the Kimberley, forging a new life amongst strangers.

The notion of ‘place’ is central to Katie and Frank’s story, as each place they lived shaped a new phase in their shared life. Moreover, for Aboriginal people connections to place are incredibly significant, be it ancestral lands or new places that Aboriginal people moved to, whether freely or forced. In the 1950s and 60s Phillipena and Fulgentius Fraser, Katie’s parents, lived at Willumbah, an outstation of Liveringa Station, where he was an overseer (head ). Willumbah is a ‘place’ of special significance in the hearts and minds of my extended family. It is close to where Fulgentius was born, and it is where the Fraser’s children and descendants spent time interacting with family and with station people. Today, this part of Nigena country (in a geographical sense) has become a place for our family that we visit, look at and feel part of.21

Tim Cresswell draws on the work of geographer Yi-Fu Tuan to explore and articulate the meaning of ‘space’ and ‘place’ and ‘experience’. It is his understanding of ‘place’ that is conveyed throughout this thesis. ‘Space’, he argues, allows movement while ‘place’ is where we ‘pause’ that then becomes ‘place’. Tuan contends that to Australian Aboriginal people topographical features are an account of “who was here, and did what”, and “who is here now”. I concur absolutely with his assertion. Landscape, from the perspective of Aboriginal people, records the achievements of its people. In other words, we are the products of our ‘place’. Our landscape is littered

20 Rafaela Lopez, ‘Hispanics in Australia: an imagined community of communities’, JILAS Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, vol.11, no.1, July 2005, p.104. 21 Tim Cresswell, Place: a short introduction, Carlton, VIC, Blackwell Publishing, 2004, pp.10- 11; see Lyn Leader-Elliott, 'Cultural Landscape and Sense of Place: Community and Tourism Representations of the Barossa', in Ian Covery, Gerard Corsane, and Peter Davis (eds.), Making Sense of Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Woodbridge, UK, The Boydell Press, 2012, p.208; Denis Byrne & Maria Nugent Mapping Attachment: A spatial approach to Aboriginal post-contact heritage, Hurstville, NSW, Department of environment and Conversation NSW, 2004, pp.49-53; Mark McKenna, Looking for Blackfella's Point: An Australian History of Place, Sydney, NSW, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2002.

14 with meaning and memories, as described by Tuan.22 Willumbah, Debesa and Derby will always be ‘our place’.23 My family’s movements and synergies at these places in Nigena country are brought to life in this thesis. This is different to the way in which many Aboriginal people embrace indigenous ways of knowing, through the ‘Dreaming’.

This thesis explores how Katie and Frank, a couple from different marginalised backgrounds, created a life together in the West Kimberley from the mid to late twentieth century, a period that saw incredible social and political changes in Australia. The thesis explores the question of how this interracial couple managed forty years of married life in the context of successive government policies of assimilation and integration. How did Katie’s Nigena family, both full and mixed- descent, accept Frank in the context of the history of challenging interethnic relationships? Did their very different, but in some ways similar backgrounds affect their lives together and how? As we will see, both Katie and Frank embraced Catholicism. How did Catholicism shape and structure their lives? Much of their married life was spent running a small pastoral property they named “Debesa”, so the question arises, how did they survive on their station when pastoral properties were extensive and worked by wealthy pastoralists or financial conglomerates? They left Debesa, after many years of hard work, for the town of Derby which had a very particular social structure. Did Derby change their lives? Debesa, after all, was their ‘place’. Given the primary importance of ‘place’ in both indigenous Australian and peasant Spanish culture, how much of a part did ‘place’ play in their lives together?

Katie and Frank’s family history is contextualised through the use of primary sources, that include stories told by the Rodriguez and Fraser families and by their friends and associates. These narratives have been used to recreate and to provide circumstantial evidence to my parents’ lives and to understand something of the world in which they lived. The storytellers were encouraged to recount their memories in their own words. All the stories are supported with relevant primary and secondary sources

22 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis, USA, University of Minnesota Press, 1977, pp.132-33, p.57; see Stephen Hawke & Michael Gallagher, Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989, pp.113-128. 23 Explored more intensely in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.

15 particularly Frank’s diaries, which he kept for practically all his life. Other primary sources included personal files sourced from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs; personal letters; Pallottine archives at Rossmoyne; Benedictine archives at New Norcia; Durack and Miller files at the Battye Library; relevant documents from the State Records Office; and newspaper articles.

My father began writing his diary in 1944 when he first went to the Kimberley. As a young man, he says he started his journal because the monks in the Benedictine Monastery at New Norcia where he first came to in Australia in 1937, (and monks in Europe), had kept one. Some have been published as historical accounts of New Norcia and Kalumburu Missions.24 Steven Stowe believes the reason historians value diaries (and letters) is because they are the most candid primary sources available. He regards them as valuable windows through which personal accounts provide a forthright reality to history, unlike the formal language of official documents.25 The emotional and intellectual energy a diarist brings to the page each time a new entry is made, suggests much about how people lived and how ideas shaped their world.26 A diary can break history down to the ‘level of the individual’.27 They bring insights of times past from an individual’s perspective, written by themselves or their alter ego presenting a prolonged ‘monologue’; one so different to our own space and times.28 Diaries have been of interest to researchers for a long time yet the motivation for people to keep a diary is as diverse as human nature itself.

I wondered about my father’s intentions and if he were like other diarists who liked to read, while keeping a diary as a companion with whom to engage in undisturbed solitude. And their intuitive wish, according to Elaine McKay, to have their diaries published.29 They have a desire, she argues, to have themselves and their

24 The Torres diaries, 1910-1914 : diaries of Dom Fulgentius (Anthony) Torres y Mayans, O.S.B., Abbot Nullius of New Norcia, Torres Mayans, Fulgencia, 1861-1914; Kalumburu War Diary / Eugene Perez, editors Rosemary Pratt & John Millington 1981. 25 Aronson, Studies in Twentieth-Century Diaries: The Concealed Self. Lewiston, N. Y: E. Mellen Press. 26 Stowe, "Making Sense of Letters and Diaries." 27 "Making Sense of Letters and Diaries." 28 McKay, "The Diary Network in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England.." 29 McKay, "The Diary Network in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England.." u/d

16 perspectives of the world placed be in the bigger picture. Some diarists cannot even explain why they keep writing.

Frank’s personal diary, in the form of yearly booklets doubled as a ‘work’ journal for day to day activities, but importantly, it comforted him as a young, adventure-seeking foreigner. He had no family, he knew no-one when he headed for a remote part of Western Australia to work as a station-hand for the Kimberley cattle pioneers, the Emanuel Brothers. His choice to write in two languages can be attributed to his commitment to his daily diary; remarkable for a man who had been denied an academic education in his formative years because his mother detested the secular schooling enforced under a left wing regime in Spain. There were times when he had neglected the diary for a few months, either because of work pressure or because he was in a state of melancholy, but he always came back to it. He wrote either in pencil or ink. Some of the pencil entries on one side of a page, were made illegible by the ink entries on the other side. The pages have deteriorated but most are readable and are now preserved in the Battye Library, and, on computer. At times the entries are cryptic and he used codes. Abbreviations like ‘H. & S. T.G.’ meant ‘Holy Mass and Sacraments. Thank God’; and at times he reverted to Spanish in the middle of a sentence. Frank’s spellings too, are at times puzzling. Fortunately, my connection is not too distant from this diarist so I could unravel some of the more ambiguous entries and importantly, I knew people he was referring to. Had another researcher explored my father’s diaries they may well have misinterpreted his intents. It is to his credit that he even chose to keep one, leaving a valuable legacy for his descendants.

My thesis is both an Aboriginal history of the Kimberley, and a biography of two individuals, so it contributes to two distinct fields. At the same time it uses the method of microhistory, and reflects Indigenous standpoint theory. Therefore it is necessary to discuss these four distinct fields, to show how the thesis draws on and contributes to them.

Kimberley Histories In the 1980s , Nigena lawman John Watson approached a Kimberley Land Council administrator, Paul Marshall, and asked him to assist in writing a book to capture Aboriginal stockmen’s oral histories from around the Fitzroy River valley region.

17 Watson was concerned that their histories would be lost to posterity, along with the correct Aboriginal place names in the region. Raparapa: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers is the product of that request.30 Narrated by Aboriginal stockmen themselves, the book is an account of the work culture that evolved during the 1940s and 50s. Most stories precede the 1980s and 90s when people with a deep sense of pride and an established work ethic began returning to their vast homelands to run their own stations. Marshall attempts to preserve the speakers’ own character, however he and the oral historians did agree to use standard Australian English given that Aboriginal English could be difficult for non- speakers to follow.31 He uses no documented archival sources, but rather complements the narratives with maps and a generous selection of photographs from the state archives.

Each chapter is the personal story of one stockman, portraying the role of hard- working men who had adapted to station life and became the backbone of the pastoral industry. For instance Walmajarri man Jock Shandley describes his work as head stockman and the professionalism with which he carried out his responsibilities. Sometimes managing up to thirty riders at a time, he ensured that saddles were greased for each day’s work, horses were properly shod and so were able to muster large numbers of cattle, directed the branding of cattle and gave instructions for horses to be watered and hobbled at night. In the evening, he evidenced, he would ensure the cows were ‘settled’ enough to find their calves.32

As elsewhere in the Australian pastoral industry prior to the advent of equal pay the Raparapa stories depict difficult working conditions for meagre returns. The station workers received little or no pay and, after the advent of equal pay and other social changes, were moved off their homelands and into station camps and towns. Raparapa also describes the reality of town life, especially the inequalities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and the effects of alcohol on people who already had little in the way of adequate living conditions

30 Paul Marshall (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right, Now We Go 'Side the River, Along That Sundown Way: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1988, p.95 and pp.124-125 maps with traditional place names. 31 Marshall (ed.), p.v. 32 Marshall (ed.), pp.32-83.

18 and education. Nonetheless, Marshall argues that, working in their own country for long periods, Aboriginal stock workers were able to maintain law and culture and engage in land management practices. John Watson returned to live on and manage Mt Anderson Station in the 1970s adamant that he and his brothers Harry and Ivan would revive a strong culture that had had everything going against it since colonisation.33 Jimmy Bird is defiant! He asserts: “They can’t break us down, there are too many of us! I’ve talked to my people about all this, and I reckon they can’t take over the Nyikina country. This is blackfella country, this one”.34

A few years after the publication of Raparapa, historian Mary Ann Jebb wrote a history of the Ngarinyin people and their neighbours in the central and northern Kimberley following the advent of pastoralism in 1903. Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal pastoral workers discusses the arrival of Europeans and the ensuing violence (blood) followed by a ‘quieting down’ of the Aboriginal people who had little opportunity but to become stockmen and women (sweat) and in the 1950s and 60s the exodus of people to the towns as they came to rely on social security for survival (welfare).35

Adopting a similar strategy to Raparapa, that is to base the book on interviews, Jebb has been able to capture living memories. When she undertook the research it was still in the same century as when the colonisers had forced their way onto Ngarinyin lands. Therefore with some degree of urgency to record their history Jebb offers a realistic analysis of the events, backed up with archival documents. She reveals that with colonisation came a dramatic change to the way Kimberley Aboriginal people in the regions north of Derby lived. The pastoralists, while introducing stock to people’s homelands, encouraged Aboriginal people to remain on country, which gave them the opportunity to continue their cultural customs. Jebb argues that as a survival mechanism they aligned themselves and their kin with the white pastoralists and

33 Marshall (ed), pp.207-248; see Anne Poelina, Action Research to Build the Capacity of Nyikina , PhD Thesis, University of New England, 2009, p.58, https://e-publications.une.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/une:2648 (accessed 11/10/2012). 34 Marshall, Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra, pp.89-98. 35 Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers, pp.4, 27.

19 became cheap pastoral labour. The arrangement forged changes to the dynamics in social relations as white men on stations lived on the fringes of society often with Aboriginal people and their own Aboriginal children. From the early frontier period through to the 1970s governments failed to recognise the contribution Aboriginal people made in the developing pastoral industry and as time progressed, they moved off stations to become fringe dwellers on the outskirts of Kimberley towns.36 Unlike Marshall, Jebb’s work is a scholarly account interspersed with documented primary sources from Western Australian archives.

Almost twenty years later and with comparable urgency to collect people’s stories, Steve Hawke responded to a request by Joe Ross, a Bunaba leader, to document the evolution of the Kimberley township, Fitzroy Crossing. In a sense, A Town is Born: The Fitzroy Crossing Story picks up where Raparapa left off.37 From 1970 onward, stockmen and their families began leaving stations near Fitzroy Crossing, that were once flourishing cattle and sheep industries, but were described by Hawke as semi- feudal systems where Aboriginal families and the non-Aboriginal managers were co- dependent, but unequal.38 In Blood, Sweat and Welfare and Raparapa, workers were sent away from the stations where they worked and lived, largely because of changes to the pastoral industry (equal pay, changes to transport and droving techniques). While these workers moved to the established towns of Derby, Wyndham and Halls Creek, those researched by Hawke moved, of their own accord, into the shantytown of Fitzroy Crossing. Here, families camped alongside the river and in doing so created a huge challenge for the Native Welfare Department to provide for the exodus of people from the stations.39 Walmajarri, Wangkajunga, Nigena and Gooniyandi peoples also moved onto Bunaba lands where they lived together cooperatively. This camaraderie, Hawke argues, was fundamental to the expansion of Fitzroy Crossing as a town.40

36 Jebb, pp.297-299 37 Steve Hawke, A Town is Born: The Story of Fitzroy Crossing, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2013 [on-line]. 38 Hawke, p.17. 39 Hawke, pp, 24, 53, 101. 40 Hawke, p.111.

20 Hawke describes the town as a remarkable social experiment and A Town is Born outlines the forces that shaped and steered its growth. Hawke supports stories with archival records and he claims that today Fitzroy Crossing has evolved into a ‘family town’.41 Despite the effects of alcohol that have had devastating results on children of alcoholic mothers, local people, he argues, have a built-in resilience and are determined to fix the town’s problems. Under the leadership of determined women and a belief that durable relationships have not been destroyed by alcohol, theirs is indeed, a family town.42

Cathie Clement, Jeffrey Gresham and Hamish McGlashan’s edited collection Kimberley History: People, Exploration and Development presents a very different history to the books discussed so far. Indeed, it is the only book which tries to present a relatively comprehensive account of Kimberley history. The book was spawned from sixteen presentations delivered at the Kimberley Society’s third annual history seminar in Perth in March, 2010. The individual essays document many facets of Kimberley history: the early explorers’ expeditions, maritime exploration, rock art, guano mining, early pastoralism, gold rushes, establishment of Christian missions and a brief overview of ‘settlement’ between 1965-2010. The book does illustrate some frontier conflict but offers little examination of the dispossession and dispersal of Aboriginal people by emerging pastoralism. Moreover, there is little mention of economic development other than pastoralism in the region and any discussion about the emergence of towns is minimal. Disappointing, however, is the absence of Aboriginal writers, given that 40% of the Kimberley population are Aboriginal.43 Just one speaker, Broome identity and entertainer Kitja man Mark Bin Bakar had the dual role of acknowledging the Noongar traditional owners (whose country the seminar

41 Hawke also engaged transcribers that at times have not understood Aboriginal English, though the errors are subtle and obvious only to speakers of Aboriginal English like myself. 42 Hawke, A Town is Born; Victoria Laurie, 'The battle for Fitzroy Crossing: June Oscar is at the helm again', The Weekend Australian Magazine, 08/11/2014, Julie Power, 'Fitzroy Crossing women tackle alcohol scourge', Sydney Morning Herald 2014; Yajilarra to Dream: Aboriginal women leading change in remote Australia, dir, Melanie Hogan, Marninwarntikura Women's Resource Centre, Fitzroy Valley 2009 [videocassette],. Julie Stokes, ‘Addressing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Australia’, http://www.nidac.org.au/images/PDFs/NIDACpublications/FASD.pdf Australian National Council on Drugs, 2012. 43 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘2011 Census Quickstats: Kimberley’ [online], available at http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/50 804?opendocument&navpos=220 (accessed 16 June, 2015).

21 was held on) and presenting a paper in which he gave an overview of the Kimberley landscape and its history from an indigenous perspective.

These histories of the Kimberley illustrate the intimate connections between the place, that is, its local environments and resources, and the Aboriginal people who live there, a theme which I also explore in this thesis. Yet, the focus of these studies have been on broader patterns of Aboriginal experience, particularly the way in which Aboriginal peoples were co-opted by the colonial enterprise, made subject to government controls and employed in the pastoral industry. My thesis contributes to this scholarship by exploring the microhistory of everyday people and the details of their everyday lives. This thesis places the overarching history and impact of colonisation in the background, and emphasizes instead the domestic realm, thus providing some insights into the daily experiences of women and children which are less prominent in the existing historical scholarship. In this respect, the thesis aligns the Kimberley histories more with biography.

Aboriginal Biographies and Autobiographies. Over recent decades biographies of ‘ordinary’ people have become popular. In Australia, biographies written by Aboriginal Australians such as Sally Morgan, Vicki Grieves, Kim Scott, Rosemary van den Berg, Ruby Langford and Glenyse Ward, have all been successful.44 Non-Aboriginal writers on the other hand, have been the keepers of the nation’s written history and therefore control what is written. While most biographies written by non-Aboriginal Australians about Aboriginal people are authorised biographies, some have ethical issues that impact on their ability to adequately tell the life of an Aboriginal Australian.

For Aboriginal writers, according to the non-Aboriginal historians Peter Read and Anna Haebich, researching archival files is just the ‘first step in a long biographical

44 Sally Morgan, Remembered by Heart, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Press, 2014; Victoria Grieves & Paulette Whitton, 'All my relos: Aunty June Barker speaks of her family history', Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia (JEASA), vol. 4, no. 1, 2013, pp.117-129; Kim Scott, Kayang & me: Kim Scott, Hazel Brown, 2nd edn; Fremantle Press, Fremantle, WA, 2013; Rosemary Van den Berg, No options, no choice!: the Moore River experience: my father, Thomas Corbett, an Aboriginal half-caste, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, c1994; Ruby Langford, Don't Take Your Love To Town, Ringwood, VIC, Penguin, c1988; Glenyse Ward, Wandering girl, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1987.

22 process’.45 For Aboriginal people, they argue, records are of secondary importance to Indigenous oral histories. When writing family life stories an Aboriginal biographer will inevitably incorporate his or her own life into the tale, as is the case in the successful auto/biography My Place published in 1987.46 Daisy Corunna, a Palkyu woman from the Pilbara region had her story told by her granddaughter Sally Morgan. Morgan treads through the hidden history of her mixed-descent Perth family, who were curious about their heritage. The book brought to the notice of a wide audience, a very real story of the treatment of Aboriginal people and the attempts by governments to assimilate them. The book was also important because is exposed the impact of white pastoralists on Aboriginal peoples. It offers an explanation as to where many mixed-descent people came from, although while Sally’s family history had been kept from her, this was not the case for all Aboriginal families.

Jackie Huggins, a prominent Aboriginal academic, also wrote a biography of her family, in this case her mother Rita’s. Concerned about her place in writing this biography, she importantly reminds us that Aboriginal Elders, like her mother, were once forced to forget their history, but today they are being asked to remember it and she was there to help her mother remember. She later reflected that despite this being one of the most important works in her writing life, it was ‘crazy’ to do it with her mother.47 As daughter and biographer, she had to distance herself from a very personal and emotional story while still maintaining some critical distance from the story. Being so close, yet so far from her mother was not easy. Added to these challenges was the drafting of the story, where she faced cultural differences dealing with white female editors who Jackie thought were attempting to bring an inappropriate ‘black voice’ to her work. Consequently, she transcribed her own

45 Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little, Frances, & Anna Haebich, (eds.), Indigenous biography and autobiography, Canberra, ACT, Australian National Press EPress, 2008. I was permitted to receive both my mother’s file and that of my maternal grandparents. To access Katie’s the process was straightforward. I applied for and was sent her file. However, for my grandparents because they still have children alive, I had to have at least one of the children’s permission. The third eldest surviving child Edna Fraser was happy to sign the forms and I was sent Fulgentius Fraser’s (my grandfather) file for the purposes of my thesis research. 46 Sally Morgan, My Place, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1987. 47 Jackie Huggins, Unwritten Histories, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1998.

23 interviews to avoid misinterpretations of Aboriginal English, so those ‘precious quirks and the language that is Aboriginal English’ were not missed.48

Both Edie Wright’s Full Circle and Steve Kinnane’s Shadow Lines engage with auto/biographical genres to express their sense of duty to ensure that their predecessors’ place in Australian history is recognised. Wright’s story depicts the life of her maternal grandfather, Alf Brown and her mother Laurelle D’Antoine, while Kinnane focuses on his maternal grandparents, Jessie Argyle and Edward Smith. Wright’s grandfather had travelled from Queensland to Kunmunya Mission in northwest Kimberley with his young family in the late 1920s. His story is brought to life in Full Circle in which Wright pens her family’s history with a balance of oral histories and documented evidence. She depicts them fighting against the barriers of discriminatory government policies, but also describes their unabashed respect for Rev J R B Love, the missionary in charge at Kunmunya.49

Perth-based Kinnane, in Shadow Lines, investigates his grandparents’ backgrounds, even travelling to their birthplaces to become acquainted with their respective homelands, a journey of considerable distance, as Jessie Argyle was from the East Kimberley and Edward Smith was a British migrant.50 Kinnane used Jessie’s personal file that he accessed from the then Aborigines Department, and his depiction of Protector of Aborigines A O Neville is far from flattering. Kinnane highlights Neville’s controlling and interfering style, which restricted his grandmother’s movements.51 In his closing chapter he explains his choice of Shadow Lines as the title of his book and in doing so demonstrates the ethno-historical strategies he used to bring his grandparents’ story to life:

48 Jackie Huggins, ‘The Theory, the practice and the Frustration’, in Women Writing: Views & Prospects 1975-1995, National Library of Australia, National Library of Australia, n.d; www.nla.gov.au/events/huggins.html. 49 Edie Wright, Full Circle: from mission to community a family story, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001; see Maisie McKenzie, 'The Loves at Kunmunya', The Road to Mowanjum, Sydney, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1969. 50 Stephen Kinnane, Shadow Lines, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003. 51 Guy Salvidge, ‘Book Review: Shadow Lines’, in speculative fiction reader & writer, 24/01/2009, http://guysalvidge.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/book-review-shadow-lines- by-stephen-kinnane/.

24 Shadow lines are wide lines of negotiation that we all use to make sense of our differences and our interconnections. They shift and change, break and reform, swell and divide into spaces and patterns within the honesty of those of us who, like Jessie and Edward, choose to ignore the straight hard lines and choose to step into a place where our stories have room to move, to enhance and exist. These lines of story shadow all of us. They are not always eloquent, or enlightening. Some are rough and difficult to reconcile.52

Lucy Marshall is a Nigena (Nyikina) woman who writes about both her family and her life in Reflections of a Kimberley Woman. The aim of Marshall’s story, which is situated in Nigena country, is to ensure her bush life is not lost to future generations. She worked with linguist Colleen Hattersley who explained that Marshall’s way of speaking is not linear and sequential, but rather, she is a speaker of Aboriginal English. Consequently Hattersley says that she rejected writing English when translating Marshall’s words, for this would have been to commit ‘an unforgivable act of assimilation’.53 Lucy Marshall was born on Mt. Anderson Station 80 kms southeast of Derby. Mt. Anderson adjoins Liveringa Station, where much of my thesis is set, and she has lived on several stations in the region. She later moved to Derby and sometimes she lives at Bedanburru Community situated near the highway halfway between Derby and Broome, a small community that is the home to Marshall’s extended family. She is a distant relative of mine, and I call her ‘Aunty Lucy’. Through her initiative to write her story, Aunty Lucy has captured and retained much of our extended family’s bush history. The mother of several children, including foster children, she is a respected matriarch who speaks several languages. Having lived through Western Australia’s changing legislation specifically designed for the control of Aboriginal peoples, she claims it was those laws that were the catalyst to live in a particular manner under the ‘Act’.54 Perhaps this is why she became a strong ‘voice’ within the Derby community representing Kimberley Aboriginal people at state, national and international levels.

The scope of Betty Lockyer’s Last Truck Out depicts her childhood growing up in

Broome, a legacy that she wants to leave for her descendants.55 Lockyer who lived

52 Kinnane, Shadow Lines, p.379. 53 Lucy Marshall, Reflections of a Kimberley woman, Broome, WA, Madjulla Inc, 2004. 54 Betty Lockyer, Last Truck Out, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2009, p.vii.

25 most of her married life in Port Hedland, describes a collection of candid, innocent and jovial recollections depicting her childhood in and around Broome during the 1940s and 50s. During the course of her research, she accessed her mother’s personal file from the Department of Indigenous Affairs and she admits to being shocked at the information she found. Lockyer says that she was motivated to write by not knowing her own grandparents’ stories, therefore she was determined that her childhood memories would not be lost to her grandchildren. She clearly understands the impact Government policies have had on Aboriginal children who were stolen from their parents. An alternative title for her book could well have been titled “Stolen before I was born” which is the way she describes how her mother was evacuated back to Beagle Bay where Lockyer was then born. Broome was under possible attack from the Japanese and her mother, heavily pregnant, left on ‘the last truck out’ to the mission.56

The final Aboriginal biography is Traudle Tan’s story about the Kwini man Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri from Kununurra, entitled The Man from the Sunrise Side. Chalarimeri is a speaker of Gunin, a Kwini dialect, so his story is written mostly in Aboriginal English. As in Marshall’s Raparapa Tan attempts to remain true to Chalarimeri’s spoken word, but for the purposes of accessibility at times it is written in plain English.

Chalarimeri who was born in 1940 at Oomarri (a fresh water section on the King George River near Kalumburu) tells his story with candor in a tale that does not adhere to strict chronological order, but goes back and forth until his story concludes in the late 1990s. The overriding thread throughout is the impact of colonisation and his disappointment at the marginalisation of Aboriginal culture. Writing about the Kwini country Chalarimeri expresses a deep connection to his traditional homelands. He considers himself ‘lucky’ given that so many people have lost their land to urbanisation, regional development and pastoralism.

56 Last Truck Out, Awaye, ABC Radio National 2009 [podcast] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/last-truck-outnurreegoo-one- mans-artthe-hill-live/3670114

26 Chalarimeri last saw his father when he was ten years old, just five years after his family had arrived at Kalumburu. A reference to his arrival at the mission as a small boy is recorded in the diaries of the Benedictine priest Father Eugene Prez O.S.B:

On Monday 17th of July, 1944 more Kwini arrived, amongst them Tjalarimeri nursing a baby girl and a boy of five [Mungala]. Having lost one of his two wives, who was the mother of the children, he [Tjalarimeri] did not know how to feed the baby girl . . . her brother Mungala, who is about 6 years old, is more wild than can be imagined.57

Chalarimeri discusses growing up under a strict Benedictine discipline, being taught Catholicism and learning horsemanship, ‘bush’ mechanics and horticulture at Kalumburu. But he resents being denied his own cultural ways and not being given a clear understanding of his rights, which, he contends, resulted in his people being disadvantaged.58

When I look back now, I see that we didn’t even realise what we missed out on – only much later I find that the white people took our culture away from us and that I am poor in my Aboriginal ways because of that. The white ways we bin taught in the mission don’t make up for what is lost. You can’t do a change just like that.59

Perhaps his biggest disappointment is the refusal by the Bishop of Broome to allow Chalarimeri a small plot of land at Kalumburu on the site where the Kwini once ‘camped’ when they first moved to the mission.60 The cover of The Man from the Sunrise Side shows a drawing of Chalarimeri superimposed over Guyon etchings, asserting his custodianship of Kwini country and his physical, spiritual and cultural connection to his traditional lands.

However, he also laments the decline of Kwini dances and yearns for their revival.61 He is scathing about Joseph Bradshaw, who ‘found’, named, photographed and hypothesized about the Guyon (Ngarinyin name) rock art and claimed that it was too

57 Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri, The Man from the Sunrise Side, Broome, Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2001, p.xiii. 58 Chalarimeri, pp.142, 148-149. 59 Chalarimeri, p.149. 60 Chalarimeri, p.123. 61 Chalarimeri, p.71.

27 sophisticated to have been drawn by Aboriginal people.62 And he has concerns about the impact of tourism. While he sees it as a good thing, he is critical of campers who leave a mess. Indeed he is still disappointed that it was used as a dumping ground after WWII and is littered with 44 gallon drums, aircraft and vehicles parts and building infrastructure.63 The book is, in many ways, a lament for a lost past.

These biographies provide rich illustrations of Aboriginal life and experience, again highlighting the importance of place in shaping everyday experience, and the strong bonds of family and culture. Many writers like Lockyer are motivated to discover, document and tell their own stories for their children and future generations. This process not only represents the enduring cultural significance of storytelling in Aboriginal society, but also illustrates the agency and resilience Aboriginal people have in still being able to narrate their own lives in their own words.64 This thesis continues this process by adding another story to the corpus of indigenous life-writing that has flourished over the past four decades. This thesis contributes to these biographies by drawing on the microhistory methodology.

Microhistory Methodology Microhistory can be thought of as a specific form of social history. This methodology provides the tools to trace and understand individual and everyday lives and the lives of small social groups. In so doing it moves away from methodologies that involve large masses of people, the grand narratives that have dismissed the microscopic as insignificant.65 As Brewer explains, these are : “[the] Nations, states or social groupings, stretching over decades, centuries or whatever longue durée”.66 The approach of zooming in on the past, allows me to focus on one case-study in an

62 Chalarimeri, pp.76-82; see Ian J McNiven, 'The Bradshaw Debate: Lessons Learned from Critiquing Colonialist Interpretations of Gwion Gwion Rock Paintings of the Kimberley, Western Australia', [online] Australian Archaeology, vol. 72, no. June, 2011, pp.35-44; Adrian Parker, John Bradshaw & Chris Done, A Kimberley adventure: rediscovering the Bradshaw figures, Marleston, SA, Gecko Books, c2007. 63 Chalarimeri, The Man from the Sunrise Side, p.100. 64 see Bain Attwood and Fiona Magowan (eds), Telling Stories: Indigenous history and memory in Australia and New Zealand, Crows Nest, Allen and Unwin, 2001. 65 István Szijártó, 'Four Arguments for Microhistory', Rethinking History, vol. 6, no. 2, 2002, pp.209-215. 66 John Brewer, 'Microhistory and the histories of everyday life', Cultural and Social History, vol. 7, no. 1, 2010, pp.97-109.

28 attempt to understand life in the places where my parents lived during the middle of the twentieth century.

Microhistory first emerged in the 1970s when social historians looked to preserve the agency of ordinary people’s history in the face of globalisation and information-age capitalism. They sought to understand the relationship between everyday people, their lifestyles and their actions in the context of and against the bigger institutions and processes in life.67 Microhistory, according to Ludmilla Jordanova, investigates small-scale history rather than histoire totale.68 She asserts that it focuses on the qualitative experiences of ordinary people: “The life and survival of those who have remained largely anonymous in history”.69 As István Szijártó argues, microhistory can make history interesting and accessible to the wider public because it gets closer to lived experience.

He identifies four characteristics that give microhistory its advantage. First, it has appeal because it is readable, thus making it enjoyable for a wider audience. A single case study can be engaging and intimate in relating one’s experiences.70 Second, it is the microscopic facts that lend themselves to an appearance of reality by allowing the researcher to get closer to the subject and to bring a sense of authenticity to the readership. Third, lived experience has several contexts that operate simultaneously and good researchers can investigate all of these to give readers a direct sense of the diversity and complexity of everyday life. And finally, the focus can reach far to investigate different aspects of one’s life, as in Szijártó’s anology of a tree that can extend its roots through the soils below the surface of the earth.71 Microhistory is the methodology that I employ to explore closely, my family’s lives and the many contexts of those lives. However, in recovering and relating those details, I am conscious of my own Aboriginality. Being Aboriginal defined my family’s identity and history, including even that of my Spanish father who upon marrying my mother was incorporated in our Nigena family culture. Further, my Aboriginality is the lens

67 David Boje, Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research, London, SAGE, 2001, p.53. 68 Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006. 69 Szijártó, 'Four Arguments for Microhistory', p.209. 70 Brad S Gregory, 'Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the history of everyday life', History and Theory: Studies in the philosophy of History, vol. 38, no. 1, 1999, pp.100-110. 71 Szijártó, 'Four Arguments for Microhistory', p.210.

29 which shapes my own critical outlook and thought, as it influences the way in which I engage with the scholarship and the way I analyse my family history. Thus this thesis fundamentally, if not explicitly, is informed by Indigenous standpoint theory.

Indigenous Standpoint Theory In this study I draw on the work of indigenous theorists like Martin Nakata and Aileen Moreton-Robinson.72 In their work each of these writers use indigenous standpoint theory, which is a postmodern approach to understanding that people ‘see’ society from a position shaped by a person's specific life experiences. Indigenous standpoint theory draws on 1970s feminist standpoint theory, in which feminists argued that their knowledge, indeed their worldview, came from their experience of being women.73 ‘Standpoint’ can be thought as a vantage point with many viewing platforms, such as culture, sexuality, economic status and gender from which a ‘knower’ or observer can explain their worldview.74

Nakata is a Torres Strait Islander academic who advances indigenous standpoint theory as a concept through which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars can disentangle themselves from the web of knowledges in which they live.75 He explains it thus: “A means to see my position in a particular relation with others, to maintain myself with knowledge of how I am being positioned, and to defend a position if I have to”.76 He argues that while, as indigenous scholars, we cannot escape dominant cultures, we can better articulate our indigenous perspectives by using standpoint theory. Moreton-Robinson engages with Aboriginal and feminist standpoint theory in

72 Martin Nakata, Disciplining the savages: savaging the disciplines, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007; Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 'The White Man's Burden: Patriarchal White Epistemic Violence and Aboriginal Women's Knowledges within the Academy', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 26, no. 70, 2011, pp.413-431; see Dawn Bessarab & Bridget Ng’andu, 'Yarning About Yarning as a Legitimate Method in Indigenous Research', International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2010, pp.37-50; Tony Birch, 'The invisible fire: Indigenous sovereignty, history and responsibility', in Aileen Moreton-Robinson, (ed.), Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2007; Irene Watson, 'Settled and unsettled spaces: are we free to roam?', in Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (ed.), Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2007. 73 Gaile Pohlhaus, 'Knowing communities: an investigation of Harding's standpoint epistemology', Social Epistemology, vol. 16, no. 3, 2002, pp.283-293; Sandra Harding (ed.), The feminist standpoint theory reader: intellectual and political controversies, New York, Routledge, 2004. 74 Gaile Pohlhaus, ‘Knowing communities’, pp.283-293. 75 Nakata, Disciplining the savages: savaging the disciplines, p.213. 76 Nakata, pp.215-216.

30 her work to critique the way in which dominant patriarchal conceptual frameworks produce knowledge. She contends that standpoint theory provides a space, a marginal space, from which Aboriginal women can develop the necessary conceptual tools to articulate their viewpoints:

[m]arginality has been the creative space for developing the conceptual tools required to expose the social situatedness of knowledge production and the different realities that are produced and experienced . . . Our Aboriginal axiology (way of doing), ontology (way of being) and epistemology (way of knowing) shape the knowledge production work that we do within the academy.77

Nakata in his analysis identifies three principles that underlie standpoint theory relevant to the production of indigenous knowledges. First, he asserts, it generates indigenous knowledges in contested spaces; second, it affords agency to indigenous peoples; and third, it recognises the tensions that exist between indigenous and non- indigenous accounts.78 Indigenous standpoint theory also means that the researcher should take seriously society’s social diversity. It is a further reason why I choose to be influenced by these scholars to explain my parents’ marginalised position.

Importantly, indigenous standpoint theories show that marginalised viewpoints can provide a basis for alternative knowledge.79 As discussed earlier, being marginalised fundamentally means to be excluded. For instance, some theorists argue that groups who are marginalised are not allowed a voice in decisions or actions that affect their lives, further re-enforcing their marginality. On the other hand, these indigenous theorists believe their marginalisation gives them the ability to see the world with a new clarity and to develop new perspectives.80

77 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘The White Man's Burden’, pp.413-431. 78 Martin Nakata, Disciplining the savages, p.217; see Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: research and Indigenous peoples, Dunedin, NZ, University of Otago Press, 2001. 79 Marianne Winther Jorgensen, 'The Terms of Debate: The Negotiation of the Legitimacy of a Marginalised Perspective', Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, vol. 24, no. 4, 2010, p.327. 80 Nancy Arden McHugh, Feminist Philosophies A-Z, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007; see Kalwant Bhopal, 'Gender, identity and experience: researching marginalised groups', Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 33, no. 3, 2010, pp.188-195; see Pat Dudgeon & John Fielder, ‘Third Spaces within Tertiary Places: Indigenous Australian Studies’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, no. 16, 2006, pp.396–409.

31 One does not have to be marginalised to engage with standpoint theories. Men can be feminists and non-Aboriginal academics can critique western imperialism. It is not my intention to favour Aboriginal ways of knowing over western ways. Nor do I mean to engage with social theories that fail to recognise my parents’ generation’s capacity to shape their lives. It is not my intention either, to construct an Aboriginal and a non-Aboriginal culture and to suggest that one more valuable than the other. Thus, I must choose my words thoughtfully. To ameliorate my parents’ and their contemporaries’ existence as marginalised peoples I view their world from Aboriginal perspectives to afford them their rightful place in history.

Chapter Outlines Chapter 1 provides a historical background that explains where the West Kimberley is, who its people are and who Nigena people are. Addressed are several topics which together make up the context for the lives of my parents. The themes depict the region’s peoples and the landscape, while unraveling the social history. I discuss assimilation, the dominant postwar Government program relating to both indigenous and migrant peoples which profoundly shaped Katie and Frank Rodriguez’s lives. Interracial relationships as an overriding theme of the thesis.

Chapter 2 gives context to who Katie Fraser & Frank Rodriguez were. It brings to life Katie’s grandparents who lost their children to mission institutions under the newly enacted Aborigines Act 1905 (WA); and it discusses her family’s lives on missions at Beagle Bay and Drysdale River. Both Katie and Frank had been Catholic novitiates, she as a nun at Beagle Bay and he as a monk at Benedictine monasteries in Samos in Spain and at New Norcia. Katie’s ancestry is bound up in both the effects of colonisation on Australia’s indigenous peoples and the policies of child removal in the early twentieth century. Frank on the other hand, as a child of Spanish rural culture had his future shaped in part by Catholicism and in part by the politics of the Spanish civil war.

Chapter 3 traces Katie and Frank’s lives from when they first met in 1946 at Liveringa Station across the early years of their marriage to 1953. Investigated is how their interracial relationship was affected by partisan structures during this phase of their lives. The chapter links my parents’ history to the policy of assimilation that

32 restricted them, from their different positions, from owning land. I explore the way in which Catholicism shaped their relationship and how marginalised peoples worked for pastoralists who pursued economic gain, albeit in the context of a social order predicated on racial hierarchy.

Chapter 4 focuses on the way in which Katie and Frank established their small property that they named, Debesa. It explores the relationship they and their children had with relatives by drawing on their youthful recollections that demonstrate strong, kinsfolk solidarity. The extended Fraser family’s attitude and loyalty had had its grounding in the closeness of inmates on the missions. Fulgentius and Phillipena Fraser feature prominently in this chapter, emphasising the way in which their families were drawn to Nigena country, while embracing Catholicism and supporting Katie and Frank.

Chapter 5 revolves around the Rodriguez family’s fundamentally sheltered existence on Debesa during the 1960s. From marginalised backgrounds with no financial backing Katie and Frank were able to progress a small pastoral lease. It discusses the involvement of Frank’s partner Horry Miller, a prominent Western Australian aviator, who offered financial backing while Frank lived at and managed Debesa and Miller’s family company “Miller Investments” controlled the finances.

Chapter 6 concludes the narratives drawn on for this thesis, as it goes beyond Debesa after Katie and Frank had been forced to leave, to the township of Derby. Key moments in their lives highlight the social history of Derby from the 1970s and I investigate some aspects of the town's interracial culture. There, they began a more sedentary lifestyle brought on in part, by Katie’s ill health. My parents’ respective heritages Nigena and Galician had long become ordinary within the extended family and local community and they experienced no associated issues. My parents were in their early 50s in 1969 when they moved into a State Housing Commission (SHC) house allocated to them in Rowan Street, where they settled into a mundane routine.

Conclusion As I worked on this study, my ancestors began to emerge in life-like way and I began to ‘know’ my great-grandparents who had passed away almost twenty years before I

33 was born. It had become obvious that I had to give them a voice too, in a bid to unravel my Aboriginal Australian family’s past. I did this by using oral histories and other primary sources to research and discuss their lives on missions, pastoral leases and towns, in the context of my parents’ forty-eight year marriage. The past can speak to the now and I began to bring my ancestors into the present.81 No longer are they banished to the past and forgotten.

As an Aboriginal writer, my ethical historical practice is informed by the way in which Australia was colonised. A land that was invaded, then stolen from my ancestors, and where my grandparents were stolen from their families, a theft that leaves a ‘stench of the past’ in the present.82 To bring the past of my Aboriginal kin into the present I explore the way in which three generations of the Fraser family before me experienced life. I cannot bring justice to my family who were affected by past discriminatory policies but in the words of historian Tom Griffiths: “I can shake the living from their moral lethargy to change the things in the present that are the consequences of the past.”83 I want to give my ancestors the historical agency they deserve.84 It is not my intention to try and lay their past to rest, when clearly it is still restless. I discuss how my family still deals with this restlessness when I talk about the way in which my granny, Phillipena Melycan was stolen from her mother, and later, when my father was forced to relinquish his share of Debesa Station into the hands of the man who held only a third share of their pastoral lease.

I have long deliberated how I would go about writing a thesis from my position as an Aboriginal postgraduate scholar. I am the first in my immediate family to ever study at a university level and indeed I am one of few in my extended family’s generation to ever complete a university degree. When opportunities for Aboriginal people to take up higher education were offered under government policies in the early 1970s in an attempt to bring equity to the broader community, I waited nearly twenty years until 1989, when I successfully gained entry to university. I was 36 when I commenced as

81 Rachel Morley, 'Fighting Feeling: Re-thinking Biographical Praxis', Life Writing, vol. 9, no. 1, 2012, pp.90-91. 82 Klaus Neumann, 'The stench of the past: Revisionism in Pacific Islands and Australian history', Contemporary Pacific, Spring, no. 10, 1, 1998, p.54. 83 Tom Griffiths, History and the Creative Imagination, [in the] Inaugural Greg Dening Annual Lecture, ‘History in Practice’, University of Melbourne, 2008. 84 Neumann, 'The stench of the past’, p.44.

34 an external undergraduate while living at Marble Bar, and a time when I did not even know what it meant to study at university.

As a postgraduate scholar what could I expect and what would be expected of me from my supervisors, my peers and my family? Would my family understand the enormity of what I was undertaking? Given that my aim was to write a social history of my parents and extended family and so illuminate the lives of marginalised peoples from the Fitzroy Valley region, how should I represent the people I will write about as

I move between two positions, the personal and the scholar?85 What voice should I adopt? And conversely, would I be working with academics who conceive Aboriginal people as being reliant on them to achieve a university degree?86 These thoughts had occupied my mind from the time I started my research and it is why I resolved to investigate the work of scholars who felt similarly uneasy. Pnina Moyzaf- Haller an Israeli anthropologist for her PhD thesis in 1985, dealt with similar uncertainties when she undertook to study the people in central Botswana. Moyzaf- Haller, to help resolve her uncertainty, drew on the philosophy of historian Epeli Hau’ofa, who claimed:

We who are fortunate [must] construct our pasts and present in our own way. We cannot continue to rely on others to do it for us because autonomy cannot be attained through dependence.87

To construct my family’s past in my ‘own way’, I set about exploring the scholarship of avant-garde indigenous theorists to expand my understanding of and explain

85 Pnina Moyzafi-Haller, 'Writing Birthright: On Anthropologists and the Politics of Representation', in Deborah Reed-Danahay (ed.), Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Berg, Oxford, 1997, p.196. 86 Michele Grossman, Entangled Subjects: Indigenous / Australian Cross-Cultures of Talk, Text, and Modernity, New York, Rodopi, 2013, p.xvii. 87 Pnina Moyzafi-Haller, ‘Writing Birthright’, p.198; see Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 'Towards an Australian Indigenous Women's Standpoint Theory', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 28, no. 78, 2013, pp.331-347; Audra Simpson & Andrea Smith, (ed.) Theorizing Native Studies, London, UK, Duke University Press, 2014, pp.2-30; I. Abu-Saad, 'Where Inquiry Ends: The Peer Review Process and Indigenous Standpoints', American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 51, no. 12, 2008; L. I Rigney, 'Internationalisation of an Indigenous Anticolonial Cultural Critique of Research Methodologies: A guide to Indiginist Research Methodology and its Principles', Wicazo Sa Review. Emergent Ideas in Native American Studies vol. 14, no. 2 Autumn, 1999, pp.109-121.

35 Aboriginal perspectives.88 I have used Indigenous standpoint theory as a basis from which I investigate and write a social history in my Nigena country.

88 Martin Nakata, Disciplining the savages; Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 'Whiteness, epistemology and Indigenous representation', in Aileen Moreton-Robinson (ed.), Whitening Race: essays in social and cultural criticism, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005; Linda Smith Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies.

36 Chapter 1 Historical Background

Growing up in the West Kimberley I knew very little about the region beyond the places where my immediate family lived. I knew the tracks, the windmill sites and the paddocks around Debesa, the that was our home, 100 kms east of Derby. I enjoyed the bush foods, the smell of lanolin in the sheep’s wool and I knew the well-travelled gravel main road that connected the property to Derby. Sitting with my three siblings in the back of the Land Rover utility as Frank drove towards the station with Katie alongside him, I knew the trees and the shrubs that landmarked our position, and I could sense the distance to the next bend in the road, nearer to our ‘place’. I knew the country around the Fitzroy River floodplains where Liveringa Station, Willumbah and Camballin homesteads were situated, close to Debesa. And I knew my extended family. But there is so much more to identify with in the far reaches of the Kimberley. In this chapter I explore those seemingly distant cultural and physical landscapes beyond my childhood sphere to convey a sense of where the West Kimberley is, who the people are that have always belonged there and how they have been affected by colonisation. I discuss the region by gleaning relevant scholarship and I explain who Nigena people are. My chosen themes for this study will give context to West Kimberley peoples and landscapes. They provide a structure to advance an understanding of the social history of the place where my parents lived and what shaped their lives.

The West Kimberley and its peoples The West Kimberley Shire covers an area of 118,560 square kilometres 2,400 kms north of Perth. It includes the townships of Derby, Camballin and Fitzroy Crossing and it is home to multiple Aboriginal communities. The Kimberley is where twenty- eight Indigenous ‘countries’ have been fixed for thousands of years and where today approximately 274 permanent and seasonal Aboriginal remote communities exist.1 The countries relevant to this study include Nigena (Nyikina), Mangala, Walmatjarri, Bunuba (Punuba), Warwa, Worara, Ngarinyin and Wunambal.

1 Dept of Aboriginal Affairs, Remote Communities Facts, http://www.daa.wa.gov.au/en/Remote-Communities-Reform/Questions-and-Answers/ accessed 15/05/2015.

37

Wyndham Derby Nigena (Nyikina) country Broome

2 Figure 3. Aboriginal Language Map

The term ‘countries’ in this context refers to the distinct lands that Aboriginal people across Australia occupied at the time of contact. Today, Aboriginal countries are sometimes referred to as language groups. Not unlike European countries people belonged to their own part of the continent, speaking their own languages and embracing local kinship patterns and mores. Most were hunter-gatherers who lived nomadic lifestyles, but others lived settled lives close to permanent sources of food. At the time of colonisation there were approximately 700 languages spoken throughout Australia and, according to the Australian Museum, an estimated population of 750,000 people.3

2 David R Horton, Indigenous Language Map, http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/map Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS & Auslig/Sinclair, Knight, Merz, 1996. 3 Australian Museum, ‘Introduction to Indigenous Australia’, 2014, http://australianmuseum.net.au/indigenous-australia-introduction, (accessed 18/02/2015).

38 Aboriginal ‘communities’ on the other hand, are ‘modern’ essentially administrative units that have evolved since the arrival of Europeans, constructed by governments and missions, some with service providers like a nursing outpost and police. These communities are best described as ‘permanent’ or ‘seasonal’. They are usually selected areas located on the fringes of urban developments or in remote localities and may receive either or both municipal and mainstream essential services. Most recognised communities are characterised by a governing council of Aboriginal people and/or are affiliated with an Aboriginal resource agency.4 Debesa never hosted an Aboriginal community because stock workers were transient and were only ever there during the mustering season. Consequently, it a place where people never formed a community.

Nigena Katie and Frank Rodriguez lived all of their married life on Nigena country. It is where they met, married and where all of their children were born. It is where the Fraser family’s Aboriginal heritage originates. It is country in which both my maternal grandparents, Fulgentius Fraser and Phillipena Melycan, were born, and it is where three of the Frasers’ five surviving children and many of their descendants continue to live today.5

Nigena has several spellings and in respect to my ancestors, and because it is the only pronunciation we ever knew, I opt to use the spelling Nigena that best reflects the way we had always pronounced our Aboriginality. Anthropologists and linguists had spelt the term phonetically as Nigena, Njigina, , and Njigana.6 More recently,

4 Tony Veale, Aboriginal Communities - Kimberley, Dept of Indigenous Affairs, Perth, email, 2013. 5 Discussed in Chp.2 6 A Capell, 'Australia Social Anthropology: Notes of the Njigina and Warwa Tribes, N. W. Australia', Mankind, vol. 4, no. 11, 1953, pp.450-469; see Erich Kolig, 'Government Policies and Religious Strategies: Fighting with Myth at Noonkanbah [online].', in Michael Carlton Howard & Robert Tonkinson (ed.), Going It Alone?: Prospects for Aboriginal Autonomy, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1990, pp.240 & 243; B Stokes, A description of Nyigina: a language of the West Kimberley, Western Australia, Australian National University, 1982; N.F. Kerr, Preliminary report on Nyigina, Perth, WA, Battye Library, 1969. According to the Nyikina dictionary, 20 ‘sounds’ are represented in the ‘Lower Nyikina’ language. They are a b d I j k l ly m n ng ny oo r rd rl rr rn w y. ‘g’ is apparently is not a sound. see Colleen Hattersley (ed.), Nyikina Birr Nganka: The source of Nyikina Language with reference to Lower Nyikina, Madjulla Inc, Brisbane, QLD, Harry's Collar, 2014. Katie’s sisters, Edna and Leena Fraser, choose different phonetic spellings to one another, yet both signify the same pronunciation. Edna Fraser (whose spelling I have opted for, given she is the older of the

39 Steve Hawke in the documentary ‘Noonkanbah’ used the spelling Nyigina in keeping with a Walmatjari language spelling system developed by linguists Eirlys Richards and Joyce Hudson.7 Today, the official orthographical spelling is ‘Nyikina’ that I argue encourages a mispronunciation of Nigena.8

Nigena country’s permeable boundary extends over pastoral leases in the West Kimberley from the Fitzroy River near Noonkanbah Aboriginal Community west of the township of Fitzroy Crossing, north to the Oscar Ranges, then west capturing Derby and southward to Dampier Downs Station that lies northeast of Broome. It comprises two sections, ‘Lower Nigena’ (or ‘Small Nigena’) in which this study is set and ‘Upper Nigena’ where Noonkanbah is situated.9 Nigena people are yimardoowarra, meaning ‘belonging to the river country’.

The Kimberley region is abundant with food sources. The rivers and their tributaries offer a plenitude of fish and it is home to myriads of birds; and there is an ample range of bush medicines and foods (as described in Chapters 4 and 5).10 As with several Indigenous countries throughout Australia, Nigena has a six seasons’ calendar engendered through nature. The six seasons (as opposed to four in Western cultures) are spread across the ‘wet’ and the ‘dry’ months and are characterised by the availability of different foods, by animal conception and birthing times.11 Nigena seasons have been documented and published, while other groups’ seasonal calendars are also featured on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website (BoM).12

two) uses Nigena; while Leena Fraser uses Nygenna. Moreover, Edna’s preferred spelling is documented in: Laurent Dousset; 'AusAnthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal database: research, resources and documentation', Njikena, u/d, http://www.ausanthrop.net/resources/ausanthrop_db/aiatsis.php?search_id=K.03, (accessed 21/12/2014). 7 Stephen Hawke & Michael Gallagher, Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989. pp.341-343. 8 Colleen Hattersley (ed.), Nyikina Birr Nganka. 9 Colleen Hattersley (ed.). 10 Annie Milgin, John Dadakar Watson, and Liz Thompson, Living with the land: and Medicine of the Nyikina, Sydney, NSW, Pearson Library, 2009; see D Shilling, 'The birds of Upper Liveringa Station, Western Australia', Emu, vol. 48, no. 1, 1948, pp.64-72; David L Morgan, 'Fish fauna of the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia: including Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Ngarinyin, Nyikina and Walmajarri Aboriginal names', Records of the Western Australian Museum, vol. 22, no. 22, 2004, pp.141-167. 11 Milgin, Watson, and Thompson, pp.8-11. 12 Bureau of Meteorology, ‘Indigenous Weather Knowledge’, 2014, http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/?ref=ftr, (accessed 31/12/2014).

40

Nigena religious traditions, unlike Christianity’s invisible God and man-made symbolic structures, see the sacred in the landscape through its natural topographies: the river, the floodplains and the hills.13 Official ritualistic time that occurs during the ‘wet’ once coincided with the pastoral stations’ ‘lay off season’, when it was too hot and wet to work with stock. The break in work commitments suited white managers and Aboriginal workers. Station managers with their families returned to the south over the Christian Christmas holiday period, while Nigena people walked long distances to ceremonial grounds on country. Cultural law ceremonies were held at revered sites on leases that included Noonkanbah, , Mt Anderson and Liveringa. Today, Nigena culture survives through stories, ceremonies, songs and dances. While customary business rituals continue to be practised on country during the ‘wet’ Nigena people also participate during the ‘dry’ in combined festivals, events and projects with thirty other Kimberley groups. Based on the concept of self- determination, projects are supported and coordinated by the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC) based in Fitzroy Crossing.14

The Nigena language (or dialect) is attached to the Nyulnyulan (language) family that comprises five dialects including , Yawuru, Nyulnyul and Bardi in the West Kimberley. Both ‘Lower’ and ‘Upper Nigena’ speak their own dialects.15 The ‘Lower Nigena’ language is being restored, documented and preserved under the guidance of Nigena woman Anne Poelina, who drew together local people to workshop, produce and publish an updated dictionary (supported with a language

13 Hawke & Gallagher, Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989; see Vine Deloria Jnr, 'Thinking in Time and Space', in God is Red: A Native View of Religion, Golden, Colorado, Fulcrum Publishing, 1992, p.67; Helmut Petri & Gisela Petri- Odermann, A Nativistic and Millenarian Movement in North West Australia, Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, Adelaide, SA, Flinders University of South Australia, 1988. 14 “KALACC encourages the participation of these groups in song, story and dance, as they keep their culture strong through sharing their knowledge with people through performance and through cultural practices. KALACC has strong organizational links with the Kimberley Land Council and with the Kimberley Language Resource Centre. KALACC has published a major work titled New Legend, a Story of Law and Culture and the Fight for Self Determination in the Kimberley“. Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, KALACC, 2014, http://www.kalacc.org.au/ (accessed 31/12/2014). 15 Colleen Hattersley, Nyikina Birr Nganka, pp.ii&2. Lucy Marshall refers these dialects as ‘Heavy Nigena’ and ‘Light Nigena’.

41 DVD) that had been in draft form since the 1990s.16 Furthermore in 2014, after twenty years since first submitting an application to the National Native Title Tribunal, Nigena land claimants together with Mangala (whose country borders Nigena to the south) had a determination handed down by Federal Court Judge, John Gilmour, on the banks of the Fitzroy River at Lanji Lanji near Derby. Prior to and since the determination the claimants have endeavoured to establish sustainable economic initiatives so as to remain on their traditional lands and to take care of their homeland and sacred places.17

Aboriginal people in the pastoral industry Long before pastoralism intruded into the Kimberley, Aboriginal peoples had occupied the region that was considered by Europeans as rugged and inhospitable, both in terms of climate and terrain.18 Explorer Alexander Forrest, the younger brother of Western Australia’s first Premier Sir John Forrest, changed that perspective when he promoted the central Kimberley and Fitzroy River regions during the late 1870s as being ideal for pastoralism, resulting in a ‘land rush’ for suitable properties.19 Additionally, his reporting of land similar to the gold bearing country around Pine Creek in the Northern Territory led to the first and only short-lived gold rush in the Kimberley, from 1886 to 1889.20

The impact of Forrest’s reports about pastoralism was immediate and moves to establish leases followed. Influential people, like the Forrests, snapped up leases along the lower Fitzroy River valley front where they established sheep stations. In the East Kimberley pastoralists from the eastern colonies established cattle stations,

16 Anne Poelina, Fitzroy River valley: Lifeblood of the Lower Fitzroy Valley, u/d, http://www.mardoowarra.com.au/ (accessed 30/12/2014); see G Johnston, B Stokes, & L Marshall, First Nyikina Dictionary - Draft, Fitzory Crossing, WA, Kimberley Language Resource Centre, 2000, vol. Draft. 17 Ben Collins, 'Native title on the Kimberley's Fitzroy River - in pictures', http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/05/30/4015731.htm 30/05/2014; see Jim Anderson, 'Camballin: A West Kimberley Development Conundrum [online]', Early Days: Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 4, 2004, p.386. 18 Simon Ryan, The cartographic eye: how explorers saw Australia, Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press, 1996. 19 Geoffrey Curgenven Bolton, 'The Emanuels of Noonkanbah and GoGo', Early days vol. 8, no. Part 4, 1980, pp.5-21. 20 G C Bolton, Explorer and Surveyor: Alexander Forrest: His Life and Times, The Griffin Press, Adelaide, SA, Melbourne University Press in conjunction with the University of Western Australia Press, 1958, p.32; see Chris Owen, 'The police appear to be a useless lot up there: law and order in the East Kimberley 1884–1905', Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, p.106.

42 while in the West Kimberley Perth-based interests took up the leases. The Nigena homeland that fronts the Fitzroy River and expands across the fertile floodplains was one of the last areas in Western Australia to be appropriated for pastoralism.21

By the late 1890s however, the industry began to grow. In the East Kimberley Francis Connor, Denis Doherty and Michael and joined together to form a pastoral company, and with Alexander Forrest and Isadore Emanuel in the West Kimberley they became the beef producing empires of Western Australia.22 Pastoralists soon moved into colonial politics, with Connor and Forrest particularly, becoming powerful figures. Once ensconced in the Legislative Council they ruthlessly pursued their interests and the interests of the industry as a whole passing legislation to regulate Aboriginal employment in their favour, to criminalise and punish Aboriginal cattle killing with ever increasing severity and insisting that the Government provide policing to protect their properties.23

From the time of contact until the early 1970s many Aboriginal peoples lived on stations where they became pillars of the pastoral industry.24 In 1829 when Western Australia’s Swan River colony was founded the Aboriginal population in the Kimberley is estimated to have been approximately 9,700 according to Peter Biskup (writing in 1973), with approximately 55,000 living in the colony.25 Revised figures, according to the Australian Bureau Statistics, estimate a minimum Aboriginal population in Western Australian at the time of colonisation of 300,000.26

21 Anne Poelina, Action Research to Build the Capacity of Nyikina Indigenous Australians, PhD Thesis, University of New England, 2009, p.58, https://e- publications.une.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/une:2648 (accessed 11/10/2012). 22 Owen, 'The police appear to be a useless lot up there’, pp.106-108. 23 Owen, p.111. 24 Early accounts of pastoralism in the region have been documented by Geoffrey Bolton in Shire of Derby, ‘Our Community’, West Kimberley, 2011, http://www.sdwk.wa.gov.au/community/aboutourcommunity.html, (06/07/2015); G C Bolton, The Kimberley pastoral industry, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1954; Geoffrey Curgenven Bolton, Alexander Forrest: his life and times, Melbourne, VIC, Melbourne University Press in association with the University of Western Australia Press, 1958; see Mary Ann Jebb, Emerarra: A Man of Merarra / Morndi Munro Talks with Daisy Angajit [Et Al.], Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1996; Howard Pedersen & Banjo Woorunmurra, Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1995. 25 Peter Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens: The Aboriginal Problem in Western Australia 1898-1954, Angus and Robertson, London, St Lucia: Press, 1973, p.1. 26 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Statistics of the Indigenous peoples of Australia’,

43

The arrival of European ‘settlers’ and the dilemmas Aboriginal peoples in the far north experienced as they confronted the invaders who were intent on taking their land, is well recorded. Forced now to compete with European stock for water, facing competition between stock and their normal food resources and finding themselves excluded from their land, they found that to survive they had to take the invaders’ stock for food. Prior to the arrival of police in the area, pastoralists in the Kimberley, took the law into their own hands. Distant from authorities in faraway Perth and often feeling fear for their lives, they took to killing Aboriginal people as a method of control. They called it ‘bush justice’.27

By the 1880s police were introduced into the Kimberley, not only to protect pastoralists and their properties from Aboriginal people but also to protect Aboriginal people from the violence of the ‘settlers’. Indeed in many places police were caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to protect either party. But pastoralists created many of the difficulties police faced, quite deliberately:

A ‘conspiracy of silence’ [that] characterised frontier relations, meaning no man would incriminate another for activities involving violence against Aboriginal people, and they certainly would not record the event. Another pioneer put the Kimberley ‘bush- man’s code of honour’ regarding punitive expeditions in these terms: ‘Either stand in with the mob and keep your mouth shut or refuse to stand in and also keep your mouth shut. In either case you will be respected and no more will be required of you . . .’ One police officer referred to a ‘sort of Freemasonry’ which existed among the colonists. He reported that ‘it was impossible to get written statements from them’, and that ‘they might as well leave the district at once if they gave a white man away’.28

With limited finances the government was unable to adequately resource policing until later in the 1890s after the Jandamarra episode, when the colonial government introduced new forms of military policing with the apparent intention of wiping out what it perceived to be as a very real threat to the pastoral industry. Chris Owen argues that while not directly sanctioning violence against Aboriginal lawbreakers by http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/8dc4551204 2c8c00ca2569de002139be!OpenDocument, 2015. 27 Owen, ‘The police appear to be a useless lot up there’, p.106. 28 Owen, pp.125-126; see Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare, p.73.

44 the police, the Western Australian government tolerated it, deeming it necessary to open up the Kimberley.29

Mary Ann Jebb discovered that frontier violence was still prevalent in the early part of the twentieth century.30 In the northern Kimberley, missionaries tried to ameliorate it by setting up missions at Forrest River 1888 (abandoned in 1889 and re-established in 1913) and with more success at Sunday Island near Derby in 1889. With little or no protection from the violence Aboriginal people’s welfare became the responsibility of missionaries and government officials following a survey into the administration of Aboriginal people in Western Australia in 1904 by Dr. W. E. Roth. The ‘Roth Report’ became the basis for the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) (discussed elsewhere in this chapter).31

In an attempt to combat the ongoing killing of stock during this era, the government moved away from what was proving to be an expensive exercise by imprisoning people in places like Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth and set up feeding and hunting reserves. By 1921 over 8,000,000 hectares had been set aside for the ‘use and benefit’ of Aboriginal people in Western Australia. In reality, the reserves were never set up in their best interests. For instance, in what was seen as a duty to WWI veterans, some reserved land in the southwest was offered for selection to returned servicemen, while miners and prospectors could apply to the Mines Department for prospecting licences over any of the reserved land.32 In the most successful example of reserved land for Aboriginals, however, twenty-eight well-stocked pastoral leases in the East Kimberley totalling over 400,000-hectares close to Halls Creek, were resumed in 1910. The government-owned lease was named “” (meaning ‘plenty tucker’) where Aboriginal people agreed to ‘sit down’ and discontinue killing stock. The strategy was successful to the extent that ‘illegal’ stock killing ceased and there were fewer imprisonments. Moola Bulla, nonetheless, was never ‘home’ even

29 Owen, pp.109-112; see Pedersen & Woorunmurra, Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance. 30 Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare, p.74 & pp.103-135. 31 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, pp.59-65. According to Biskup, the 1905 Act remained the cornerstone of Aboriginal administration until 1936 when the Native Administration Act gave unprecedented powers to government, over the lives of WA’s Aboriginals. p.170. 32 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.105.

45 to local people and they refused to remain there permanently. Groups of people came and went.33 In 1955 the station was sold to a Queensland interest.

As Aboriginal people’s lives were severely disturbed and their social and cultural beliefs ignored, pastoralists began using them as unpaid labour. Those not moved off pastoral stations to missions and reserves were controlled under a system of ‘colonial governance’ where they camped near homesteads and received rations, so becoming a readily available pool of labour. According to Anne Scrimgeour, rationing on pastoral properties was ‘outsourced’ to stations as an inexpensive way to contain Aboriginal peoples despite, she claims, it being the original role of police officers, government officials and church missions.34 Full-descent people on these stations lived in very basic conditions, while the mixed-descent and white station-hands received wages and accommodation.

As the Kimberley frontier expanded the value of Aboriginal labour became obvious to pastoralists and they became indispensible assets in the pastoral industry, remaining so well into the 1970s. Until the arrival of welfare, equal wages and technological advances in station machinery and mustering practices, they remained the backbone of the industry. At the same time, and based on conversations they have had with Aboriginal people in the industry, some historians suggest that stockmen and women saw their role on stations as a way to survive during the invasion of their homelands, and it may even have improved their living arrangements.35 Stock workers, who remained on their countries while living on pastoral stations continued to hunt and gather bush foods and, as far as was practicable, maintained their religious customs. My parents supported their workers when they came work on Debesa, and they never expected anyone to forego ceremonial commitments. As children, we learned from our Aboriginal countrymen about bush foods and my brothers spent time learning to do stock work as discussed in Chapter 5. Nevertheless Scrimgeour argues, Aboriginal

33 Biskup, pp.101-106; see Hilary Rumley & Sandy Toussaint, 'For their own benefit?: A critical overview of Aboriginal policy and practice at Moola Bulla, East Kimberley, 1910-1955', Aboriginal History, vol. 14, no. 1, 1990, pp.80-103. 34 Anne Scrimgeour, 'We only want our rights and freedom: The Pilbara pastoral workers strike, 1946–1949', History Australia, vol. 11, no. 2, 2014, pp.101-124, p.104. 35 Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1989.

46 people’s access to their country was conditional, and always at the discretion of the pastoralists.36

There was little serious interest in their welfare despite regulations concerning their work being introduced in the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA). Permits to employ Aboriginal people specified the maximum number of workers allowed on a station, but stations were under no obligation to name them. This meant that station owners could deny their existence. For instance, they could claim not to know someone named as their employee when presented with a medical bill.37 The Act left many conditions to the discretion of the issuing Protector who sometimes left this to stations. Generally, this meant supplying ‘clothing, blankets, medicines and medical attendance when practicable and necessary’.38

Oral histories passed down in Nigena country tell of continuing police brutality. John Watson remembers that police in their role as Protectors of Aborigines patrolled the region, ‘removing’ children to missions, and travelled as far as the desert areas to capture people and bring them back to the stations as labourers. Those considered to be troublemakers were sent to prison and sometimes, Watson claimed, the police who he described as the ‘biggest rogues’ killed alleged troublemakers to ‘get rid of them’.39

Steve Hawke argues that it took up to the 1930s, some fifty years after the pastoralists first arrived, before Aboriginal people stopped resisting removal from country and spearing stock and ‘settled down’ permanently in the station camps.40 Station managers became possessive of their workers and they formed mutual agreements not to interfere with each others’ workers. As they had been doing since the 1880s, if a stock worker absconded the police soon returned them to their camp.41 Put simply, to

36 Scrimgeour, ‘We only want our rights and freedom’, p.108. 37 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.107. 38 Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare, p.79. 39 Paul Marshall (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right, Now We Go 'Side the River, Along That Sundown Way: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1988; see Bruce Shaw & Sandy McDonald, 'They did it themselves: Reminiscences of seventy years', Aboriginal History, vol. 2, no. 2, 1978, 122-139. 40 Hawke & Gallagher, Noonkanbah, p.52. 41 Hawke & Gallagher, p.43; see Scrimgeour, ‘We only want our rights and freedom’, p.108; Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare, p.79.

47 the pastoralists Aboriginal peoples were a crucial element of their enterprise cheap and now trouble free work force that lived in the camp at their beck and call.42 Harold Godbehere, the manager at Myroodah Station in the 1930s and 40s, conceded their importance: “In justice let it be said, that we would have been hard put to it indeed to have opened up the country without them”.43

Catholicism arrives in the Kimberley Catholicism has had an intense involvement in the shaping of Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. Along with other Christian pioneers missionaries began to disturb the rhythm of Aboriginal daily life in the late 1800s, as the mission movement became part of the ‘physical and spiritual frontier’ in the Kimberley. The aim of the Catholic Church was to ‘Christianise and civilise’ the Aboriginals while at the same time protecting them from exploitation by pastoralists and pearlers. Indeed Catholicism, as established throughout this thesis, was a significant part of Katie and Frank’s relationship.

The first Catholic apostolic venture to the region began when sixty-three year old Father Duncan McNab arrived at Derby in 1885.44 He had been invited to undertake an exploratory field trip to the northwest by the second Bishop of Perth, Bishop Griver, a Spanish Benedictine.45 McNab had previously worked with Aboriginal people on the east coast in Victoria and in Brisbane where he tried to improve their social conditions. There, he had been concerned about the injustices they experienced. He advocated unsuccessfully on the behalf of Aboriginal peoples to governments in Western Australia and Queensland and he travelled to Rome and Europe to raise awareness about the ‘plight’ of Aboriginal peoples. His mission to the West Kimberley was not successful but, as with most missionaries of his era, he had

42 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.97; Frank Rodriguez, personal communication, 17/05/2003 recalled to me, a time when he was a station hand: “I always had some Aboriginal boys with me. I don’t remember their names because they only came to work for that particular job.”; see Michael Hess, 'Black and Red: The Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike, 1946', Aboriginal History vol. 18, no. 1, 1994, pp.65-83. 43 Harold S Godbehere, Kimberley was God's, Carlisle, WA, Hesperian Press, 2011. 44 Bill Worth, 'Church of The Kimberley – Heroes in Faith: Father Duncan McNab', Kimberley Profile, Issue 2, May 2013. 45 Margaret Zucker, From Patrons to Partners: A History of the Catholic Church in the Kimberley, Fremantle, WA, Uni of Notre Dame Australia Press, 1994, p.16; see Brigida Nailon, The writing on the wall: Father Duncan McNab 1820-1896, Echuca, VIC, Brigidine Sisters, 2004; Mary Durack, The Rock and the Sand, London, The Anchor Press Ltd, 1969.

48 arrived without any formal training or knowledge about local Aboriginal peoples. He is, nonetheless, commended by later Catholic writers for ‘planting the seed’ of Christianity among the Kimberley Aboriginals. According to a writer in the Kimberley Catholic newsletter the Profile, he was remembered for his kindness, sincerity and trust:

[He arrived with] no understanding of the local languages, and no real plan for what came next. But the experience of his work in Queensland assisted him to appreciate the enormity of what lay before him and diminished the culture shock that inevitably accompanied such an apostolate in a remote location. He steadfastly held on to the hope that others would come after him to rescue his work among the peninsula inhabitants and thereafter improve upon it.46

And follow him, they did! French Trappist missionaries laid their imprint in the Kimberley in 1890 at Beagle Bay Mission on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome, but abandoned it ten years later, and were replaced by the German Pallottines. Following the passage of the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) more Christian missions emerged and government supported their involvement by passing the administration of Aboriginal peoples to them.47 Further north, on the very tip of Western Australia, the Benedictines arrived at Drysdale River in 1905 but they struggled for survival as they tried to entice the Kwini to ‘settle’ at the mission. As a consequence, they did not attract government support until 1922 when it was decided that the mission had become viable.48

While Christianising and civilising was the aim for all these missions, different religious groups did things differently. The Pallottines for instance, did not initially interfere with full-descent adults’ customary practices. Their motto was to ‘make haste slowly’ as they attempted to distinguish aspects of Aboriginal religion that would be compatible with Christianity. The anthropologist S. D. Porteus after watching a ceremony at Beagle Bay in the 1930s remarked:

46 Worth, Church of The Kimberley – Heroes in Faith. 47 Anne O'Brien, God's Willing Workers: Women and Religion in Australia, Sydney, NSW, University of NSW Press Ltd, 2005, p.120. 48Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.124.

49 The Brothers of the Mission, sitting in their cheerless monastery and hearing this wild chorus night after night, must sometimes wonder how deep their teachings have gone. Perhaps they are wise to give the night to the blacks. Tomorrow will be a new day, so why wonder? The black helpers in semi-civilised garb will be back at their tasks . . .49

Together with the St John of God Sisters, the Pallottine priests and brothers worked hard to advance their missionary enterprise. Together, they set up several Aboriginal institutions: Beagle Bay and Lombadina on the Dampier Peninsula, La Grange (Bidgedanga) two hundred kilometres south of Broome, and at Balgo on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert over five hundred kilometres to the east. Churches were built on the missions and in Kimberley towns, as were an orphanage, a hostel, a ‘native’ hospital, and a leprosarium. Some of the missions even came to resemble small towns.

The Pallottine’s policy of ‘making haste slowly’ raises many issues. Historians have debated whether or how Indigenous peoples around the world accepted Christianity and the way in which they continued to use their own customs and beliefs. Peggy Brock investigated the interaction between Indigenous lore and Christianity in Australia (and abroad) and she argues that Aboriginal people did not readily or quickly accept Christianity and that any adaptation to it was slow to develop. Spiritual change within Indigenous societies, she argues, could only have become embedded in a community once it had meaning. Missionaries, of course, persisted with Christianity in different ways, intending that it would ultimately take hold, and it did, but often in unexpected ways as mission peoples accommodated Christianity to their existing belief systems rather than adopting it wholesale.50 Terence Ranger too, an historian of African Indigenous religions, argues that Australia’s Indigenous peoples, Native Americans and others incorporated Christianity into their own Indigenous belief systems. Today, many Aboriginal people’s worldviews and spirituality are interconnected with Christianity as they look to their landscape

49 S. D. Porteus cited in Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, pp.126-127. 50 Peggy Brock, Setting the Record Straight: New Christians and Mission Christianity, Leiden, The Netherlands, Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP, 2005, vol. 31.

50 traditions to explain their understanding of Christianity. In turn, they draw on their knowledge of Christianity to understand their connection with the landscape.51

In the meantime Beagle Bay Mission developed strongly following an arrangement between the Government and the Church, who according to Christine Choo, colluded under the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) to take children from their families to the mission.52 The first Chief Protector of Aborigines H. C. Prinsep, who had been in the position since 1898 when the Aboriginal Department was established, gained substantial powers over Aboriginal children. He could remove them from their families and place them in the custody of an institution, an industrial school or an orphanage where they were trained as labourers and domestics to fulfil the needs of white people.53 Mixed-descent children in particular were taken from their parents or parent, in most cases a full-descent mother, and placed on missions ‘in order to facilitate assimilation’.54 According to Biskup, parents of full-descent children were ‘asked’ to give their children to the missionaries until they reached sixteen, while mixed-descent children were routinely removed from their parents. The aim of the missionaries, he claims, was to teach the children Western ways through a good balance of work, play and religion.55

Charles F. Gale, who replaced Prinsep in December 1907 as Chief Protector, had no reservations about taking children from their families. He had been made aware by his travelling inspectors that there were ‘numerous half-caste children’ in the Kimberley who, he believed, would be better off on the missions. James Isdell, a travelling inspector, harboured similar beliefs to Gale. He wrote that children of mixed-descent were more intelligent than ‘black’ people, and that their ‘black’ mothers would only suffer briefly after their children were taken and they would soon forget them.56 Isdell’s theory was of course incorrect as evidenced by the case of my

51 Terence Ranger, 'Christianity and the First Peoples: Some Second Thoughts', in Peggy Brock (ed.), Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, Leiden, The Netherlands, Brill Academic Publishers, 2005. 52 Choo, Mission Girls, 2001, pp.14-15. 53 Choo, 'The role of the Catholic missionaries at Beagle Bay in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families in the Kimberley region from the 1890s', 1997, p.6. 54 Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia 1900-1940, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1988. 55 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.126. 56 Biskup, p.126.

51 great grandmother Lucy Muninga (discussed in Chapter 2). Muninga, Phillipena’s mother, was traumatised for the rest of her life after having her child taken from her.

Missions and dispersal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’s belief systems precede Christianity by thousands of years. These are practised according to each region’s laws and continued well into the twentieth century despite the intrusion of Christianity. Aboriginal people around the Kimberley during the frontier era migrated to pastoral properties and inevitably integrated into existing groups with varying degrees of success.57 The willingness of Aboriginal groups to accommodate displaced peoples who had been forced from their traditional lands was a common practice in the north of Western Australia. This section describes some of those movements.

The far northwest of the Kimberley 600 kms from Derby is the homeland of the Worara. With their neighbours the Ngarinyin and Wunambal to the south, this region is the universe of the Wandjina spirits around which their belief system revolves. In local mythology Wandjinas are wet season spirits that influence the landscape formations and its inhabitants.58 The Wandjinas are a symbol of the seasonal rebirth during the ‘wet’ season. They signal the arrival of the monsoons that refreshes the landscape and affects the regeneration of life.59 The Wandjina image that can be found etched on cave walls and rocky outcrops throughout the area resembles a halo- like headdress over a mouth-less face with huge eyes and eyelashes circled with dark rings. Depictions of the Wandjina are widely recognised today, both in Australia and internationally.60

57 Helmut Petri (translated by Ian Campbell), Sterbende welt in Nordwest-Australien. (English: The dying world in Northwest Australia), Carlisle, WA, Hesperian Press, c2011. 58 Kimberley Foundation Australia, ‘Researching, preserving and promoting Kimberley rock art’, 2012, http://www.kimberleyfoundation.org.au/wandjina/, (accessed 06/07/2015); Valda Blundell & Donny Woolagoodja, Keeping the Wanjinas fresh: Sam Woolagoodja and the enduring power of Lalai - Mowanjum Aboriginal Community, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005. 59 Sue O'Connor, Anthony Barham, & Donny Woolagoodja, 'Painting and repainting in the West Kimberley', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 1, 2008, p.34. 60 David Mowljarlai & Cyril Peck, 'Ngarinyin cultural continuity: a project to teach the young people the culture, including the re-painting of Wandjina rock artsites', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2, 1987, pp.71-78.

52 In 1912 the Presbyterians established Port George IV Mission in Worrorra country. Unlike the Catholic missionaries elsewhere in the Kimberley, they had to relocate their mission several times before the government granted them Mowanjum 15 kms southeast of Derby in the mid 1950s. Two years after arriving at Port George IV they renamed the mission “Kunmunya” the Worrorra name for that area.61 In contrast to the Catholic missionaries, the Presbyterians had received ‘special’ training to work with Aboriginal people and it was Robert Wilson, on completion of his training at Mapoon Mission in north Queensland, who became Kunmunya’s first superintendent. Ultimately, however, the Presbyterians’ ambitions to train the local men as stock workers failed. With Kunmunya on the verge of collapse by the mid 1940s the Western Australian government offered the missionaries free of charge Munja Station, which had been a feeding depot in the homelands of Ngarinyin peoples 90 kms south on the Walcott Inlet.62 They suggested to the Presbyterians that the Worrorra could just simply move south. But the Worrorra refused to leave their country to live in a place where their bones could never rest comfortably, leaving the Presbyterians to find more mutual ground. A site was eventually identified between Derby and Kunmunya called “Wotjulum”, meaning ‘a place of living water’, and a mission was built there for all three groups, with the salvaged building materials from

Kunmunya and Munja.

By 1952, after living in scattered settlements between Kunmunya and Munja, the people gradually moved to Wotjulum. At first the three groups were uneasy with each other but they ultimately merged to live as one. Wotjulum however proved to be unsuitable because, it was hemmed in by hills and only accessible by sea. The missionaries had intended it to be a self-supporting and vegetable garden to supply produce to the nearby Iron Ore mine sites at Cockatoo and Koolan Islands in the Yampi Sound, but neither eventuated. The move to Wotjulum therefore meant

61 Visions of Mowanjum: Aboriginal writings from the Kimberley, Battye Library, Adelaide, SA, Rigby, 1980; see Maise McKenzie, The Road to Mowanjum, Melbourne, VIC, Angus & Robertson, 1969, p.126. 62 Mary Anne Jebb, Mowanjum: 50 years community history, Derby, Western Australia, Mowanjum Aboriginal Community and Mowanjum Artists Spirit of the Wandjina Aboriginal Corporation, 2009.

53 that there was no employment for the men and they gradually migrated towards the towns.63

In 1956 the Wotjulum people were relocated yet again, this time to the Presbyterian’s Mowanjum Mission 15 kms south of Derby alongside the town’s airport. By now they were 150 and 600 kms, respectively, from their homelands.64 This would not be their last move. In the 1970s, the Mowanjum people were relocated away from the site because of intended extensions to airport, to a new site 15 kms southeast from Derby on the . (Discussed in Chapter 6.) The ‘shoving’ around of the three clans had a profound impact on them as senior law man David Mowaljarlai lamented: “I am Worrorra [sic] – I am Ngarinyin – I am Wunambal – Once I walked my country – But lost my place – then I lost my dignity – spirit”.65

On the outskirts of Derby at Mowanjum the Worara, Ngarinyin and the Wunambal became the neighbours of Nigena people who became their ‘hosts’. In another example, nearer to the centre of Nigena homelands nestled at the foothills of the Grant Ranges (known as “Looma Hills” to the locals) is the community of “Looma” meaning ‘blue tongue lizard’ in Walmatjari. Here, several groups live on a 6,000- hectare site just west of the Liveringa homestead, that was excised and reserved as the Looma Aboriginal Community in the mid 1970s. It had become the home to predominately Nigena (river people), Walmatjari and Mangala (desert peoples). Some Bunuba people who traditionally inhabit the Leopold Ranges north of Looma in the lower central Kimberley had relocated there too. Some of the Looma residents are people who worked with my family on Liveringa and nearby stations, and some are our extended full-descent relatives.

The Mangala, like our extended family Patsy Yambo who was interviewed for this research, had found their way to Looma. As a small child Patsy and her family after

63 McKenzie, The Road to Mowanjum. 64 McKenzie. 65 Jebb, Mowanjum, pp.7&42; see David Mowaljarlai & Jutta Mainic,Yorro Yorro: everything standing up alive, Broome, WA, Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 1993; C Wainburranga & P Mackinolty, 'Too Many Captain Cooks', in Tony Swain & Deborah Bird Rose (ed.), Aboriginal Australians and Christian missions: ethnographic and historical studies, Adelaide, SA, Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1988; and Phyllis M Kaberry, Aboriginal Woman: Sacred and Profane, Farnborough, Hants, Gregg International, 1970.

54 being nudged from their homelands by the arrival of Europeans, were forced onto Nigena country. Their movement out of the Great Sandy Desert into the Fitzroy River valley country was a gradual process. Several factors contributed to this. A long dry spell during the first half of the 20th century that forced them to move closer to the river; the opening up of the Canning Stock Route that destroyed their water soaks; their forced removal by police patrols; recruitment to work on stations; and a longing to reconnect with family.66 Frances Crawford, in her thesis, The Looma Story, explained that all these groups were able to continue to practise their rituals as ‘refugees’ because they shared common mythical ancestors that allowed them to bond and share land with the Nigena. Beliefs such as conception and birthplaces that gave rights to their children in their new country, and burials that gave them a connection with country and a sense of belonging. So, like the people from the very northern Kimberley they were able to merge and continue their traditions, while nearby Liveringa Station became an important site to where their ‘boards and objects’ were relocated for and significant events in the early 1970s.67 Even during the 1960s, when my parents were establishing their small property, Frank would take workers to Liveringa so they could associate with their contemporaries for religious purposes, and he would then collect them after a few days.

Liveringa Liveringa Station is in Nigena country. Covering 405,000 hectares the station stretches for 100 kms fronting the Fitzroy River. The station’s first owners, the Kimberley Pastoral Company (KPC), was a syndicate of several proprietors who had acquired the lease by lottery, a few short years after Alexander Forrest in 1879 had trumpeted the region as being ideal for pastoralism. The company was formed in

66 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.82; see Anne Poelina, Action Research to Build the Capacity of Nyikina Indigenous Australians; Hawke & Gallagher, Noonkanbah; Erich Kolig, The Noonkanbah Story, Dunedin, NZ, University of Otago Press, 1987. 67 E Kolig, 'Captain Cook in the Western Kimberley', in Ronald & Catherine Berndt (ed.), Aborigines of the West: Their Past and Their Present, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1980; see Frances Crawford, The Story of Looma, PhD Thesis UWA, 1976; Dept of Native Affairs, Liveringa Station, ‘Native Matters’, item 775/38, SROWA; Steve Hawke, A Town is Born: The Story of Fitzroy Crossing, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2013; Exile and the Kingdom, dir. Frank Rijavec, Lindfield, NSW, Film Australia, 2005 [video recording]; Ambrose Chalarimeri & Traudl Tan, The Man from the Sunrise Side, Broome, WA, Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2001.

55 1881 and among its shareholders was John Forrest.68 Not only did he become the first Premier of Western Australia, but also its Treasurer and the first Minister in charge of the Aborigines Department.69

Descriptions from the leaseholder in the 1880s describe the station as robust and bustling, conveying a sense of excitement as the new lease on ‘virgin’ land was being developed as a sheep station.70 The property boasted plenty of water, in the rivers, billabongs and bores. The pastoralists described buildings, stables and fences being erected and sheep numbers increasing, with some being brought from South Australia to interbreed with the station’s flock to produce better quality wool. But Liveringa was ‘full of adventure and excitement’ heightened by the ‘hostility of the natives’, who laid claim to sheep meat, in what the pastoralists deemed to be theft.

Aboriginal station-hands who worked for the KPC and on nearby stations watched as their land was consumed for pastoralism. They observed the disregard with which revered sites were given western names. For example, as Alexander Forrest made his way through the Kimberley he renamed landmarks, even calling a river “Barrett- Lennard” after his fiancée. It is now commonly known as the Lennard River.71 The observations and experiences of Nigena and others are captured in the book Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra.72 It was important to them that their stories were not lost, so place names are documented in the book so they could one day be reclaimed. These Aboriginal history speakers hoped that the wider community might understand why Aboriginal people fight for the return of their lands.73 Like refugees, the Nigena lived in a camp compound near the Liveringa homestead, and they worked for the ‘boss’, the women mainly in the homestead and men with stock. The homestead, according

68 Cyclopedia Co,"Liveringa”: the property of the Kimberley Pastoral Company, Limited, Perth, WA, Cyclopedia Co, 1912, p.3, & pp.2-9. 69 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.45. 70 Cyclopedia Co., "Liveringa": the property of the Kimberley Pastoral Company, Limited, Perth, WA, Cyclopedia Co, 1912. 71 Water Notes, Government of Western Australia, ‘Rivers of the Kimberley: About the Kimberley rivers’, 2009, http://www.water.wa.gov.au/search- results?query=rivers+of+the+kimberley&collection=wadow (accessed 10/07/2015). 72 Marshall, (ed.) Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra. 73 Marshall, (ed.); see Stephen Scourfield, 'Story of a dream as it comes true', West Australian: Travel, 20/08/2011.

56 to one stockman who worked in the region during my research period, was ‘very grand, even majestic’.74

Together at Liveringa, the management, non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal workers clipped the sheep’s wool, baled it and sent it down the Fitzroy River to Derby by boat, until boats were superseded by bullock and donkey teams, for export to London where the wool fetched a good price of up to 50d for a scoured fleece. During the 1940s and 50s with decent wool prices abroad, sheep stations prospered.75 By the 1960s, however, the sheep industry was on the verge of collapse. In 1962, Kim Rose of Liveringa and Canny Rose of Mt Anderson met with a West Australian Pastoral Lease Committee to apply to have their fifty-year leases renewed and they described what had led to their current crisis.76 Back in 1908, Rose explained, Liveringa itself had increased its numbers to 1,000,000 sheep yet by 1917 it had dropped to 41,000 and by 1925 to 28,000. By 1950, the whole of the West Kimberley carried only approximately 200,000. There were several reasons for this but none was more telling than the manner of land-use. Erosion was commonplace in the first half of the twentieth century because of overstocking and because cattle routes passed near water sources causing silting which led to heavy losses of sheep that had become bogged. Rose was never keen for drovers from cattle stations to camp with their herds for too long in sheep country as they headed towards the port of Derby. Eric Lawford recalled:

The Kartiya [white man] who was manager there, Kim Rose, was also a hard man. He didn’t like drovers going through his sheep paddocks. We couldn’t even go off the stock route and down to the river to water our cattle. He made us follow the stock route and water the cattle at the billabongs.77

74 Marshall, (ed.) Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra. 75 Cyclopedia Co,"Liveringa". 76 Lands Dept, Pastoral Lease Committee – a further interview with Mr Kim Rose, Liveringa Station and Mr Bill Henwood, Calwynyardah Station, ‘Transcripts of Evidence’, con 4983, SROWA, 1962. 77 Marshall, (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra, p.21.

57 Kangaroos, together with introduced pests like donkeys and goats ate the choice plants and grasses, while dingoes attacked the sheep.78 Attempts to reduce the pests were made by poisoning dingoes and eagle-hawks, but the kangaroo numbers kept increasing causing deterioration of the river frontages where lambs would normally eat fine herbage. Even on the sections of land that were being spelled, the kangaroos, pastoralists complained, would come in to feed on the tastiest pastures. Predators on Debesa and throughout the region were a big problem and young lambs were often the prey of dingoes and hawkes, yet kangaroos never seemed to be a problem. Probably because Debesa was distant from the floodplains.

To counteract the problems Liveringa began rotational grazing while vermin were baited with strychnine pellets. However, the station appears to have never recovered. In 1962 the KPC ceased to exist and some of its shareholders moved to form the Kimberley Holdings Limited.79 In the early 1970s an American business, the Australian Land and Cattle Company (ALCCO) bought the lease plus several adjoining stations, its main interest being in the potential that the Camballin irrigation farm presented (discussed further in Chp.3)80

Following the Rose era, living conditions deteriorated for Aboriginals on Liveringa. According to a report to the Commissioner of Native Welfare in 1971 by the Department of Native Welfare’s District Officer, Kevin Johnson, who was based in Derby, it was well known in the town that ALCCO was experiencing financial difficulties and it could not meet all of its commitments. The company had all but ceased to provide accommodation for its Aboriginal population but Nigena people residing and working there refused to leave. The Native Welfare Inspector’s Report in April 1971 specified 72 Aboriginal people living at Liveringa, comprising 15 rural workers (all male), 7 domestic workers 7 (all female), 14 pensioners (7 male and 7

78 Alan Barnard, (ed.), The Simple Fleece: Studies in the Australian Wool Industry , Melbourne, VIC, Melbourne University Press, 1962. 79 G C Bolton, A survey of the Kimberley pastoral industry from 1885 to the present, Masters Thesis UWA, 1953; Kimberley Pastoral Company, Records, 1891-1963, [ACC1240A], Perth, Battye Library. 80 Jack Fletcher, To Dam or be Damned : The Mighty Fitzroy River, Perth, WA, Self Published, 2008; Jack Fletcher, ‘Australian Land Cattle Company’, Diaries [ACC7744A – restricted until the death of Jack Fletcher], Perth, Battye Library, 2014.

58 female), 23 children (10 male and 13 female) and 13 others (2 male and 11 female). The report described the accommodation as being:

Same as for 1970 report, but more delapidated [sic]. One 14’ x 14’ G.I. hut, timber-framed. Six 8’ x 10’ G.I. huts concrete floors. One Nissen hut 15’ x 30’ with concrete floor, continuous wire-mesh bunks run round sides. Two bough sheds, thatch all gone. An assortment of filthy hovels and shacks, tent flys and dens made out of odd bits of G.I. PENSIONERS [accommodation] – Camp contiguous with that of labour force. Several bough shelters, and temporary hovels.81

ALCCO ignored instructions from the Department of Native Welfare to provide a list of employees, which led to speculation that the station did not employ any Aboriginal people at all. Johnson believed the management was embarrassed at not being financially able to support their workers and provide adequate accommodation. The company attempted to move them on and razed their deteriorating campsite to the ground, with promises of new accommodation. But this never eventuated. A large group of people stood firm and refused to leave the station, camping at “Jigada” (old Looma) nearby. The Department supported the people’s stance and along with the state government’s Medical Department, regularly visited the camp and ensured that appropriate resources, food and shelter, were being supplied and the unemployed were receiving benefit cheques. The group then pooled their cheques, spent it wisely and ensured children were delivered every day to Camballin 15 kms away for schooling.82 In the ensuing years they relocated to Looma 2 kms from the Liveringa homestead. It took time for the community to settle, a legacy of the readjustment to a new life, compounded by an unhealthy lifestyle brought on from sedentary living. Today, the large, interrelated and extended families living at Looma who were drawn together during the periods of dislocation and dispersal assert a strong cultural connection to the area.83

Derby

81 Dept of Native Affairs, Liveringa Station. 82 Dept of Native Welfare, Commissioner of Native Welfare, ‘Letters’, item DNW71, SROWA, 1971. 83 Winun Ngari Aboriginal Corporation; ‘Looma Community’, n/d, http://winunngari.org.au/community/looma/, (accessed 20/01/2015).

59 Derby sits at the base of the King Sound in the West Kimberley Shire and is located in an area that Nigena people call Booroola.84 (Discussed further in Chp.6). The town began to emerge in the 1880s as a port and as a depot for pastoral leases. Gazetted in 1883, it lies north of the mouth of the Fitzroy River and is named after Edward Henry Stanley, “Lord Derby” (1826-1893), who was the Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1882 to 1885.85 Derby became the main town in the region from where essential services were provided and colloquially it came to known as the ‘Hub of the Kimberley’. In 1921 a mail air service commenced between Geraldton and Derby, which was followed by a medical air service in 1934. The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) began its operations from the town in 1955, servicing the whole of the Kimberley. The spread of Hansen’s disease (leprosy) and venereal disease among Aboriginal populations across northern Australia led to the establishment of a leprosarium near the town in 1936, and it closed in 1984. The formation of a lazaret that isolated Aboriginal people from the Europeans was a recommendation in the 1934 Moseley Report, a Royal Commission into the condition of Aboriginal peoples in Western Australia.86 The site’s Aboriginal name is Bungarung and it is where those even ‘suspected’ of having the disease were confined. Government authorities administered the centre while the St. John of God Sisters provided the medical care.87 Katie and her sisters often visited patients at Bungarung. On a Sunday after church in Derby, they would head to the Leprosarium taking food and they would sit outside of the compound fence on blankets to play cards and gamble. The authorities didn’t seem to mind that town’s Aboriginal people and the inmates indulged in this pastime.

84 Colleen Hattersley (ed.), Nyikina Birr Nganka. 85 Landgate; Derby: History of Country Town Names, u/d, http://www0.landgate.wa.gov.au/maps-and-imagery/wa-geographic-names/name-history, (accessed 03/01/2015). 86 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, pp.114-115; see Shire of Derby, ‘Our Community’, West Kimberley, 2011, http://www.sdwk.wa.gov.au/community/aboutourcommunity.html, (06/07/2015); see Moseley, Royal Commissioner, Report: Investigate, Report, and Advise Upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines, Fred W M Simpson, Perth, WA, Government Printer, 1935; Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare, Chp Four 'The big round-up: the leprosy campaign and its aftermath'; P L Turnbull, A lifetime of caring: the history of the Leprosy Mission in Australia, 1913-1988, Box Hill, VIC, Leprosy Mission, 1990; W. S. Davidson, Havens of refuge: a history of leprosy in Western Australia, Letchworth, University of Western Australia Press for the Public Health Department [distributed by] International Scholarly Book Services, 1978. 87 Alphonsus M Daly, Healing hands: memories and milestones of the Derby Leprosarium, where Sisters of St. John of God provided nursing care Perth, WA, Health Department of Western Australia, 1986?

60

By 1951 the Australian Iron and Steel Company, a subsidiary of Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd (BHP), was mining iron ore at Cockatoo and Koolan Islands at Yampi Sound in the 100 kms north of Derby. The iron ore mines were the largest and most remote in the country.88 Derby’s domestic airport is where passengers from Yampi Sound, pastoral stations, missions, Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing connected to commercial flights to Perth and Darwin. During this period another boost to the region’s economy, and to the pastoral industry, came with the completion of an abattoir in 1951 under the auspices of the Derby Meat Processing Company (DEMCO).

As the local Aboriginal people watched from their reserve in Panton Street, non- Aboriginal people descended on Derby to work in the town’s latest asset.89 Derby continued to develop as the main hub in the Kimberley. A radiotelephone link to Perth was installed in 1959 and by 1983 an automatic telephone service had begun. The number of grazing sheep in the region peaked in 1953. When the industry boomed during the Korean War, Myroodah Station under the management of Harold Godbehere ran up to 30,000 sheep.90 However, as we have seen, poor grazing practices and other problems together with downturn in the industry, meant that by 1969 sheep stations struggled to survive. Ultimately the pastoralists along the Fitzroy River abandoned any illusions of a thriving sheep industry and cattle became the major stock interest.91

Derby’s local population was made up largely of Aboriginal people of both mixed and full-descent while the rest were generally anglo, a transient population including public servants. The languages spoken included Kriol and Aboriginal English while most white people spoke standard English. Among the district’s occupations,

88 Broken Hill Proprietary Company, 'The Decade 1945-1955', Seventy-five years of B.H.P. development in industry, 1885-1960, Melbourne, VIC, Broken Hill P/L, 1960. 89 Craig Mostyn Group, 'A flair for trade: Go west young man’, 2014 http://www.craigmostyn.com.au/about/history/, (accessed 06/07/2015). 90 Godbehere, Kimberley was God's. 91 F H Bauer, 'Sheep raising in Northern Australia: an historical review', Australian Geographer, vol. 7, no. 5, 1959, pp.169-179; see Michael Pearson & Jane Lennon, Pastoral Australia: fortunes, failures and hard yakka: a historical overview 1788-1967, Collingwood, Vic, CSIRO Publishing; Australian Heritage Council, Australia. Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, 2010.

61 according to the 1971 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census, were professionals, administrators, farmers (pastoralists), miners and craftsmen with only sixteen people listed as unemployed.

Derby’s District Hospital was the major health centre servicing the outlying stations and towns in the Kimberley. Doctors, nurses, specialists and administrative staff tended to be transient and white, while the domestics, gardeners and support crew in menial roles were employed locally and were made up of both Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal peoples. Schoolteachers, main roads, public works, community welfare, telecommunications and several smaller government departments made up the rest of the public service. The non-government personnel worked in the banks, airlines, freight carriers, religious organisations and several private businesses including two hotels. Mixed-descent Aboriginal people were more likely to have employment of some description, while full-descent people were generally the unemployed.

A white transient’s length of stay could be anything from a few short months to many years. Most white people, including pastoralists, returned or retired to the south, making it rare to find a third or fourth generation non-Aboriginal person in Derby. As pastoralists, Katie and Frank never retired to the south. It was not their country and their families lived in the Kimberley. The West Kimberley was their home. Moreover, other pastoralists of Frank’s era like Frank Lacy, Fred Russ and Stan Webb who all married Aboriginal women chose to remain in their wife’s country when they retired.

Four years after the 1967 Referendum and sixty years after the first census was ever held in Australia, indigenous peoples were eligible to be counted in the nation’s census. On the 30th of June 1971, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were recognised as Australians who needed to be counted, enabling the ABS to collate data not previously assessed from cities, towns, missions, reserves and pastoral leases. However, the Bureau’s figures are not a true reflection of the indigenous population and I contend that Derby’s full-descent Aboriginals were probably not counted in the 1971 or 1976 census. If we look at the 1968 census, which was the year before

62 Aboriginal people were counted, the town’s population was 2,695.92 At the next census in 1971 (when they were included) the population dropped to 2,538.93 It is worth noting that given 1971 was the first time indigenous peoples were included in the census, a time when most were still moving off stations and relocating to the towns, one would expect the population to have increased. Therefore it is arguable that the data collection was not carried out properly or that people were still either getting used to, or were uncomfortable with, the process. Interestingly, the 1976 count for Derby dropped even further to 2,411.94 Five years later the 1981 census suggested a truer reflection when it rose to 2,933.95

By the early 1970s government assisted programs were emerging in Derby that aimed to improve the quality of life for Aboriginal peoples. The State Health Department in keeping with the World Health Organisation’s Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion, aimed to empower Aboriginal people to take responsibility for their own communities.96 Better planning and environmental measures were recommended when constructing houses, while people’s cultural and kin commitments were being considered. Unlike in the deplorable living conditions at Liveringa, cultural requirements such as avoidance behaviour between people, and the need to vacate a house following a death, were being taken seriously.97 Nonetheless, the Department of Native Welfare was still unable to provide adequate accommodation for the region’s Aboriginal peoples. Symptomatic of the way in which houses for full- descent people in the Kimberley were constructed is a Report completed following

92 J. P. O'Neill, J P, 1968 - Population and Dwellings in local government areas: Part 5. Western Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra, ACT, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, 1968, vol. 4. 93 J. P. O’Neill, 1971 - Characteristics of the Population and Dwellings Local Government Areas: Part 5. Western Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra, ACT, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, 1973. 94 O'Neill, 1971 - Characteristics of the Population and Dwellings Local Government Areas, 1973. 95 R. J. Cameron, 1981 - Census of Population and Housing, 30 June 1981: Persons and Dwellings in Local Government areas and Urban Centres, Western Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1982. 96 Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Regional Report of Inquiry into Underlying Issues in Western Australia - 14.4 Aboriginal Health Workers and Employment, in Reconciliation and Social Justice Library, http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic/regional/wa_underlyin g/220.html , 1991. 97 Sue Ethington & Laura Smith, The Design and Construction of Indigenous Housing : The Challenge Ahead, in Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, ACT, http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]/0/c73ff65afc91fbf8ca256dea00053954?OpenDoc ument, 2004.

63 the first ever meeting of the Northern Division Aboriginal Consultative Committee that met in Derby in September 1967. The new committee consisted of Aboriginal representatives from across the Kimberley where issues around housing were brought to the attention of the Department of Native Welfare.98 The committee had asked for overhead fans and a back door to allow heat to escape but in February the following year the Commissioner for Native Welfare, Frank Gare responded thus:

Although I am aware of the many desirable improvements which could be affected in these dwellings, I am not able to direct funds for this purpose at this stage, when every source of finance is required for standard transitional and conventional homes. It is now the determined policy of the Department to hasten the end of camping-reserve life for our Aboriginal people, whom we now all desire to see living in town houses alongside the rest of the community. If valuable money is spent on doors, windows, sinks and other facilities, it will slow down this program. I ask you to support the Department in this difficult decision, which, although it may prolong for some time the conditions under which some people are living, it will help to accelerate the ultimate solution of this vital problem.99

On the census night of 30th of June 1971 5,492 people were tallied as being in the West Kimberley. Derby and Fitzroy Crossing were the only towns while the district hosted stations and settlements like Camballin. The ABS does not specifically set out where Aboriginal people lived but it does provide data in relation to the types of houses. How many people lived in them, how many rooms, the nature of the occupancy and the utilities installed.100 Most were stand-alone houses or semi- detached. Of the 619 dwellings identified in the West Kimberley, the SHC owned 133 while 65 were privately owned and the remaining 421 dwellings are likely to have been government houses.101 A mindset persisted that non-Aboriginal people should live in good accommodation, while mixed and full-descent peoples should be content with lesser quality homes. The superior, government owned homes were in the more affluent streets away from the Panton Street reserve with SHC homes

98 Dept of Native Welfare, Aboriginal Consultative Committee, Northern Division, ‘Meeting’, SROWA, item 1729, 1968, 11/03/1968. 99 Dept of Native Welfare, Aboriginal Consultative Committee, ‘Letter - F Gare’, 1968, item 1729 WYG25.1, SROWA, 1968. 100 The total numbers across various data, house, house type, employment, populations are not always consistent however the figures are close and indicative of who participated on Census night. 101 O'Neill, 1971 - Characteristics of the Population and Dwellings Local Government Areas, 1973.

64 interspersed amongst them. Again, my mother in particular her sister Aggie, would visit people at the reserve, taking food and clothes to them. I too, would take secondhand clothes to family on the Reserve, which they seemed to really appreciate.

Derby’s two dominant racial groups, Aboriginal and anglo, coexisted yet few interacted outside of work environments and public places. Aboriginal people were not keen to invite white people into their homes because they were very aware that their housing was inferior. The household essentials belonging to people of lower socio-economic status were often of a lesser quality to the public servants who were provided with fully furnished houses and whitegoods and they often drove government vehicles, as my husband (a Telecom employee), and I did when we lived in Derby from 1974 to 1978. Our houses were fitted with air-conditioning and cyclone shelters were installed close to the back door. Not only did we receive free ongoing maintenance and upgrades, but also a Telecom tenants’ manager paid us regular visits to ensure our housing was satisfactory. My parents, on the other hand, were housed with the SHC and were charged for normal wear and tear when maintenance was needed. Single white employees, whether public servants or privately employed, were accommodated in suitably furnished single people’s quarters, as was my husband when he first arrived in the town. Accommodation for single local people was not readily available and they sought board privately, usually with family or friends.

In 1968, a St. John of God nun, Consilio Kehoe, whom the teenagers affectionately called “Connie”, formed a club, a youth centre. Named the “Joybeats” the club was aimed at the town’s youth and became a regular meeting place. The club organised social outings, dances, film nights, weekend day trips to the river or to the beach at Broome, and members participated in Church services often to the bemusement of the non-Catholic teenagers who had joined. Going to a Church service nonetheless did not discourage them from being part of the club since there was little else the town offered them. Activities were held in the ‘old’ Holy Rosary Church that was also the

65 venue for parish social events. The Joybeats was even responsible for a number of marriages in the town.102 Only a few full-descent youth ever joined the club.

The racial divide in the town was clearly marked not only by the allocation of houses, but also by demarcations in some public areas like the picture theatre and the two pubs. The open-air theatre had a gravel floor and corrugated iron walls along the sides and back where the ticket booth and the entrance were. There was no wall at the front, but the large screen and the toilets behind it served as a barricade to prevent anyone from sneaking into the pictures. Two aisles divided three rows of seating. On the far left the full-descent people sat on wooden benches, while the town’s ‘elite’ sat in the middle row, the best viewing area, and mixed-descent people generally sat on the right-hand side. The latter two groups enjoyed the comfort of canvas deckchairs.103 There was no rule about the seating, as far as I was aware, but cultural divisions at the time would dictate that white people should have the best seating, black people the worst and everyone else would sit where they could. Young people sat together in the front few rows of the middle and right-hand rows.104 The two hotels also had demarcation areas, with the Boab Inn’s demarcations more pronounced than the Spinifex Hotel. Full-descent people socialized in the Boab Inn’s front bar, while white and mixed-descent peoples shared the lounge and the beer garden. Nonetheless when a band played in the beer gardens, everyone found his or her way onto the dance floor. The town’s single mixed-descent and white people, both local and transient, mixed socially through sporting activities, community events, movies, camping, partying, pubbing and work places. Katie and Frank’s interracial relationship in the context of Derby’s social history that is discussed further in Chapter 6 remained intact and they associated with family and close associates.

Assimilation

102 The Joybeats live on in the Kimberley, dir. Hilary Smale, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Kimberley, 2012, http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/09/26/3598312.htm, (accessed 07/05/2014). 103 Sun Pictures in Broome had a similar arrangement and in all likelihood, so did Wyndham. Similar open air cinemas with segregated seating in Tweed Heads in NSW and at Warrnambool in Victoria are discussed by historian Maria Nugent, ‘Every Right to be There: Cinema Spaces and Racial Politics in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia’, in Monique Rooney, & Russell Smith, (eds.), Australian Humanities Review, Australian National University, 2011. 104 Michael Gugeri, God before Gugeri: Luggers, Trucks & Water bores & other Kimberley stories; pp.191-193.

66 In the context of indigenous Australia’s post-invasion evolution, assimilation formed the longest lasting policy regarding the future of Aboriginal people. Emerging early in Australia’s written history, assimilation became an entrenched ideology that imagined an essentially white and British nation. This section deals with the impact of assimilation on full and part-descent Aboriginal people and non-European migrants. All experienced the process of assimilation but not every non-anglo person rescinded their respective cultural traits. On the contrary, they borrowed and incorporated what they wanted (where they could) rejecting and discarding what they didn’t.

Unofficial assimilation began with the arrival of the British and it has threaded its way through to the present day. In 1901, when Australia became a nation it passed the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 whose purpose was to place restrictions on entry to Australia and in some circumstances to expel prohibited immigrants.105 The Act proved to be the cornerstone for the White Australia Policy that restricted the immigration of non European people well into the 1970s. Three years before the passage of the Commonwealth Act, the Western Australian government had passed its own Immigration Restriction Act and in 1905 it passed the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) for the ‘better protection and care’ of Aboriginal people. Among other policies it effectively mandated separating Aboriginal families in the interests of assimilating mixed-descent children into white society.106

Historians report the start dates of official Government assimilation programs differently. According to Tim Rowse 1937, 1939 and 1951 have all been used.107 In 1937 all States (except Tasmania) agreed to a form of biological absorption and assimilation of Aboriginal people. This loosely signalled intent to breed out aboriginality and each State was left to decide what absorption meant. But this policy had a short life because in February 1939, the Commonwealth Minister for the

105 Tim Rowse, Rethinking Social Justice: From 'Peoples' to 'Populations', Canberra, ACT, Australian Studies Press, 2012; see Immigration Restriction Act 1901. 106 Haebich, For Their Own Good; see Richard Pether, The Acts of the Parliament of Western Australia. 1829/1956, http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview?pi=nla.aus-vn672744-2x-s1-v, 1976. 107 Tim Rowse. (ed.), Contesting Assimilation, Perth, WA, API Network, Curtin University, c2005.

67 Interior, John McEwen, introduced the idea of cultural assimilation, which meant for Northern Territory Aboriginal people (the only ones over whom the Commonwealth had control) that they could be awarded citizenship only after they transformed from ‘their traditional nomadic inclinations to a settled life.’108 Then in 1951 at a national Native Welfare conference the Australian Council of Native Welfare was established which adopted the Commonwealth approach to assimilation despite Victoria and Tasmania not being represented.109

Following WWII, the Australian government became seriously concerned that the population of Australia was too low and that the experience of the war with Japan could easily be experienced again. It was decided therefore that a larger population would not only protect the young nation, but it would also provide blue-collar workers for post war reconstruction. As a consequence, intense immigration programs commenced to bring displaced peoples and other migrants from continental Europe. The immigration programs had merit in as far as populating and building the country was concerned, but for some, the program was contentious and treatment of some migrants was deplorable.110 For instance, in 1947, the President of the Returned Services League expressed his loathing towards non-English speaking migrants:

108 Russell McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal People and the Australian Nation, Canberra, ACT, Australian Studies Press, 2011, p.34. 109 Tim Rowse, (ed.) Contesting Assimilation. 110 Anna Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Press, 2008; see Lesa Melnyczuk, Silent memories: traumatic lives: Ukrainian migrant refugees in Western Australia Welshpool, WA, Western Australian Museum, 2012; Leigh Edmonds, The Vital Link, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1997, p.113; Paul Babie, 'Australia's Ukrainian Catholics, Canon Law, and the Eparchial Statutes', The Australasian Catholic Record, vol. 81, no. 1, 2004. My father-in-law, Akim Solonec, fled communist Ukraine into Germany and then with a young German wife Gertrud and their son Victor arrived in Fremantle in the middle of summer 1950 after a happy, fun journey. Before departing northern Germany they had waited for months in a large immigration camp in Bremerhaven, until Victor at the age of one year was allowed to travel, and the journey came as a welcome relief. On board the General Heresy the men paid for their passage by working the ship and the women cared for the children. They took English lessons, watched films about Australia and enjoyed a strong community spirit. They believed they were headed for a land of hope and glory. But they were crushingly disappointed on arrival in Australia. As they travelled by train to the refugees’ camp 100 kms east of Perth at Northam, they noted the burnt bush, a result of recent bush fires; and their accommodation was basic, in tents that Gertrud recalled having spiders and possums, and that they shared with other families. see Gertrud Solonec, interviewed by the author, 1998, notes in author’s possession, Perth. Akim worked with a pick and shovel on the Kalgoorlie water pipeline, replacing the original 24cm pipeline with a 30cm one. He did not enjoy the working conditions nor the atmosphere. The refugees were from various countries that included Yugoslav, Poland, Italy, Ukraine and Russia. He did not get on well with the Italians, and the boss he claimed, was nasty because they did not speak English. ‘One day I throw him pick and shovel - you have you pick and shovel, and your job too - and I walked off.’ He then worked on the railways on the Kalgoorlie line. ‘Ohhh, that’s a hard job,

68

This is a business that should make every Australian hold his breath, not only with indignation but with the fear of what will eventually become . . . Australia being swamped by people of alien thought and dubious loyalty.111

Cultural assimilation differed between indigenous peoples and migrants. A preference for British migrants endured, and a ‘white, masculine, outdoor person originating from the British Isles’ was the ideal.112 The title migrant however, was generally a reference to non-English speaking people who were expected to shed their existing cultural identities, including their languages, to assist their rapid assimilation into the host population. White migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds, it was assumed, would assimilate better than indigenous peoples because they were believed to be racially superior. All the same, assimilationist ideology, it was presumed would afford Aboriginal peoples and migrants:

Shared values, visions and agreements where all citizens will be treated equally and the same and share fully in the benefits of Australian society, once they agree to cast off their differences and become the same.113

The effect of assimilation policies on Aboriginal people, however, was markedly different to the effect on migrants. Many migrants arrived with Government assistance as cheap labour while Aboriginal peoples, who had been cheap labour since first contact, were being forced onto the edges of society as fringe dwellers. Assimilationist policies during the 1950s were well expressed by the senior Commonwealth public servant, Paul Hasluck, who believed that Aboriginal peoples would be better off ‘escaping’ their Aboriginality by ‘crossing over’ to live the same way as white people. After all Hasluck said, ‘what was there to cling to?’ He went on to claim: “Here and there throughout the continent there were crumbling groups of another one.’ The camp was 30miles from Northam, and Akim visited Gertrud and their now four boys (twins included) on the weekends. Later, the work camp moved to Grass Valley 3miles from Northam and he bought a pushbike so he could visit his family more often. see Akim Solonec, interviewed by the author, 1998, notes in author’s possession, Perth. The family eventually bought a block on the outskirts of Perth, at Balcatta, where Akim built a house and he remained there with Gertrud until his death in 2002. Gertrud died in 2004. 111 Donald Horne, Ideas for a Nation, Sydney, NSW, Pan Books, 1989. 112 S. Castles, Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the demise of Nationalism in Australia, Sydney, NSW, Pluto Press, 1992, p.8. 113 Haebich, Spinning the Dream, p.8.

69 Aboriginal people bound together by ancient tradition and kinship living under a fading discipline.”114

By the mid-1960s assimilationist policies were clearly not working. Aboriginal communities were far from disintegrating. As previously explained, people who remained on pastoral properties, and to a lesser extent those isolated on missions and reserves, were inadvertently placed in a position to maintain their cultures. It also became apparent that plans to remove or sublimate people’s ethnic identities were not working either.115 Assimilationist ideas struggled for relevance in a multi-cultural society. In their analysis of assimilation, Castles et al were perplexed by the enthusiastic approach to such a problematic policy. They raised several matters, questioning how such a large intake of migrants could have been easily assimilated into a British-based culture. They asked why, on the ‘strength of nationalism and racism in Europe at the end of the Second World War’ would migrants to Australia want to be British?116 Neither the Aboriginal population nor the migrants were prepared to readily surrender their cultures and the notion that Australia might actually value its multicultural population began to emerge.117

Between the mid 1960s and the official adoption of multiculturalism in 1973, the Australian Government adopted a short lived policy of integration.118 Integration was an attempt to move away from the assimilationist policies that were supposed to bring better opportunities and way of life to non-anglo peoples. Integration was intended not to distance people from their cultural heritage and collective identity, but to provide a space where identity and group solidarity could be maintained while all rights and entitlements were protected. With regard to Aboriginal people, integration

114 Tim Rowse, (ed.) Contesting Assimilation. White pastoralists too, held the view that Aboriginal cultures were disappearing and their references to ‘ancient stone age’ cultures support this claim. see Les Schubert, Kimberley dreams & realities: an objective study of the effects on part Aboriginals forcibly educated in the twentieth century & the tragedy of the uneducated indigenous, Mandurah, WA, Blue Bay Publishers, 1997; Tony Ozies, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 2003. 115 Ann Curthoys, 'An uneasy conversation: the multicultural and the indigenous', in John Docker & Gerhard Fischer (ed.), Race Colour & Identity: in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, NSW, University of NSW Press Ltd, 2000, p.22. 116 Robert Ho, 'Multiculturalism in Australia: A Survey of Attitudes', Human Relations, vol. 43, no. 3, 1990, p.260. 117 Castles, Mistaken Identity, p.45. 118 Haebich, Spinning the Dream, p.8.

70 supposedly allowed the ‘preservation of Aboriginality and the extension of Aboriginal rights’, yet it proved to be just a stepping stone on the way to a new policy, self determination. 119 Still assimilationist policies played a critical role in shaping Aboriginal and migrant people’s destinies and influencing the wider community’s attitude towards them.

With the failure of assimilation in Australia and the ongoing migration programs, the stage was set for a major overhaul of migration policies, that did not affect Aboriginal people. A policy was needed that would both respect migrants’ national and cultural origins and exploit them for the nation’s benefit. Hence the Australian Government embraced ‘multiculturalism’. According to Robert Mason, multicultural policies were intended to improve migrants’ access to equal treatment and opportunities, ensure equity in terms of welfare and other government programs and protect their culture and language to provide a conduit into a new multi-cultural civic society.120 For Australia to be a fair society a social justice strategy was necessary whereby no one was discriminated against because of their ethnicity, creed, language or birth country. Yet, the essence of such a policy lay in its commitment to certain commonalities, that English be the main language and that migrants commit to parliamentary democracy and Australia’s legal framework.121 The term ‘multiculturalism’ was coined in 1973 when the Labor Immigration Minister Al Grasby called the unveiling of programs and services specifically for migrants A Multi-Cultural Society for the Future. Australia’s multi-cultural future had begun. For Aboriginal people riding on a wave of determined activism that had begun in the 1930s, a policy of ‘self-determination’ replaced assimilation and integration policies.

In the context of a broader social history during the second half of this research period, from the 1970s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s livelihoods across Australia were evolving government policies that had emerged from a growing demand for equal rights. Together with their supporters Aboriginal peoples became the vanguard of a political movement through activism that played a major role in

119 McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, p.8. 120 Anthony Moran, 'Multiculturalism as nation-building in Australia: Inclusive national identity and the embrace of diversity ', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 34, no. 12, 2011, p.2161. 121 Ho, ‘Multiculturalism in Australia’, pp.260-263.

71 triggering the 1967 Referendum. 90% of eligible Australians voted both to include indigenous Australians in the census, and for the Commonwealth Government to take control of Aboriginal affairs. The lead up to the 1970s and beyond was a time when activism in the form of protests and demonstrations in most Australian cities was at its height. Protesters rallied for Aboriginal land rights, for an end to the Vietnam War, for increased women’s rights, and for an end to apartheid in South Africa. At the same time, incumbent governments influenced both debates about Indigenous Australians and shifts in attitudes by the wider community. During the 1970s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples saw the protection era of previous decades wane, and they no longer came under strict government and missionary control. The political climate in Australia was rapidly changing and people in the Kimberley, while far removed from the urban populations in the south, were kept up to date with events through radio and newspapers. Following the 1972 election of the Whitlam Labor Government there came a decisive change in Indigenous affairs as government ‘speak’ moved away from assimilation and integration ideologies to policies of self-determination and self-management. The mood for self-determination prior to this election had signalled the need for transforming policies, but attempts at any changes were slow, thus motivating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to increase their campaigns for both civil (equal) and Indigenous rights.122

Under the Whitlam Government, a determined sense of developing our own future strengthened and the government supported the advancement of Aboriginal people’s economic, social and political affairs.123

Interracial relationships Interracial relationships and class associations in the wider Australian context are discussed here in an attempt to understand how married people of mixed heritages lived and interacted. Marriages between people of different cultures have not been uncommon throughout Australia.124 Depictions of encounters between Aboriginal

122 Scott Robinson, 'The Aboriginal Embassy: an account of the protests of 1972', in Valerie Chapman & Peter Read (ed.), Terrible Hard Biscuits: A reader in Aboriginal history, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin: 1996, p.241. 123 Scott Bennett, Aborigines and political power, Sydney NSW, Allen & Unwin 1992, p.24. 124 Karen Hughes, 'Becoming Rosalind’s daughter: Reflections on intercultural kinship and embodied histories', Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia (JEASA), vol. 4,

72 people and foreigners can be found etched in cultural artefacts while tales of interactions are represented in local Indigenous mythology and oral traditions.125 Asian men who commonly worked on the pearling luggers had established a system of ‘trade’ with Aboriginal people for wood, water and sexual partners in exchange for rice, sugar, cloth and alcohol.126 Sexual relationships were not just between Aboriginal women and pastoralists or fisherman. In 1899 one unorthodox missionary is documented as having been initiated in Bardi law and given three wives on Sunday Island, near Derby, where he had established a non-denominational mission. The missionary, Sydney Hadley, had had a strained relationship with the government. He did not request financial assistance and he appears to have been liked by the Bardi people. He spoke Nyulnyul and he allowed the Bardi people to practise their traditional customs that included marriages, burials and the segregation of moieties in the mission school. He remained at Sunday Island for several years.127

In the early 1900s all states in Australia implemented legislation to control relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and it was debated zealously in the years that followed.128 Of particular concern to the Western Australian government authorities and missionaries in the West Kimberley was the exploitation and mistreatment of Aboriginal women and growing numbers of so- called ‘half-caste’ children.129 According to Christine Choo, it was the relationships between Asian men and Aboriginal women that was most concerning. An attempt to control cohabitation between races had in part, been the catalyst for the Aborigines no. 1, 2013, pp.76-91; see Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, 'Black Sheep Nation', Australian Cultural History, vol. 26, 2007, 173-193; June Duncan Owen, Mixed Matches: interracial marriage in Australia, Sydney, NSW, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2002; Radhika Mohanram, Black Body: women, colonialism and space, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1999; Pamela Rajkowski, Linden Girl: the story of outlawed lives, Perth, WA, University of Western Australia Press, 1995. 125 Choo, Mission Girls, p.97. 126 Choo, pp.21&98; see Marshall, (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra. 127 Biskup, Not slaves, not citizens, p.54. 128 Anna Haebich, Broken circles: fragmenting Indigenous families, 1800-2000, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2000; see Peggy Brock, 'Aboriginal families and the law in the era of assimilation and segregation, 1890s-1950s', in Diane Kirkby (ed.), Sex, power and justice: historical perspectives of law in Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Oxford University Press, 1995; Patricia Jacobs, 'Science and veiled assumptions: Miscegenation in Western Australia, 1930- 1937', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2, 1986, pp.15-23; J W Bleakley, The Aborigines of Australia: their history, their habits, their assimilation, Brisbane, QLD, Jacaranda Press, 1961; Auber Octavius Neville, Australia's coloured minority: its place in the community, Sydney, Currawong Publishing Co,1948? 129 Suzanne Parry, 'Identifying the process: the removal of “half-caste children from Aboriginal mothers', Aboriginal History, vol. 192, 1995, pp.141-153.

73 Act 1905 (WA) that gave government officials the legal right to remove mixed- descent children.130

Debates about biological absorption or cultural assimilation continued into the 1930s, 50s and 60s.131 In terms of interracial relationships Queensland was the first state to pass laws on marriage when amendments to the 1897 Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act in 1901 gave the Chief Protector the right to control Aboriginal people’s marriages.132 The Chief Protector of Aborigines argued that due to Queensland having the largest proportion of Aboriginal people and with the introduction of Chinese and Pacific Islanders for the sugar cane industry, Queensland’s problem was complex. Perhaps this is what led to that state’s pragmatic view of miscegenation in the 1930s:

Far from encouraging the idea of absorbing Aboriginal identity altogether, Bleakley [Chief Protector of Aborigines] went out of his way to rid Queensland of its mixed-descent population by absorbing it into the Indigenous population rather than the white. In this, he made Queensland the exception to every other Australian state and territory.133

In Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, cultural assimilation was implemented by the 1930s and any monetary assistance for mixed-descent people was stopped, forcing Aboriginal people to live as white people thus, contends Ellinghaus, denying mixed-descent Aboriginal people their identity.134

In Western Australia the 1935 Moseley Royal Commission into the treatment and conditions of Aboriginal people suggested biological absorption to deal with the issue of mixed-descent people and this suggestion set the scene for debate in the ensuing years. Mixed-descent peoples, it was argued, should marry people with ‘more white

130 Choo, ‘The role of the Catholic missionaries at Beagle Bay in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families in the Kimberley region from the 1890s’, pp.20-21. 131 Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: The Australian Experience, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1982, pp.160-183; see McGregor, Chp.6 'Assimilation and Integration' in Indifferent Inclusion, pp.98-118. 132 Katherine Ellinghaus, 'Absorbing the Aboriginal problem: controlling interracial marriage in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries', Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, p.197. 133 Ellinghaus, p.200. 134 Ellinghaus, p.194.

74 blood’ as a way of ‘breeding out Aboriginality’.135 The Chief Protector of Aborigines from 1915 to 1940, A. O. Neville, claimed that a policy of controlling marriages would prevent any increase in Aboriginal populations. Neville was also a great proponent of biological absorption. Supported by the Chief Protector of the Northern Territory Cecil Cook, who upheld the same philosophy, Neville contended at the 1937 Conference that with the birth of more and more mixed-descent children, and even the casual interracial sex on the frontier, the solution by biological absorption seemed obvious. But there were shortcomings. For an Aboriginal person to marry someone deemed to be Aboriginal (full-descent) permission had to be sought from the Chief Protector and such requests were seldom granted, however relationships went underground and cohabitation between forbidden couples continued. The legislative controls failed and interracial relationships continued.136

By the 1940s the marriage of an Aboriginal woman to a white man in the north of the state was either approved of or ignored by the authorities. For example, Kimberley pastoralist Frank Lacy, a New Zealander born in 1899 who owned a cattle station married an Aboriginal woman.137 Lacy, whose father was a Harbour Master, had been educated at Kings College in Auckland and by the age of twenty-four he owned a small farm. But he was restless and he decided to travel, ending up in the Kimberley. He secured a pastoral lease north of Derby then married an Aboriginal woman though he had been engaged to a white woman previously. Lacy knew he would need a partner who could cope with the rigours of establishing a cattle station and someone he could adequately provide for. Their partnership was acceptable to the wider Kimberley community.138

On the whole then, marriages between Aboriginal women and white men were not as concerning to the authorities as was a white woman’s union with a black man. According to Katherine Ellinghaus, a white woman’s role and social standing depended solely on who they married. The reason behind any concern was simple she

135 Moseley, Report, 1935 136 Ellinghaus, ‘Absorbing the Aboriginal problem’, pp.192-193; see Russell McGregor, 'Breed out the colour: or the importance of being white', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 33, no. 120, 2002, p.291. 137 Marion Nixon, The Rivers of Home, Perth, WA, Vanguard Service Print, 1978. 138 Nixon.

75 argues. While a white man could have a relationship with an Aboriginal woman his social standing was not necessarily affected, because he could walk away without any consequences. A white woman in a relationship with a black man on the other hand, alongside being ostracised and the recipient of a humiliating status, she was ‘at risk’ of becoming pregnant and she could be left 'holding the baby’.139 Katie and Frank on the other hand, as a married couple were not victimized in any way because of their racial differences. They attracted no official problems and their marriage was endorsed and celebrated by the Catholic church in 1946. Within their own sphere and among their contemporaries, they enjoyed a strong relationship in which they were committed to one another. In the following chapters, their marriage unfolds to reveal a social history that contributes new information to the region’s historiography.

139 Katherine Ellinghaus, 'Margins of Acceptability: Class, Education, and Interracial Marriage in Australia and North America', Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 2002, pp.55-75; see McGrath, Born in the Cattle.

76 Chapter 2 Katie & Frank to 1946

Katie was born Mary Catherine Fraser on the 24th of November 1920 at Beagle Bay Mission in NyulNyul country, 120 kms north of Broome. Her birthplace, built on flat swamplands, is where her mother Phillipena Melycan was ‘removed’ to as a small child, under government policies of the day. In 1907, about the time that Phillipena was taken to Beagle Bay, the small community consisted of a few buildings and for the bush people. There were forty-four girls and forty boys attending the school that stood alongside a church, both constructed of rough iron sheets. A few years later the buildings were destroyed by a cyclone but a new church, a much sturdier structure that still dominates the small town today, replaced the old church. The bricks were made from a combination of local clays and cemented together with mortar made from burned shells. Phillipena along with the other children helped the adults to gather large quantities of shells, and to bring them to the building site in bullock drawn carts.

The church was completed in 1918 and named the Sacred Heart Church, in time for her marriage to Fulgentius Fraser in 1919.1 Katie, their first born, was baptised there the following year. Three months after Katie’s birth and 15,000 kms away, Frank was born to Maria Casanova and Jose Rodriguez on the 7th of February 1921 in the tiny village of Freixio in Galicia, Spain. He was named Francisco Rodriguez Casanova. Freixio is situated near the town of Mon Forte de Lemos in the Province of Lugo in Galicia and is set amongst the mountains where the buildings were also made from local earthen materials. There, my paternal grandparents lived and raised their children surrounded by farmlands and peasant families.

1 Mary Durack, The Rock and the Sand, 1st edn; London, The Anchor Press Ltd, 1969; see Frank Birrell; 'The History of Beagle Bay: a History of the Sacred Heart Church', Beagle Bay History, u/d, http://wkfl.asn.au/religioused/beagle_bay_church_history.htm, (accessed 21/09/2011).

77 Katie’s family

Lucy (Muninga) & Jimmy Kassim Brumby & Percy Rose

Phillipena (Sarah) Fulgentius (Eulla)

Katie, Aggie, Frances, Edna, Gertie, Dottie, Jimmy, Leena

Katie’s ancestry gives context to her identity as a first Australian of mixed-heritage whose background was an interracial, interreligious one. Her parents, Phillipena “Sarah” Melycan and Fulgentius “Eulla” Fraser, both Nigena, were Stolen Generations children who had come under the influence of missionaries soon after the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) was ratified.2 The Chief Protector of Aborigines at the time, was Henry Prinsep and he became Phillipena and Fulgentius’s legal guardian denying their parents any right to the care and responsibility of their own children. The Act gave government authorities the legal right to remove them to institutions on the understanding that they would be better protected and cared for, leaving my great grandparents to grieve and to try and understand why their children were taken from them.3

2 Both have different birth names to the one that they were given by the missionaries. Phillipena was Sarah and Fulgentius Eulla. Both their mission names remained with them throughout their lives. The name Tjinjilla alongside Eulla appears in the Drysdale River journals in: Benedictine Community of New Norcia, Drysdale River Mission / Kalumburu Journal, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1923, 65014P. 3 Government of Western Australia, Aborigines Act, 1905, Canberra, ACT, AIATSIS, 1905, http://asset0.aiatsis.gov.au/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1320205245411~715; see Norman Etherington, 'Introduction', Missions and Empire, New York, Oxford University Press, 2005; D Short, 'When sorry isn't good enough: Official remembrance and reconciliation in Australia', Memory Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 2012, pp.293-304; Bob Reece, 'Killing with kindness: Daisy Bates and New Norcia', Aboriginal History, vol. 32, 2008, pp.128-145; Robert Manne, 'The Stolen Generations: a documentary collection', Essay, The Monthly, 2006, https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2006/september/1244160772/robert- manne/stolen-generations (accessed 29/07/2015); Henry Reynolds, This whispering in our hearts, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1998; Ronald Wilson, Bringing them home: report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Australia), Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney, NSW, 1997; Parry, 'Identifying the process: the removal of “half-caste children from Aboriginal mothers', pp.141-153; Rosemary Van den Berg, No options, no choice!: the Moore River experience: my father, Thomas Corbett, an Aboriginal half-caste, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, c1994.

78

Jimmy Kassim & daughter Phillipena Phillipena Melycan was named “Sarah” by her parents Jimmy Kassim, a Muslim, who is believed to have come from India, and Muninga (later renamed Lucy) a full- descent Nigena woman.4 At the time that “Sarah” was taken from them, they all lived together with Muninga’s sister Numingil (later renamed Bernadine) and her daughter Gypsy, at 20 kms south of Derby where Kassim was a cook. Little is known about Muninga and Numingil’s early life but the Fraser family’s oral histories do explain how Kassim came to be in the West Kimberley. He is understood to have arrived in Australia as a teenager aboard a cargo vessel from India of which his uncle was the bosun. Effectively, he was a stowaway who had become sick and he left his ship either in Fremantle or at Port Hedland probably in the late 19th century since “Sarah” was born in about 1900.5 No official record of his disembarkation has come to light at this time, therefore he probably ‘jumped ship’ and merged into a life of indentured labour as described by Heather Goodall et al that suggests such seafarers were drawn to Aboriginal communities.6

Jimmy Kassim arrived in Australia aboard his uncle’s cargo ship from the sub- continent that would have been a regular arrival at Fremantle in the two decades before Phillipena was born. According to the Fremantle Shipping Registers in the Western Australian State Records Office, ships carrying ‘general cargo’ during the 1880s were mostly from Colombo (Sri Lanka), while during the 1890s most arrived from Karachi in India (now Pakistan) with cargoes of camels. Given that Kassim was a Muslim and the family’s oral history says he was Indian, it is likely that he came from India. He had entered Australia at a time when most Muslims coming to Australia were Afghan cameleers and drovers. It was the cameleers who provided vital outback transport services for almost sixty years carrying, amongst other

4 The spelling of Jimmy Kassim’s name appears on official documents as Kassim, Kasim, Casim and Melycan. His daughter Phillipena’s surname appears as Melycan or Carson. 5 Edna Fraser, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 28/08/2003; see Gertie AhMat, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 21/08/2003; Pamela Rajkowski, Linden Girl: the story of outlawed lives, Perth, WA, University of Western Australia Press, 1995, p.44. 6 Heather Goodall et al, ‘Jumping Ship – skirting empire: Indians, Aborigines and Australians across the Indian Ocean’, Transforming Cultures eJournal, vol.3, no.1, 2008, p.57, http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/TfC.

79 essentials, water, tanks, building materials and mail for Australia’s exploration projects and schemes like the Overland Telegraph Line, and for pastoralism and the mining industry before the advent of railway lines.7 They also worked in the northern desert areas on remote cattle and sheep stations carting bales of wool to port, but it was in the Kimberley goldfields where they first found a demand for their services in Western Australia. For a brief time during the gold rush days of the late 19th century they traversed the rugged track from Derby and then Wyndham to the goldfields at Halls Creek before more prosperous deposits attracted prospectors further south to Marble Bar, the Murchison and Coolgardie.8 But Jimmy Kassim did not work with the ‘ships of the desert’ as far as my family is aware, though the cargo vessel he arrived on may well have come here with cameleers from Karachi.

After being discharged from his uncle’s ship Kassim remained in Australia and continued to work on boats. He found employment in the pearling industry at Cossack near Roebourne in the Pilbara, before making his way to Broome where it is believed another uncle lived, who employed him as a diver. In Broome, Jimmy Kassim may have been able to embrace his Muslim customs in the company of Muslim Malays and Indonesians who began arriving as indentured labourers for the pearling industry in the late 19th century.9 But the Muslim faith does not appear to have been a significant part of their culture unless, that is, it was practised ‘underground’.10 This is supported by the fact that no Mosque was built in the town until the 1930s.11 But it was as a camp cook at Yeeda Station that Kassim probably met Muninga and they had “Sarah”.

7 Gary D Bouema, Mosques and Muslim Settlement in Australia, Canberra, ACT, Brown Prior Anderson P/L 1994, p.22. 8 Christine Stevens, Tin Mosques & Ghantowns: a history of Afghan Cameldrivers in Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.80-83; see G C Bolton, Alexander Forrest: his life and times, Melbourne, VIC, Melbourne University Press in association with the University of Western Australia Press, 1958; and Durack, The Rock and the Sand. 9 Nahid Kabir, 'Muslims in Western Australia 1870 – 1970', Early Days: Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 5, 2005, p.551. 10 Rajkowski, Linden Girl, p.46; see Richard Symonds, 'The Muslims in India & The Muslim Renaissance ', Making of Pakistan: National Committee for Birth Centenary Celebrations of Quaid-i- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Karachi, Pakistan, National Book Foundation, 1976. 11 Kabir, ‘Muslims in Western Australia 1870 – 1970’, p.555. Earlier, in 1904 Perth-based Muslims had banded together and built a mosque for themselves; see Pamela Raikowski, In the tracks of the camelmen: Outback Australia's most exotic pioneers, North Ryde, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1987, p.19.

80 Muninga and Numingil would walk the 20 kms to Derby to earn some money for food, and it was from Derby that their children “Sarah” seven years old, and her cousin-sister Gypsy (first cousin) were ‘stolen’ and held overnight in a Derby lock-up before being shipped off to Beagle Bay mission.12 Gypsy, still being breastfed by her mother, Numingil, cried all night for her ‘mumma nanya’ [I want mummy’s breast] until “Sarah” told her to ‘shut up leinju [policeman] coming’. The two frightened little girls huddled together as their distraught mothers called for them from among the high grass outside of the caged cell.13 Family histories deny any suggestion that the children were not safe with their parents and it could be argued that both “Sarah” and Gypsy were being well cared for by their family. Many years later, my grandmother described those events to the Pallottine priest Father Francis Huegel:

My mother, named Lucy, started calling for her two children and did not get any answer. They told her the police took them for a ride. So Lucy called in language. Gypsy and I could hear Mum calling. They locked us in, we were there for the night. The ship must have come in the night. The tram pulled up in the morning and took us to the water. We went past there to see my mother. She hit herself, bleeding all over. That was the last I saw of her.14

The children disembarked from the ship at Beagle Bay, which is known to the local NyulNyul people as “Doonyoorood”, a few kilometres from the mission. The bay had been named in honour of the British ship HMS Beagle that surveyed the area in

1838.15 The Beagle Bay mission site itself, is called “Ngarlan”.16 At the mission, the children were baptised and given European names and “Sarah” became Phillipena, a name that she came to be known by.17 (From this point on, I will refer to “Sarah” as

12 P. Fraser, ‘Phillipena Fraser’ in Brigida Nailon & Fr Francis Huegel (eds.), This is your place: Beagle Bay Mission, 1890-1990: birthplace and cradle of Catholic presence in the Kimberley, 1st edn, Broome, WA, Beagle Bay Community with assistance from Magabala Books, 1990, p.29-32. This book is a collection of stories collected during the 1960s by Huegel from ex-inmates of Beagle Bay Mission, including Phillipena Fraser. The stories were later collated by Nailon and published in 1990. 13 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 19/10/2013. 14 Nailon &, This is your place, p.29; see Margaret Zucker, 'Open Hearts: The Catholic Church and the Stolen Generation in the Kimberley', Australian Catholic Historical Society, vol. 29, 2008, pp.23-38. 15 Magdalene Williams, Ngay janijirr ngank = This is my word, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1999. 16 Brigida Nailon & Fr Francis Huegel, This is your place, p.ii. 17 People on pastoral stations were given European names too. The name of a flower was not unusual, for example Rosie, Pansy and Violet; other popular names included Mabel, Topsy and Queenie. My mother was very aware of her heritage and sentiments ran deep even if

81 Phillipena). Wanting to be near the children, it was Numingil who followed them, trekking through the bush some 200 kms from Derby. With other people she camped in the humpies ‘outside’ of the mission fence while Muninga, stricken with grief, stayed in Derby.18 Muninga eventually learned that the children were with people in ‘white clothes’ but she was never exactly sure where.19

In later years Muninga did briefly meet Phillipena again, at the One Mile camp near Broome, by which time Phillipena was married with children. It was a very emotional reunion. Edna Fraser, Phillipena’s fourth child, remembers a large new canvas being spread on the ground for the children to sit on and when the two women met they sobbed and wailed for each other, and other people were crying.20 Over the years whenever Phillipena’s second child Aggie Puertollano visited Broome from Derby with her family, she would point to the One Mile Aboriginal Community as they drove past, saying: “That’s where we were”.21

Grief took its toll on Muninga, so when people in ‘white clothes’ arrived in Derby in 1936 to care for those with leprosy she attached herself to them. That attachment with the nuns gave her a connection to Phillipena and to her grandchildren. Muninga never contracted leprosy, but as her health deteriorated the nuns took her in and gave her lodgings at Bungarun (Leprosarium). In return, she would do odd jobs for them. Shortly before her death in 1938 my great grandmother was baptised by Mother Gertrude, and she is buried just outside of the Bungarun cemetery.22 they appear as light hearted. For instance, she supported the Indian or Pakistani cricketers when they played in Australia and she loathed the English players. Ear glued to the radio in the days before TV, the only time she ever barracked for the Australians whom she assumed were English descendants, was when they played against England. Her rationale was that her white grandfather Percy Rose had abandoned her father Fulgentius into the hands of the Scottish station overseer Walter Fraser, while her Indian grandfather, cared for his partner Muninga and for their daughter “Sarah” until she was taken from them. 18 St John of God Heritage Centre, ‘Welcome to the SSJG Heritage Centre’, 2014, http://heritage.ssjg.org.au/Home-Page.aspx, (accessed 11/03/2014). Edna’s comments are supported by the St John of God Heritage Centre’s photographic collection in Broome that displays photos of people in bush shelters at Beagle Bay living just outside of the mission compound. 19 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 14/10/2013. 20 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 19/10/2013; and Katie Rodriguez, personal communication, 1970s (as told to Cindy Solonec in Derby). 21 Shirley Rickerby, personal communication, 24/10/2013. 22 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 19/10/2013. Muninga is not listed as a patient at the Leprosarium and neither does her name appear on the wall at the cemetery that lists patients. This lack of formal data supports Edna’s knowledge that her grandmother did not have leprosy and that is why she is buried away from the main cemetery at Bungarun.

82

Jimmy Kassim remained in contact with his Aboriginal family after Phillipena and Gypsy were taken. He continued to work as a cook in Broome hotels and at some point (which has not come to light for this study) he was a cook on the MV Kangaroo.23 In time, Kassim lived in Broome with Gypsy and her two children where he continued to practise his Muslim faith. The old man would tend to the perpetual light in the Moslem mosque but his children and his grandchildren were never allowed to go inside. When his health deteriorated he was sent to Beagle Bay to be cared for by Phillipena, even though he was not a Catholic.24 Being a Muslim is unlikely to have concerned the missionaries given that the children, including Phillipena, Gypsy and Fulgentius, were not Catholic either, but according to Mary Durack he did eventually become a Catholic. “They got him in the end [the Catholics]. He followed Katie and her mother to Beagle Bay and there became a Christian three years before he died – and he was an almost fanatic one – used to crawl to mass when he was crippled with arthritis”.25

Edna remembers her grandfather well. As I sometimes sat and talked with Edna, Katie’s younger sister, she would recall the time she spent as a young girl living in the same household as her grandfather Jimmy Kassim. The grandchildren called him Nygumi (NyulNyul for grandfather). His sisters in India would send saris for the girls, but they were not allowed to wear them because the mission did not supply them and perhaps because they weren’t European. Katie too, remembered how as the children chased each other around the small house, he would sometimes use his walking stick to trip up the child who was winning because he felt sorry for the slower one. Edna would help Kassim rearrange his arthritis-ridden legs, lifting them into a more comfortable position and bringing him food and water. Some of the mission men too

Muninga’s family had some closure this year, on the 22nd of October 2013 when a graveside ceremony was held and attended by three of her grandchildren – Aggie Puertollano, Edna Fraser and Leena Fraser; three great grandchildren and one great, great grandchild. With the help of the Stolen Generations working party in Broome, Muninga’s gravesite was prepared at Bungarun and a headstone with plaque that Edna Fraser had organised, was blessed by Monsignor Paul Bower. The family prepared a prayer for her, which they read at the graveside. At Beagle Bay the following day, a similar ceremony was held for Jimmy Kassim, her spouse. 23 Mary Durack, ‘Durack family papers, 1886-1991’, Diary, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 1962, 17/05/1962. 24 Edna Fraser, personal communication, March 2012. 25 Durack, ‘Durack family papers, 1886-1991’, 17/05/1962.

83 would come and help him hobble to Church.26 He died in 1936 in Beagle Bay where he is buried.

Fulgentius Fulgentius Fraser’s birth name is “Eulla” and he was born under a boab tree near the present day Camballin manager’s house. His biological mother is identified as Brumby, a full-descent Nigena woman and his biological father is alleged to be Percy Rose, a white man who managed Liveringa Station for the Kimberley Pastoral Company (KPC) between 1900 and 1912.27 Little is known about Brumby though it is believed she died when “Eulla” was a small child and he was then raised by her sister Stumpy.28 His legal guardian was a Scotsman, Walter Fraser, from whom he takes his surname though it seems that Eulla knew his biological father too.29 Percy Rose was an honorary protector of Aborigines and a Justice of the Peace and according to Katie, he paid the station’s overseer Walter Fraser £500 to be the boy’s legal guardian.30 He may well have had a sense of responsibility towards his ‘half- caste’ child, as did some white fathers in Queensland during the same era.31 But it seems more likely that, given his status, Rose could not be seen to be breaking the law which required him to provide support, and he may have felt that he should lead by example and abide by Section 34 of the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA):

34. (I.) Whenever a half-caste child whose age does not exceed fourteen years is being maintained in an Aboriginal institution or at the cost of the Government, a protector may, with the approval of the Minister, apply to the justice of the peace for a summons to be served on the alleged father of such child for the purpose of obtaining contribution to the support of the child. (Father liable to contribute to support of half-caste child. See Q. 1902 No, 1 s. 19).32

26 Edna Fraser, personal communication, March 2012. Edna recalls seeing Kassim’s death registration at Beagle Bay – Fr. Francis had shown it to her. She recalls him having a long name. The priest explained that unlike Edna who has a short name – Mary Edna Fraser – other cultures could have very long names. 27 Dept of Native Affairs., Fulgentius Fraser, 1940. 28 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 20/10/2013. 29 Katie Rodriguez, interviewed by the author, 1991, notes in author’s possession, Perth. 30 Tony Ozies, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 12/08/2003. 31 Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, Made to matter: White Fathers, Stolen Generations, Sydney, NSW, Sydney University Press, 2013, pp.10-14. 32 Government of Western Australia, 1905, http://asset0.aiatsis.gov.au/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1320205245411~715.

84 Eulla spent the first nine years of his life on Liveringa Station and it is conceivable that he developed an understanding of indigenous customs and beliefs living with his full-descent family. Neither Brumby nor Stumpy were ever removed from the station and they probably never embraced Christianity. The Fraser family’s oral history reveals little about Walter Fraser and even less about my grandfather’s Nigena father so it is unlikely that Katie and her siblings knew either. Walter Fraser remained his guardian well after he was married, as evidenced in Fulgentius’s Native Welfare file.33

As a child, I always understood that Percy Rose, who was a relative of Kim Rose the manager at Liveringa during the 1940s and 50s, was my Grandpa’s biological father but I never gave a thought to the fact that my grandpa was Fraser and not Rose. I became more aware of and interested in Walter Fraser once I started my PhD research since he is mentioned in several station diaries. Harold Godbehere, the manager of the 404,685-hectare Myroodah Station for thirty years from 1929, knew Walter Fraser. He claims Fraser had once worked for Cobb and Co in the eastern states as a coach driver and after arriving in the Kimberley he became an overseer on Liveringa and Myroodah Stations where the Aboriginal people apparently liked him, looked after him, and he looked after them in return.34 Even some of his skills later manifested themselves in Fulgentius, like his method of killing, carving and salting killers (bullocks). As my sister Pepita Pregelj well remembered, our Grandpa would prepare and salt raw meat to hang in the meat house at Willumbah, an overseers’ outstation on Liveringa. Described by Godbehere, Fraser would apparently prepare meat in the same way. “With knife aloft he [Walter Fraser] brought it down with a swish across the dampers and salt junk, bunged one upon the other and shot the portion along the oat bag spread before him, muttering a native name.”35

33 Dept of Native Affairs, Fulgentius Fraser, 1940. 34 Godbehere, Kimberley was God's, p.84. 35 Godbehere, p.84; see State Records Office, 1919/107, ‘Walter Fraser’, SROWA, con 3458. Willumbah is an outstation for Liveringa where Fulgentius and Phillipena lived during the 1950s and 60s. Fulgentius was an overseer at Liveringa. The Nygina meaning for Willumbah is ‘home by the water’ that lends itself to a sense of place as discussed earlier. My cousin Kerry Fraser McCarthy was raised by our grandparents, and she grew up knowing the meaning as told to her by Fulgentius. Years later, working as a nurse in the Derby hospital where she nursed my mother, Katie also confirmed to her the very same meaning for Willumbah [in] Kerry McCarthy, personal communication, 25/07/2015.

85 In 1909 Fulgentius had been identified by police patrols as “Ulula Fraser” a nine- year-old ‘half-caste’ boy living in the Liveringa vicinity and removed him from his family.36 It could be argued that Fulgentius too, like Phillipena, was safe with his Nigena family before being taken based on his daughter Aggie Puertollano’s comments, spoken here in Aboriginal English: “Fulgentius for Fraser from Walter, but he never looked after Grandpa, his Aboriginal father looked after him [translation - Fulgentius took the name ‘Fraser’ from Walter but he never looked after Grandpa, his Aboriginal father looked after him].”37

In December of 1909 Fulgentius was taken by police patrols to Derby and along with nine other mixed-descent boys was escorted by Father Planas OSB to join the Spanish Benedictine missionaries at Drysdale River Mission. The site had been established two years earlier in 1907 at a place known to the local Kwini as “Pago”. There he was baptised and renamed “Fulgentius” after the incumbent Abbot of New Norcia, Fulgentius Torres. Later in life he became known as “Fred” or simply, as “Fraser”. Once at the mission, the boys learned to teach catechism and helped bring the local people in. Fulgentius even entered local Catholic folklore when as a fourteen year old, he fired a gun into the air to distract the Kwini from attacking Father Alcade and two monks.38 My Grandpa thus, remains forever a Kimberley legend.

At Drysdale River there were no potential Catholic wives for the young men, therefore when at a marriageable age they were sent to Beagle Bay Mission to find a wife. In 1918 Fulgentius, who worked in the bakery met and began courting Phillipena Melycan who was working in the convent. Prior to their wedding Fulgentius wrote to the Spanish missionaries asking after them by name and reminding them of the times that they all enjoyed together, and for some help with his

36 District Police Office (Fitzroy)., J. T. Campbell, ‘Journal’, item 430/4739, SROWA, 1909. Variations of my grandfather’s name include ‘Eulla’ and ‘Ulula’. 37 Aggie Puertollano, personal communication, 28/08/2003. Aggie was interviewed by me, Fulgentius’s granddaughter, hence she refers to her father as ‘Grandpa’, for my benefit. Fulgentius and Phillipena’s grandchildren and extended family called them ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Granny’ respectively. 38 Eugene Perez, Kalumburu: The Benedictine Mission and the Aborigines, 1908-1975 Perth, WA, Kalumburu Benedictine Mission, 1977, pp 11-19; see Seraphim Sanz de Galdeano, Metamorphosis of a Race: Kuini and Kulari Tribes of Kalumburu Mission, Perth, WA, Hesperian Press, 2006. Sanz worked at and later managed Kalumburu Mission from 1939-1949 and 1955 – 1982, and he offers a variation to the spelling of the tribes Kuini and Kulari; see Durack, The Rock and the Sand, p.190.

86 wedding plans. The tone of his letters written in limited English depicts a sense of affection and parental attachment. He concludes with:

Please my Lord I ask you if you can sent to me a per of suite [a men’s suit] for my married day. I will be very pleased and thankfull for your great kindness. I think with the help of God I will get married after Easter, so please sent it to me for the day? and some holy pictures and one rosary bead. I think that’s all for this time. Goodbye may Gods blessing upon you. As I remains yours faithfully Child in J.C. Fulgentius Eulla.39

Fulgentius and Phillipena married on the 5th of August 1919 in Beagle Bay.40 Katie arrived fifteen months later and they named her Mary Catherine. The baby was delivered by an Aboriginal midwife in their cottage and she was baptised on the same day, it seems, that she was born.41 In fact, all females born on the mission during the Frasers’ era 1919 – 1940 were christened Mary though the family came to call her Katie.

Fulgentius, with Phillipena and Katie, returned to Drysdale River Mission in 1923 for one year.42 There they lived in a small comfortable cottage and he re-engaged with evangelistic work bringing people into the mission, while Phillipena, with other mixed-descent women taught the local women to cook and iron. A second child, Agnes (Aggie), arrived on the 4th of January 1924 and at some point they realised that they would have to return to Beagle Bay for their children’s education. There was no school at Drysdale River and because it was increasing its population the decision was made to send young families like the Frasers back to Beagle Bay.43

Katie Katie, the eldest of eight children, cherished fond memories of her mission days at Beagle Bay and she recalled those times to me for an assignment in my first year as

39 Fulgentius Fraser, Personal Letter, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 10/04/1919. 40 Dept of Native Affairs, Fulgentius Fraser, 1940. 41 Broome Catholic Diocese, Mary Catherine Fraser, Baptism Certificate, 1974 [issued]. E. J. Dwyer, Broome, WA, Broome Catholic Diocese. 42 Benedictine Community of New Norcia, Drysdale River Mission / Kalumburu Journal, 65014P. 43 Katie Rodriguez, personal communication, May 1991.

87 an undergraduate in 1990. My mother ‘grew up’ in the mission dormitory and with her younger siblings was not restricted from visiting her parents whenever she wanted to. She enjoyed reminiscing to me about her day-to-day routine under the care of the nuns, remembering the clean clothes and blankets and the dormitory atmosphere as a happy one.44

She described their daily routine as rising early to milk cows and goats and to prepare the ovens and the dining rooms for the day. This was followed by an early morning mass, then breakfast before school. Meals were served in the dining rooms whilst their parents, along with the rest of the folk from the ‘colony’, which is where families resided, lined up for their meals at the kitchen three times a day.45 With the help of the residents the missionaries provided the whole community with bread, tea, jam, meat and vegetables and they could get rations of flour and sugar from the store. At the schoolhouse the boys and the girls lined up side by side as they marched into class singing songs like The Men of Harlech. The Fraser sisters have never forgotten the songs from their childhood and occasionally we would hear them singing in harmony, Whispering Hope and Irish Eyes learned all those years ago from the Gaelic nuns. They received a very basic schooling yet developed fine writing styles. Phillipena would write to me when I was at boarding school in Geraldton during the 1960s.

In the evenings, the community gathered around big campfires and chanted the Rosary while on Sundays after Mass they regularly went on picnics, sometimes camping overnight in the bush. And at holiday time the older Fraser children would spend up to two weeks camping in the bush with their Nyumi.46 The Bay itself was a twenty mile walk, a round day trip. Distance was no problem and they made good

44 Katie Rodriguez, personal communication, May 1991. See similar experiences about dormitory life from Mary Carmel Charles who was eight years older than Katie in, William B McGregor, 'Language shift among the Nyulnyul of Dampier land: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia', International Journal of Linguistics, vol. 35, no. 1, 2003, pp.115-159, pp.139-140. 45 The ‘colony’ was the residential area set away from the dormitories and the missionaries. It is where the adults lived with their younger children, in small huts not big enough to accommodate large families. 46 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 20/09/2014.

88 use of indigenous survival skills passed down over thousands of years.47 Katie even recalled with amusement a time when, dressed in a standard floral print dress and barefoot she tumbled out of a tree near the mission and ran screaming back to the family. She had come across a skeleton. This was flat NyulNyul country and in keeping with local customs a body had been ceremoniously laid in the tree sometime in the distant past.48 Katie and Aggie, as the oldest children, lived in the dormitory while the younger ones, Frances, Edna and Gertie, lived at home in the colony. The children slept together in a large double bed on a mattress filled with hay while baby Dottie slept in her parents’ bed. Nygumi’s bed was separate.49

By 1929 it had become difficult for the Beagle Bay missionaries to support entire families so Fulgentius wrote to the Abbot requesting to return to Drysdale River but he was unsuccessful.50 He then sought and found employment droving stock to the southern markets, with the Broome-based company Streeter and Male. He would be away generally for up to nine months at a time, but Katie remembered a time when he was away once for almost three years. He worked with a ‘droving plant’, sometimes in charge, taking cattle from south of Broome through Meekatharra to Fremantle. On one of Fulgentius’s journeys he left the ‘plant’ at Meekatharra to visit the Benedictines at New Norcia. Living there was Father Alcade whom he had saved from death in 1913 at Drysdale River. The mutual affection between the two clearly had not diminished and the Benedictines held Fulgentius in high esteem, as described in this lively article found in the 1930 edition of St Ildephonsus College magazine:

We were pleased to meet not only Father Cubero, but also the half- caste native named Fulgentius, who played a man’s part in the history of the Drysdale Mission sixteen years ago. Fulgentius, the half-caste, belonged to the Derby district. He and several other young boys accompanied the late Bishop Torres when he went to found the Mission in the Nor’-West. These boys were trained by the fathers, and remained with them for a number of years. On 27th of September,

47 Katie’s recollections parallel historian Richard Broome’s take on mission life during that period: Broome, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1982, p.106; see B Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2011. 48 Katie Rodriguez, Oral History, 1991. 49 Edna Fraser, 28/08/2003 50 Fraser, Fulgentius, Personal Letter, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1919. The letter is copied here verbatim.

89 1914, the natives around the Mission made an attack during which our friend Father Alcade was severely speared. For a time it seemed that the Fathers would all be murdered and the Mission wiped out. Fulgentius, seeing the desperate position, seized an old gun and fired over the heads of the attackers. The report of the gun scared the natives who fled in fear to the bush. Alarming reports spread through the State as to the fate of the Mission. Fortunately the reports were exaggerated. The attack shows how precarious is the lot of the Missionaries though we are happy to say things have much improved since then. Father Alcade returned to Perth where the medical skill of Dr. J. J. Holland restored him to health and strength.

Fulgentius remained with the Fathers at the Drysdale for some years, and on leaving, he found employment as a . Early this year he arrived at Meekatharra with a mob of cattle from the Nor’-West. Having delivered the cattle safely he asked his “boss” to give him some time off as he wanted to visit New Norcia and there meet Father Alcade. His time at New Norcia was pleasant in every way. All were pleased to see him. He and Father Alcade were often seen in earnest conversation, perhaps reviewing old scenes. Fulgentius impressed us all by his courteous bearing, and his eagerness to learn as much as he could. One day he received a telegram from the “boss” asking him to hasten as he had much work ahead. Without any fuss or complaint Fulgentius packed his small collection of goods and before evening was away to the work awaiting him in the wide expanses of the Nor’- West. In his lonely rides by ridge and river, by creek and pool, across mountains, plains and valleys, we wish him every happiness his stout, brave heart deserves.51

Whenever Fulgentius returned to Beagle Bay he would travel on a supply boat to the bay then continue his journey by donkey and cart with the mission stores until met half way by his excited children, who had got word that Fulgentius was returning. They cried when they saw him, and they cried when he left: “He always brought us goodies, like big tins of minties and fancy biscuits [and] little bloomers and dresses. We were in our glory. But as soon as the work was impending, he’d go again”.52 Edna has recalled those events with her father both fondly and with a hint of sadness.

Overshadowing Katie’s glowing tribute to mission life, however, is the reality that the children were not prepared for life outside of the mission, other than to work as domestics. Edna Fraser says they had no idea what racism or discrimination meant.

51 Drysdale River Mission, in St Ildephonsus College magazine, New Norcia, WA, Benedictine Community, 1930. 52 Edna Fraser, 28/08/2003.

90 Certainly they were all happy together, but it was not until they went to live outside of the mission that they realised how white people regarded them.53 Nonetheless, Katie and her sisters steadfastly defended the missionaries at Beagle Bay where they grew up. She described her mission days as being the happiest days of her life and she wondered what might have happened to her parents had the government and the missionaries not sent them to the mission.54 Like Katie used to, Edna often asserts that her childhood was a happy one: “We were free to go to our parents whenever we wanted to. We didn’t have to stay in the dormitory.”55

In January 1939 Katie and three other young women entered the Sisters of Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles convent for Aboriginal aspirants at Beagle Bay Mission.56 The ‘Black’ convent, as it was called, was the brainchild of Bishop Otto Riable, the Catholic Administrator Apostolic of the Vicariate for the Kimberley. In a Report to the Mother General of the St. John of God Sisters in Wexford, Ireland, Bishop Riable stated that he had hoped that some Aboriginal boys might have been prepared to become priests but with only sporadic interest he turned his attention to Aboriginal girls who might aspire to a religious life.57 And he was not disappointed. To ensure that the interest from young women was genuine he held a retreat that was attended by twenty-seven girls with, he says, ‘great fervor and devotion’. The girls were asked to write down any queries they had about becoming a nun and to place them in a question box. Given that the only nuns the girls knew were all white, European women, it is with no surprise that the most asked question was whether it was possible for a ‘native or half-caste girl’ to be a nun. The Bishop assured them that the

53 Edna Fraser, 28/08/2003; see Dudgeon, ‘Mothers of Sin, 2007; Choo, Mission Girls, 2001, p.289; Gillian Cowlishaw, Black, White and Brindle: race in rural Australia, Sydney, NSW, Cambridge University Press, 1988. 54 Katie Rodriguez, Oral History, 1991. 55 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 23/10/2013; see Williams, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1999. Williams too acknowledged the ‘goodness and kindness’ of the Pallottine missionaries while describing her NyulNyul countrymen as ‘proud and good people’. 56 Choo, Mission Girls 2001, p.310. The ‘Black’ convent lasted for eleven years yet a thorough analysis of the nunnery has never been done, partly due to the difficulty researchers found in accessing archival and oral sources, including official Church records. It seems that the ‘Black’ sisterhood has been shrouded in secrecy and at the time of Choo’s research the nuns avoided questions and were reluctant to identify Aboriginal women who had joined the Order. Furthermore, even Beagle Bay inmates were unaware of the aspirants’ and postulants’ daily routines. Choo did nonetheless talk with some of the Fraser women, including Katie, though she only identifies Edna and Gertrude in her thesis. 57 Brigidia Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, Derby Chronicle, SAC Archives Rossmoyne (draft manuscript), WA, 1939, 7.430.

91 colour of their skin was no barrier and that a new congregation would be established. The nuns had become their surrogate mothers so it is not surprising either, that the girls aspired to joining a convent.58 Seven girls made formal applications. Satisfied that they were sincere, Riable then made application to the Holy See (the Pope in Rome) for permission to establish a convent specifically for Aboriginal nuns.59

It seems that Bishop Riable was motivated by the apparent success of a foundation for Native Sisters in Papua New Guinea. In keeping with the Holy See’s wish to have a native clergy established in all Catholic missions around the world, “The Little Native

Sisters of the Vicariate of Rabaul” grew out of humble beginnings in 1912.60 Riable’s philosophy is likely to have been inspired by the Bishop of Rabual’s aim to keep the links to the indigenous peoples through the nuns, one of simplicity. In a letter to Riable, the Bishop of Rabaul counselled:

Nothing would be so disastrous as to make of them a kind of half- European Sisters, an enigma to themselves and a burden for the Missions. Everyone knows the ridiculous and unhappy condition of a race or category untimely raised above its level or standing.61

But by 1939 the tone of the Papua New Guinean bishop to Bishop Riable had hardened, as the following advice for the Beagle Bay Aspirants shows. Indeed it could be argued, that this contributed to the failure of the convent a little over a decade later.

1. Be very strict regarding the admission and have each candidate medically examined especially for T.B. 2. Light clothing and as much native (Indigenous) food as possible. A great deal of physical work, little spiritual exertion, short lectures, and a great deal of recreation. 3. Always under supervision and direction of a European Sister. Not allowing them to go far out with their own people, no [sic] have many

58 Choo, Mission Girls, 2001, p.307. 59 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 7.431. 60 Nailon, 7.433. 61 Nailon, 7.433.

92 visitors. They are never to accept anything from their own people, etc [sic].62

Given the close relationships between the Fraser family at the time, it is difficult to imagine that Katie would have been able to shun her own family as the Bishop suggested. Katie and the other women, who were the first to enter the convent, did meet the eligibility criteria laid out under the Rules of the Society of Native Sisters that was developed for the purposes of entry to the Aboriginal convent. Rule 1 and Rule 7 indicate the regime under which they were required to live:

Rule 1 - Any Catholic girl of at least one half of Aboriginal blood can be admitted if she has the right intention, is bodily and mentally fitted for missionary work and is of a sociable disposition. Rule 7 – The novices will not speak to anyone outside the convent except what their various duties require. They can receive visitors once a month.63

With Katie secure in the convent and the other children either in the dormitory or with Phillipena, Fulgentius moved to Ethel Creek Station in the Pilbara for two years. He then returned to Nigena country, to Myroodah Station where he worked for Harold Godbehere and lived at outstations as an overseer.64 Several Aboriginal people also lived at outstations on the larger leases throughout the Kimberley from where they maintained the far reaches of the stations. Phillipena eventually joined Fulgentius on various sites with most of their children.65 Two of their daughters Edna and Gertie stayed in the convent with Katie to attend school. In May of 1943 Edna was discharged from the mission and she left to live with Aggie, now married to ex- Beagle Bay inmate Tom Puertollano and they lived in Derby. When just 15, Edna, secured her first job in 1943 at the Derby post office where she earned £2.10 a week. Edna’s written English was good and she penned out telegrams that she then delivered by pushbike. And she operated the switchboard. She was the first Aboriginal woman to ever work in the Derby post office where she remained until 1947.66 Fulgentius

62 Nailon, 7.435. 63 Christine Choo, Aboriginal women on Catholic missions in the Western Kimberley, PhD Thesis, University of Western Australia, 1995, pp.376-378. 64 Dept of Native Affairs, Fulgentius Fraser, 1940. 65 Dept of Native Affairs, 1940. 66 Edna Fraser, 28/03/2003.

93 meanwhile, had been offered an overseer’s position on Liveringa by Kim Rose and with Phillipena and three youngest children Dottie, Jimmy and Leena he relocated to Willumbah outstation in the 1940s.67 Fulgentius had, at last, returned to his childhood home.

Katie meanwhile, enjoyed her work in the mission convent, fine-tuning her domestic skills, learning to crochet and sewing her creations to the hem of the altar cloth that remained in the famous Beagle Bay church for many years. But, as noted in a letter by the Commissioner of Native Affairs to the Honourable Minister for the North West in 1943 in which he explained that the young novitiates’ vows were, ‘in no way comparable to those taken by the members of the Order of St. John of God’, she was always a lesser child of God in the eyes of white authority. 68

Katie remained ambivalent about her time in the convent, but she rarely talked about her experiences and no one can speak on her behalf. I wonder then whether she might have even anticipated her departure in 1946 because in 1943, at the age of twenty- three, she wrote to the Commissioner of Native Welfare requesting an exemption from the Native Administration Act (WA 1936). She concluded her letter:

. . . I do think that my interests are now sufficiently protected by the religious society to which I belong and which is under the special protectorate of His Lordship, Bishop Riable. It is mainly for this reason that I apply for an exemption from the Native Administration Act. Yours faithfully, Sister M. Agnes Fraser.69

Her request came in the same year that Edna left Beagle Bay, leaving just Katie and Gertie at the mission. An exemption from the Act was only granted to those who met certain criteria and were considered able to ‘better themselves’. Those deemed ready to leave a mission (or a reserve) to live in a town were considered to be both capable of showing respect to their new employers and having the ability to save money.70 As a mission inmate Katie was not actually entitled to an exemption, nonetheless she was

67 Phillipena returned to Beagle Bay for the birthday of both Jimmy and Leena respectively. 68 Dept of Native Affairs, Katherine Fraser, ‘Personal file’, item 879/43, DAA, 1943, 22/09/1943. 69 Dept of Native Affairs, 18/04/1943. 70 Tim Rowse. (ed.), Contesting Assimilation, Perth, WA, API Network, Curtin University, c2005.

94 granted one because she was a member of a religious order.71 The following year in Western Australia the Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act of 1944 was passed and Katie became eligible to apply for a Citizenship certificate, but it was not until four years later, as discussed later in this thesis, that she applied for citizenship. A Citizenship certificate would afford her limited rights if she could prove, among other things, that she could behave in a ‘civilised’ way.72

Gertie was the next to leave the mission and she joined her sisters in Derby on the 16th of May 1945.73 In 1946 Katie followed, to be reunited with her siblings in Derby where she worked briefly as a nanny and domestic for Harold and Sylvia Rowell.74 She then worked as a housemaid at the Club Hotel before moving to Liveringa Station where Fulgentius had secured her work as a cook.

Frank The youngest of eight children my father was born Francisco Rodriguez Casanova at Freixio, Spain in 1921, where he lived until 1934, the year he turned thirteen when he moved 100 kms away to the Benedictine monastery at Samos. In 1937 he relocated 15,000 kms to the Benedictine monastery at New Norcia in Western Australia. As we examine the period from his birth to the time that he left Spain, we come to understand why his Catholic mother, Maria Casanova decided to allow him to come to Australia. Freixio is set among the hills 6 kms south of the town of Mon Forte de Lemos, and it is typical of a northern Spanish peasant village. A small chapel, the “Santa Barbara”, stands in the centre surrounded by the villagers’ homes and barns with fields of crops extending into the countryside. At least three other Freixio families lived in what appears like an interconnected set of buildings with narrow pathways edged with stone fences separating the homes.

This country is strikingly different to the bush and red earth 100 kms east of Derby where Frank would one day build a corrugated iron house with inner asbestos walls and cement floors for his family. His home at Freixio was a two-tiered stone layered

71 Dept of Native Affairs, Katherine Fraser, 1943, 22/09/1943. 72 Rowse, (ed.) Contesting Assimilation, c2005. 73 Dept of Native Affairs, Fulgentius Fraser, 945/40. 74 Harold M Rowell, Reminiscences, Perth, Battye Library, 2000, p.115.

95 structure made from local materials, with the living and sleeping quarters on the top level, and a barn underneath. The warmth from the farm animals below the wooden floor would have mingled with aromas of homemade tortillas de pataca (omelette), linguiça (sausages) stewed polbo (octopus) and roasted castañas (chestnuts) providing a pleasant distraction from the barn odour during the cold, winter nights of inland Galicia. During the day his mother would shepherd the cattle into the pastures to feed, and she then milked the cows to make cream and cheese and other food provisions.75 As a small boy Frank remembered his mother showing him how to plant vegetable seeds in the field. Dressed in baggy peasant pants with a heavy overcoat and beret and clinging closely to her he would squat every few paces to dig a hole the width of a teacup and carefully lay a seed, covering it with damp soil just as she had shown him. Later, with his siblings he would go to the village chapel to pray, and on Sundays and special occasions they would all go to the local church, “Santa Lucia” in nearby Guntin village. He loved the special occasions when fireworks lit up the evening sky and with his older brothers he would run around excitedly to find the empty cones and rocket tails. Like many young boys he liked to play with fire.

Frank first used dynamite when he was about six years old. As a mischievous lad he stole dynamite from his fourteen-year-old brother, Jesus, who was in charge of the town explosives’ depot and he placed it under a rock, then put a match to it before scampering up a hill. A huge blast followed shattering the rock and Frank was lucky to have survived!76 He often worked on his sister Dolores’ farm at the nearby village

75 The food sources are in Galician. Today, Freixio’s aged and deteriorating buildings had been condemned and boarded up to prevent people entering. My relatives who live there have a new house just a few metres from the old home. They continue to prepare and eat their traditional foods in much the same way, making cheese to sell in nearby Mon Forte de Lemos, and they make their own sausages and wine. Galicians call their province ‘verde’ Spain, meaning ‘green’ because of its cool and wet climate, unlike the drier southern regions. The province is endowed with lush meadows and widespread farm plots, hills, mountains, resourceful rivers and ample coastline boasting superior seafood to the rest of the country. Winters are cold and it often snows, while the summers are mild. Galicia is the least known of the seven Celtic nations. It embraces Celtic traditions and customs that are evident in the arts, architecture and myths and legends. Transceltic, ‘Celtic Identity, Language and the Question of Galicia’, Culture and heritage, 2013, http://www.transceltic.com/pan-celtic/celtic-identity-language-and-question-of-galicia, (accessed 06/07/2015). In short, this is the milieu from which Frank Rodriguez came. There are no similarities between the north west of Spain and the north west of Australia where Katie and Frank were optimistic of developing a sheep station. The terrain is flat with low shrub and the climate has two distinct seasons; a monsoonal hot humid summer, tempered by a dry mild winter and it hosts sprawling pastoral properties of thousands of acres. 76 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, 17/8/2003. Years later on his own property at Debesa he would continue as a pyrotechnician of sorts as he adapted to fire

96 of Norcedas. In very cold conditions he would trudge in the early mornings 10 kms to her farm where he sometimes stayed rather than walk home in the evening. As a shepherd he looked after the sheep and the cows as they grazed in the fields. He vividly remembered praying desperately to St Anthony (the patron saint of finding things) after he had fallen asleep and allowed the flock to wander off. He knew he would be punished and not permitted tea unless he found them, and it was getting dark.77 When Frank was ten years old his father suffered a stroke and lost the ability to work. He quickly succumbed to his illness leaving Maria to care for their brood and run the small farm.

Frank received little education until he was thirteen when he was sent to the monks at Samos, at a time when Spain was on the cusp of civil war. His mother had been reluctant to have him educated in the republican state education system and the Benedictine monks accepted him into the monastery. He recalled this time with a hint of sadness because according to the seminarians, it was too late for him to contemplate priesthood:

When I first went to study, when they sent me from my home when I was thirteen years of age, I was too far behind and they reckoned that I was not scholarly and I could go back home with [my] parents or become a labourer.78

He chose to remain at Samos as a novice monk, which meant he learned labouring skills. His first language was Galego, a dialect similar to Portuguese but it was the national language Castellano that he learned to read and write at Samos. Later in Australia he learnt to read and write in English. On a visit to Samos in 1997, fifty years after leaving, he clearly enjoyed returning to the Benedictine monastery, just 12 kms off the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail (the French route). He proudly pointed to the roof extensions on the old buildings that he and other boys had worked on in the 1930s. At the age of sixteen Frank left Samos with the Benedictine

farming, burning off paddocks in preparation for the ‘wet season’ so that new grasses as feed for his sheep would reappear after the first rains. Michael Gugeri makes mention of Frank’s penchant for fireworks in his book, Michael Gugeri, God before Gugeri: luggers, trucks & water bores & other Kimberley stories, Victoria Park, WA, Hesperian Press, 2014, p.55. 77 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, 05/1997. 78 Frank Rodriguez Snr, interviewed by the author, 1990, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

97 missionaries to work in Australia, leaving behind a country descending into civil war.79 During this time it is probable that his mother and his sisters Dolores, Aurora and Amable, remained in Freixio while his brothers, Manuel, Jose and Jesus were away somewhere at war, fighting.

In the years following the establishment of the Benedictine mission at New Norcia, it was not unusual for the incumbent Abbot to travel to Spain to entice youth to join their West Australian monastery and convent and it is feasible that the Head of New Norcia, Abbot Catalan, visited Samos during Frank’s time.80 If he did, it is likely that my father was attracted by Catalan’s account of the monastery and the prospects for young men. In the year before he left Spain (on the 10th of February 1936) he became Brother Beda.81 It is not clear what criteria he would have had to meet in order to work in Australia as a missionary, but it is feasible that he may have had to pay a £40 landing permit and have work guaranteed by relatives or friends in Australia. In Frank’s case the Benedictines would have sponsored him.82 At the time, there does not appear to have been any requirement for the missionaries to speak English, but many have had to pass a medical check. The current New Norcia archivist has found several notes in the records about individual newly arrived monks which list height, chest circumference, condition of sight and hearing and other very basic medical and physical facts.83

As my brother Frank Rodriguez Jnr recalls, our grandmother Maria Casanova consented to Frank leaving Spain because she wanted to protect him:

79 Richard A Cardwell, 'Poetry and Culture, 1868-1936', in David T Gies (ed.), The Cambridge Companion To: Modern Spanish Culture, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p.175; see Joseph Aceves & Williams Douglass, The Changing Faces of Rural Spain, New York, Halsted Press, 1976, p. p.105; Juan Pan-Montojo, 'Spanish Agriculture, 1931-1955: Crisis, Wars, and New Policies in the Reshaping of Rural Society', in Yves Segers Paul Brassley, & Leen Van Molle, (ed.), War, Agriculture, and Food [electronic resource]: Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s, Hoboken, Taylor & Francis, 2012; Christopher J Ross, Spain since 1812, 3rd edn; London, Hodder Education, 2009, Mary Kneipp, 'Australian Catholics and the Spanish Civil War', Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, vol. 19, 1998, pp.47-64. 80 Fr David Barry, personal communication, 20/03/2013. 81 Rodriguez, Frances - Hno Beda, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1937-1941. 82 National Archives of Australia, ‘More People Imperative: Immigration to Australia, 1901- 39’, Your story, our history, Canberra, 2014, http://guides.naa.gov.au/more-people- impreative/chapter4/index.aspx, (accessed 06/07/2015). 83 Peter Hocking, email, 16/04/2014.

98 It was during the Civil War in Spain during some very hard times and most or some or all of his brothers were involved or away in fighting and his Mother told the monks to take him to Australia where he would be safe and the opportunity to travel. He did speak of how sad it was to leave and how his mother cried lots when he left.84

Frank sailed from Genoa in Italy on the Viminale arriving in Fremantle on the 17th of August 1937.85 He travelled to New Norcia the next day with Brother Santiago in a 1930s Maple Leaf truck arriving in time for lunch:

At a quarter to twelve, our Most Illustrious Father Abbot, together with Fathers Pedro and Pablo as well as the new brother (David) Rosendo Alvarez, arrived; Brother Santiago arrived twenty minutes later with the truck loaded with goods along with our new brother, Beda Rodriguez.86

Frank was one of the last novices to arrive in Australia until well after the Spanish Civil War. The final cluster of recruits from Spain to New Norcia arrived in 1948. Today there are no Spanish monks at New Norcia though their legacy remains strong.87

The climate, the environment and the sparsely populated country are likely to have had the biggest impact on Frank. Through all of his adolescent years he had lived the austere life of a novice Benedictine monk at Samos and at New Norcia where he embraced the strict disciplinary “Rule” of St. Benedict, adhering to the rules of ‘silence, obedience, and humility’.88 St. Benedict was a young scholar who had dropped out of college at Nursia near Rome in about 500AD. He had been ‘repelled by the futility of life devoted solely to hedonism’ and he turned instead to find ‘the

84 Frank Rodriguez jnr, email, 2013. 85 Commonwealth of Australia, Quarantine Service, Department of Health, Perth, WA, Battye Library WA, 1937. 86 Brother Martinez, Photographs, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives. According to the New Norcia archivist, Peter Hocking, the Chevrolet was built in Canada, and probably assembled by Holden in Australia. 87 Fr David Barry, Fr Bernard Rooney & Fr Anscar McPhee, personal communication, 20/03/2013. 88 Nicholas Buxton, Tantalus and the Pelican: Exploring Monastic Spirituality Today, London/New York, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009, p.99.

99 eternal truth in prayer and solitude’, leaving his legacy as “Benedict’s Rule” for those seeking to embrace gospel-based lives.89

Consequently, Frank’s working day consisted of labour and prayer. Unlike the secrecy surrounding Katie’s daily activities in the ‘black’ convent at Beagle Bay, Frank’s existence was well defined. Under Benedict’s Rule, prayer and work are not treated separately in a monk’s life. Indeed, prayer is considered the most important work that a monk partakes in. Slotted in between his prayer schedules Frank learned to lay cement, he worked as a farmer, tended to the grape vines and the olive trees, and he worked closely with Brother Paulino in the bakery.90 He woke early each day to start work even before breakfast and before prayers. A weekday schedule of ‘holy exercises’ followed: 9.30 – 10.15 focused conversations; 11.35 spiritual readings; lunch and rest; 3.45 – 4.30 focused conversations; 4.30 – 5 cell; 5 – 6 quiet recreation; 6 – 6.30 cell; 6.30 – 7 dinner; and 7.30 conversation and Rosary.91 At times when he worked away from the monastery, perhaps in the field where he was unable to attend the holy exercises, he would pause to pray.

89 Benedict had found it hard to live up to the expectations of a Christian so he devised a guideline for himself and his followers, based on the writings of monks before him and on the principles of the gospel that became known as “Benedict’s Rule”. Written in Latin in the sixth century initially for men, Benedict’s Rule has seventy-three chapters and around 9,000 words. It has been translated many times in keeping with today’s inclusive language and shifts in scholarly opinion, making it less complex and more accessible for those interested in monastic life and their desire to live by the Rule. It provides guidance for monastic life. For instance obedience, silence and humility. And it discusses the clothes and footwear the monks should wear; and provides instructions for the election of the Abbot. Wybourne challenges the belief that the Rule is strict and he argues that it was Benedict’s intention only to provide a useful set of directions for those seeking to embrace gospel-based lives. He himself who spent time in monasteries researching for his book “Tantalus and the Pelican: Exploring Monastic Spirituality Today” suggests that Benedict’s Rule is neither ‘repressive nor indulgent’ and is still useful and relevant today. They are not, he points out, rules and regulations for running a monastery; that is what constitutions and policies are for. Perhaps this strict and disciplined lifestyle also contributed to Frank’s decision to later leave the monastery. St. Benedict himself was a layman, a point that Esther de Waal claims is ‘liberating and encouraging’ for lay people to realise. She too argues that what the Rule offers is a practical way of life, a focus and not a set of directions laid down by any superior clergyman. see Buxton, Tantalus and the Pelican, 2009, p.101; Catherine OSB Wybourne, Work & Prayer: The Rule of St Benedict for Lay People, London, Continuum Books, 1992, p.7; Esther de Waal, A Life - Giving Way: a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, New York, Continuum Books, 1995, p.xvii; de Waal, New York, Continuum Books, 1995, pp.9; Buxton, London/New York, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009, p.101; Buxton, London/New York, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009, p.99; de Waal, New York, Continuum Books, 1995, p.xii. 90 Paulino was the last surviving Spanish monk at New Norcia who died in late 2009. Frank had also befriended Father Seraphim Sanz who would later become the resident priest and CEO of Kalumburu Mission and over the years they remained good friends. 91 Santos Ejercicios, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1937.

100 As, apparently, for most of his contemporaries the rosy picture presented by Abbot Catalan began to fade as the reality of evangelistic life hit home and Frank began to contemplate the consequences of a lifetime in the monastery, where few recruits remained. With the knowledge that he could never become a priest, Frank is likely to have made the decision not to take his final vows to become a monk. On the 15th of July 1941, Abbot Catalan handed him an official letter stating that his request for dispensation from monastic life had been granted. The Abbot explained that the Apostolic Delegate who held special faculties from the Holy See had seen fit to release him from his vows and other religious duties. The letter told Frank that he was no longer privileged as a Benedictine noviciate and he should practise the life of an el mundo Christian (common in the world).92 Those who chose to leave the monastery could at their own cost find their way home to Spain.

The next day, no longer Brother Beda, Francisco Rodriguez left New Norcia and entered the world of ordinary citizens, finding paid work for the first time on a vineyard in the Upper Swan Valley. He had developed into a handsome young man, with an athletic build, thin dark hair and a small, tapered moustache. He stood 1.8m and weighed around 80kgs. Frank was determined to experience life in Australia beyond the monastery and he set out on his own to explore more of the country before returning to Galicia. Living in the Swan Valley he often went to Sunday mass at St. Michaels Catholic Church on Great Eastern Highway in Midland Junction then he would cycle the thirty-five kilometres to Scarborough Beach just for a swim. On his return he occasionally found lodgings for the night in what is now the Brass Monkey Hotel in Northbridge. 93 After a year he headed further south to work on wheat and dairy farms near Lake Grace and at a dehydrated apple factory in Donnybrook. In Donnybrook accommodation was very basic, even for someone who had lived a strict life in a monastery for seven years. His bed was made of hay and hessian bags, and he lived in the garage. Even the owner’s two dogs, he later quipped, had a much better deal. They had a double bed with inner spring mattress and a big living room. In Donnybrook, he made friends with the Millard family and, still keen to experience more of Australia before returning home, he was pleased when they found him work

92 I. A. Catalan OSB, Personal Letter, 15 July 1941, Cindy Solonec, private collection. 93 Pepita Pregelj, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 07/09/2003.

101 with their relatives in the Kimberley on cattle stations owned by the Emanuel Brothers.

Three years to the day of his departure from New Norcia, on the 15th of July 1944, Frank flew to Port Hedland in the Pilbara. The passengers overnighted there before continuing their journey to Broome, Derby and finally to Fitzroy Crossing. His new employers the Emanuel Brothers owned several large stations in the central Kimberley including , Christmas Creek and Gogo.94 Ted Millard who managed all three between 1921 and 1953 sent Frank to Christmas Creek where Millard’s nephew Vic Jones, was the manager and this is where Frank decided to commence a diary.95 He had entertained the idea of keeping a diary while at New Norcia where the monks penned their memoirs and now, as a twenty-one year old he began an account of his movements. His first diary entry reads: “They sent me to work at Christmas Creek [station] and from this date I start[ed] writing some sort of diary, and wrote down events that happened across my life.” Given his teenage disappointment of not being scholarly enough to become a priest, Frank was determined to educate himself and over the years he became literate in and a fluent speaker of English. He came to enjoy reading, in particular world events and Spanish history. The fact that my father even kept a diary is quite remarkable given his limited opportunities for formal education and it is to his credit that he should leave a valuable legacy for his descendants. Katie, on the other hand, never left any such documents therefore I rely on oral histories from her siblings, children and associates and her native welfare file for her story. Had Katie left her memoirs they would have given this work a whole new perspective!96

94 Bolton, 'The Emanuels of Noonkanbah and GoGo', Early days vol. 8, no. Part 4, 1980; see Chris Owen, Weather hot, flies troublesome...: police in the Kimberley District of Western Australia 1882-1901, PhD Thesis, University of Western Australia, 2013. 95 Bolton, 'The Emanuels of Noonkanbah and Go Go', Part 4. The Emanuel Brothers was founded by Samuel Emanuel who, at the age of twenty-seven in 1830 migrated from London to Goulburn NSW where he founded the family business. Following Alexander Forrest’s expedition to the Kimberley and his trumpeting of the region’s pastoral potential, Samuel’s grandson Isadore travelled to the region in the 1880s with the Duracks. While the latter ‘settled’ in the East Kimberley, Emanuel continued to the West Kimberley where he took up large leases along the Fitzroy Valley riverfront. 96 In 2003 when I decided to do a Masters degree, exploring the coexistence between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the West Kimberley, I decided that Frank’s diaries would be a useful source but I only used few of the entries in that thesis. On opening the first diary written in 1944 I was surprised to find that for the first six years he had written in Spanish, so that is why I arranged for him to come to Perth and for two weeks, as we sat together and as he trawled through those years translating his own words, I typed up the

102

As Frank’s time in the West Kimberley grew into years and his diary continued to harvest snippets from his life, references are made to the monks. From his entries we know that his very first job, not surprisingly, was formwork that he had learned at New Norcia. He cemented a water tank at Blood Wood camp about 15 kms from the Christmas Creek homestead where he first met the camp manager John Marshall and John’s new bride, Nita. The three became lifetime friends. Then at Dusty Mustering Camp he met several other Aboriginal workers who taught him to ride horses and to brand and geld cattle. His introduction to the Kimberley as a ‘clean skin’, whose third language was English, was not without its moments. He later laughed about learning to ride and being thrown to the delight of the Aboriginal stockmen. And he mentions clowning around and making fun of the boss, until they realised that Vic Jones always carried a revolver.97 Over the years whenever the stockmen met up they would greet each other affectionately, always happy to see one another.98

Though having lived in monasteries with strict work regimes the young shepherd, turned novice monk, turned farmhand, found station work very hard and tiring. He and the other stockmen mustered, branded, and drafted the cattle as they moved them from one site to the next, edging closer to the Gogo homestead from where a drover would muster the cattle to the Broome meatworks. Frank cemented more tanks for Jones who was impressed with his workmanship and by the end of August raised his pay from £3 to £4 a week.99 But even though Frank was proving to be a capable builder and mason he still needed official qualifications as a tradesman to ensure continuing work into the future. He enrolled in correspondence courses through Stotts College in Perth and the International Correspondence Schools (ICS) achieving

entries. I would ask him to clarify aspects of, or to elaborate on points. I had never before looked closely at the diaries and now I began to gain a sense of who my father was. He presents as a very modest and private yet decisive man who was well structured in his outlook with both family and work commitments. He rarely ever wrote anything negative about anyone and there are few subjective references to his children. On occasion frustration surfaces but his writings clearly revealed a man totally devoted to Catholicism. 97 Frank Rodriguez Snr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 2003. 98 Rodriguez Snr, 2003. Walmajarri stockman, Eric Lawford, in telling his story to Paul Marshall describes the places where Frank first worked in the Kimberley. He also refers to the stockman ‘Crowbar’ who Frank worked with several years earlier on Christmas Creek Station. see Paul Marshall, Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right, Now We Go 'Side the River, Along That Sundown Way: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1988; Frank Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, Battye Library, Perth, 1944 – 1969, 03/03/1946. 99 Rodriguez Snr, Oral History, 25/08/1944.

103 a certificate in Roofing and Steel Square on the 25th of January 1950.100 Given his limited English, the improbability of qualified tutors, and the time it would have taken for mail to reach its destination and for assignments to be returned, it is a credit to Frank that he persevered and gained the necessary accreditations. Katie often paid testament to his determination to study, saying how he would work late into the night to complete his assignments.101

In 1945 development had recommenced at Broken Hill Pty Ltd’s (BHP) iron ore mine at Cockatoo Island in the Yampi Sound north of Derby, attracting workers in search of better pay.102 Frank too headed offshore in early 1945. But he was disappointed that the pay proved no better than on the stations while union strikes meant days off work and no pay. He decided to return to work for Ted Millard at Christmas Creek Station who had written advising him that work was available if he wanted it.103 On the 23rd of October at Christmas Creek he laid the foundations for the first house that he would build in the Kimberley. This was before the days of concrete mixers and Frank hand mixed the dry cement in drums then moulded the bricks with his hands from the local sands and stones.104 The house is still there, as part of the manager’s office at Wunkajunka Aboriginal Community. It was one of two stone structures that he said ‘they could never destroy’. The other is the manager’s house at Camballin that he built for the agricultural researcher Kim Durack in 1955 (discussed in Chapter 3).105

Having been raised in rural milieus my father was close to nature, accurately predicting the weather, being fascinated with the landscape and he had become a keen gardener. In later years, he would successfully cultivate trees and vegetable gardens

100 Frank’s course comprised Arithmetic, Workshop Calculations, Roof Details & Levels, Steel Square, and Special Roofs. Stott’s Colleges was established in 1883 and is one of Australia’s oldest private colleges. 101 Katie Rodriguez, personal communication, 1990. 102 Broken Hill Proprietary Company, The Decade 1945-1955: Seventy-five years of B.H.P. development in industry, 1885-1960 / BHP (firm) Melbourne, VIC, Broken Hill P/L, 1960. 103 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 19/06/1945. 104 Rodriguez Snr, 23/10/1945. 105 Frank Rodriguez Snr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 2003. Frank was a carpenter, a stonemason and a builder and his building legacy survives in the heritage- listed buildings at Liveringa; and the modest buildings at Debesa; see Jim Anderson, 'Liveringa Homestead Group', in Tanya Suba, and John Taylor, (eds), Register of Heritage Places, Group 10 11/12/1998, Perth, WA, Register of Heritage Places - Assessment Doc’ Liveringa Homestead, 1997.

104 so it is little wonder that within a short time in the Kimberley he was experimenting, grafting introduced figs onto wild figs, but with no success. He quickly realised that grafting a deciduous fig tree onto a native fig tree just was not going to work.106 Frank was also a good correspondent and he kept in regular contact with his family in Galicia, his brothers in South America, the Millards in the southwest and with the monks at New Norcia and he received regular copies of the Catholic paper The Record.107

In May 1946 he decided to leave the Emanuel Brothers and return to Cockatoo Island so he headed for Derby where he was intercepted by Kim Rose, the manager of Liveringa Station, who offered him work. Since his arrival in the Kimberley in 1944 his aptitude as a hardworking, capable and reliable builder was gaining him a reputation that continued throughout his working life. After a short stint at Cockatoo he decided to accept the Rose offer and he arrived at Liveringa on the 16th of July 1946.108 Frank began work in the blacksmith’s workshop on the 17th of July.109 He undertook a variety of jobs that included concrete worker, mechanic and all round handy man, though primarily he was a builder.110 He also began courting Katie Fraser who had arrived at Liveringa one week after him. Although their lives to this point had been somewhat different paths, neither Frank nor Katie had wanted to remain in their respective Catholic cloisters to lead a life of celibacy, prayer and missionary work, and they left of their own accords. Frank in 1941 and Katie in 1946, the year they met and fell in love at Liveringa.

106 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 17/01/1946. 107 In 2014, the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth ceased producing “The Record” and it became an online eNewspaper. It was first published in 1840. Archbishop Timothy SDB Costelloe, 'The Record heads in new direction', The Record 16/07/2014. 108 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 16/07/1946. 109 Rodriguez Snr, 17/07/1946. 110 Kevan Rose, ‘Liveringa Station, Derby (Jan 1949 to Dec 1951)’, in This Is My Life, Perth, WA, Private Collection, unpublished, 2005. After arriving in the Kimberley in 1944, Frank quickly gained a reputation as a hardworking, capable and reliable builder that continued throughout his working life. Jim Anderson who was the caretaker at Liveringa for several years during the 1980s and 90s made special mention of Frank’s legacy when he listed the Liveringa buildings for the Western Australian Heritage Council: “The builder, Frank Rodriguez, a Spanish stonemason and refugee from the horrors of his homeland’s civil war, was responsible for much of the construction at Liveringa and Camballin in the 1950s and 1960s”.

105 Chapter 3 Early days at Liveringa: 1946 – 1953

In 1946 the Kimberley Pastoral Company (KPC) owned Liveringa Station and Kim and Pat Rose were managing it, while members of their extended family managed nearby sheep stations. Stretching along the banks of the Fitzroy River over the expansive flood plains and lush pastures the Liveringa homestead emerged like a mansion on a high hill with panoramic views. It overlooks a meandering billabong set in the undulating landscape from where the flood plains stretch for miles. Safe from any raging floods, the boss’s house boasts a swimming pool, a tennis court, terraced lawns and exotic flower gardens that grow on the escarpment leading up to the house. The homestead perched gallantly above its lesser buildings, signifying the hierarchal system that once operated from there. Nestled neatly in the lower hills once stood three married employees’ cottages where Katie and Frank lived, the men’s quarters, the cookhouse and mess, a meat house, the shearing shed, blacksmith’s workshop, and the Aboriginals’ fenced in compound. Alongside the billabong were vegetable gardens that provided sustenance for the Liveringa population. The layout of buildings was not unlike cattle homesteads in the Northern Territory as described by Ann McGrath.111 Twenty kms from the Liveringa homestead is Willumbah, an outstation where Fulgentius was the overseer (head stockman) and it is there that he and Phillipena lived with their younger children. In contrast to the Liveringa homestead and surrounds, the Frasers’ house was built on flat ground near the floodplains.

Within a few days of arriving at the station, Frank met Fulgentius Fraser for the first time and he was happy to find someone else who spoke Spanish. Fulgentius in his youth had learned Spanish from the Benedictine missionaries at Drysdale River Mission and he humoured Frank with: “[d]onde yo soy hay muchas castanas” [where

111 Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1989; see Gugeri, Michael, ‘Liveringa Station 1952-1954, in God before Gugeri: luggers, trucks & water bores & other Kimberley stories, Victoria Park, WA, Hesperian Press, 2014; Jane Lydon, (ed.) Fantastic Dreaming: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission, Plymouth, UK, AltaMira Press, 2009. Some of the buildings including the nissen hut no longer exist. Those that do are heritage listed in, Heritage Council, ‘Liveringa Homestead Group’, State Heritage Office, http://inherit.stateheritage.wa.gov.au/Public/Inventory/Details/6feb342b-2164-44d9-874c- 56abf9103092, 2012 (accessed 10/07/2015).

106 I come from there are a lot of chestnuts].112 Galicia is renowned for its chestnut trees and Frank well remembered his mother cooking the nuts at Freixio. He recalled to me that he chuckled with delight at Fulgentius’ Spanish vernacular, then he became even more interested in what Fulgentius had to say when he mentioned that his eldest daughter Katie’s arrival was imminent.113 As he often did for his children, Fulgentius had secured work for Katie as a cook and she arrived at the station on Saturday the 27th of July 1946 ten days after Frank, courtesy of Bishop Otto Riable.114 She was given a small room adjacent to the cookhouse and the store from where she too, had a magnificent view of the billabong and the Fitzroy River valley. Katie and Frank’s mutual attraction was immediate and within six months they were married.

The speed at which my parents became engaged and set a wedding date probably had something to do with Katie’s departure from the convent at Beagle Bay. Her decision to leave put her under pressure from both the Bishop and from Fulgentius for her to return, but she was adamant that she no longer wanted to live the life of a nun. Along with the three other women who were the first to enter the convent, Biddy Kelly, Vera Dann and Lucy Dolby, Katie was considered to be a model of Christian womanhood to her peers.115 But now she had abandoned Riable’s vision to have Aboriginal nuns evangelise their own people. Her departure had wider consequences and in particular for Fulgentius because as a nun, his eldest daughter had a perceived prestige as is evident on his Native Affairs file. In his application for an exemption from the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) he stated that he had a daughter in the convent at Beagle Bay, no doubt to strengthen his chances. Moreover, both his referees and the departmental officers, referred to Fulgentius as having ‘a daughter in the convent’ implying he was a suitable applicant.116 By leaving the convent Katie had distanced herself from her superiors. Her reason for leaving is not absolutely clear though her sister Aggie Puertollano suggested to me that:

112 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, May, 2003; see Frank Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, Battye Library, Perth, 1944 – 1969, 03/03/1946. 113 Rodriguez Snr, 05/08/1946. 114 Rodriguez Snr, 27/07/1946. 115 Christine Choo, Mission Girls: Aboriginal Women on Catholic Missions in the Kimberley, Western Australia, 1900-1950, Perth, University of Western Australia Press, 2001, p.178. 116 Dept of Native Affairs., Fulgentius Fraser (Wife Phillipina Fraser nee Melycan), ‘Personal file’, item 945/40, DAA, 1940.

107 Mum [Katie] left because it was not very strong. Joining the convent was people’s own choice; no pressure what so ever from our parents. Katie probably didn’t want to stay too, because all the family had left.117

Katie and Frank’s five-month courtship was only ever interrupted when he travelled to Derby in September to build the Catholic Church while Katie remained at Liveringa. Earlier in the year, he had been asked to build the Church by the Pallottine priest Father Albert Scherzinger who was temporarily based in Derby, and Frank had agreed. Now, there was an even greater reason and urgency to build the church if he and Katie were to marry on their preferred day, the “Feast of the Immaculate Conception” on the 8th of December.118

Following WWII, building stocks and finances in the Kimberley were scant, which meant the Pallottines would have to be resourceful and innovative if they were to procure materials for their church. As did other people they found timber in the most obscure places, as Frank explained:

The timber wasn’t much good that was used [around town]. It was old timber from the jetty that had been thrown out into the sea, but the tide brought the timbers back in, so any ‘good’ pieces, the people would pick up.119

For instance, people of mixed-descent who lived alongside the marsh in Derby (where the caravan park is now situated) built their own homes with whatever materials they could scrounge, and one couple’s floor was made from wooden shipping pallets that they partially covered with linoleum.120 The Pallottines sourced their building materials for the church from a disused airbase at 300 kms east of Derby.121 During the war the air force had operated from there and it was complete with runway, hangars and army barracks. The disused army huts were dismantled and

117 Aggie Puertollano, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 04/09/2003. 118 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 14/07/1946. Fr. Albert Scherzinger was based at Derby until a resident priest Father John Hennessey arrived in 1946. 119 Frank Rodriguez Snr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 2003. 120 Edie Wright, Full Circle: from mission to community a family story, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001, p.221. 121 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 24/09/1946; see Peter Dunn; ‘Noonkanbah Airfield near Fitzroy Crossing, WA During WW2’, Australia @ War, 2003, http://www.ozatwar.com/airfields/nookanbah.htm, (accessed 06/07/2015).

108 transported to Derby by Sam Thomas, a local trucking agent, and Frank sorted through the materials wherever Thomas off-loaded them. On the 25th of September he began laying the foundations for the church. With the help of several men who were Katie’s contemporaries from Beagle Bay and Lombadina Missions - Ambrose Cox, Albert Kelly, Tom Puertollano and Jerome Manado - Frank made large cement blocks to raise the army huts to a suitable height.122 He then began assembling a church. During the building phase Fr. Scherzinger pondered over a name for the Church and Frank suggested the Holy Rosary, the same as the principal Church in his Parish of Marcelle in the Galician province of Lugo. This building is believed to have been the first Catholic Church in Derby.123

But how did Katie’s family react to Frank, a European man? Her siblings claim to have graciously accepted him and they were happy for their eldest sister. Edna and Gertie would have had a keen interest in her relationships given that Katie had effectively been their surrogate mother when the two girls remained at Beagle Bay with her after the rest of the family left to join Fulgentius on the stations. She had always been there for them so it is with no surprise that they would have an opinion about Frank. Importantly, he had a common factor in his favour as far as the Fraser family would have been concerned. He was a Catholic.124 And a devoted one at that! Having a shared religion meant they had a shared worldview. One that they could both relate to. Furthermore, as Regina Ganter claims, indigenous cultures, like many European peasant societies, “have a strong sense of family and complex social relations within a simple material culture”.125 Both of my parents came from supportive families while Katie recognised a wide network of relatives that had

122 Edna Fraser, personal communication, 01/12/2012. 123 Notably, a church “St. Marys” depicted in photos in the Eric Mjöberg collection had been built in the early 1900s, but it is unclear to which demonination it belonged. Eric Mjoberg, Among Wild Animals and People in Australia, The Western Australian Explorers' Diaries Project, Peter Bridge & Kim Epton, Perth, WA, Hesperian Press, 1914, p.55. In recent conversations with two retired priests, Fr Joe Kearney and Fr Wendelin Lorenz, at the Pallottine Centre at Rossmoyne in Western Australia, neither had been aware of any Church before the Holy Rosary. 124 Gertie AhMat, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 21/08/2003. 125 Regina Ganter, Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 2006, p.147; see Christine Choo, 'The role of the Catholic missionaries at Beagle Bay in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families in the Kimberley region from the 1890s', Aboriginal History, vol. 21, 1997, pp.14-29. The Rodriguez families in Australia maintain strong connections with their relatives in Spain. As discussed in Chapter 5, some of the children of the Spanish families who came to work in the Kimberley were born in Derby, Wyndham and Perth where they formed a good rapport with Katie’s family.

109 evolved out of the displacement of Kimberley children to missions. Together, their union was shaped by a commitment to Catholicism while Katie’s complex family ties signified kinship values that she probably learnt from her bush family who camped on the verges of the mission.

Katie did have concerns about marrying a white man. She was aware that some men who married Aboriginal women distanced themselves from their wife’s parents and she discussed it with Frank. He assured her that all would be fine, after all, he had formed a good rapport with Fulgentius.126 Clearly, Frank was not concerned about any reaction from his non-Aboriginal acquaintances should he marry an Aboriginal woman. On the other hand, Tony Ozies who had also grown up at Beagle Bay and was a station worker on Liveringa at the same time that my parents lived there, voiced his and perception of the attitudes of white people toward interracial marriages:

In those days, the white fellas had no respect for Aboriginal people. When the war was over, the whites couldn’t cohabitate. It was ok by Neville for Frank and Katie, but Frank then wasn’t allowed to go up to the top house if he married Katie. He wasn’t allowed up there for a cup of tea. Frank and I became good friends.127

As marginalised, non-English people who often sat at the bottom of the working class hierarchy, Katie and Frank would have come to realise the upshot of an interracial marriage.128 The interface between marginalised peoples and anglo-Australians centred on paternalism while across Australia a caste barrier developed sometimes visibly, at other times, implicit. While Frank was able to move comfortably between cultures, there were acquaintances who were not impressed with his choice of companion. Frank’s first employers in the Kimberley, the Millards, were opposed to his impending marriage. They questioned him about his relationship with Katie and they let him know that they were ‘not too pleased’ about his involvement with

126 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 20/10/1946. 127 Tony Ozies, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 12/08/2003. NB: Ozies reference to A. O Neville is figurative. Neville’s ‘reign’ had ceased in 1940, well before Katie and Frank married in 1946. Francis Illingworth Bray succeeded him on the 21/12/1940; see 'Native Affairs: New Commissioner Mr F. I. Bray's appointment', The West Australian, 12/10/1940. 128 Judith Keene, 'The word makes the man: A Catalan Anarchist Autodidact in the Australian Bush', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 47, no. 3, 2001, p.313.

110 Aboriginal people, which he says he chose to ignore.129 Frank was aware of prevailing white attitudes towards Aboriginal people and the Millards’ concern could only have come as an uncomfortable reminder.

Frank was familiar with acts of prejudice. Facilitating his understanding of other cultures was his experience of adverse treatment and attitudes towards migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds in Australia. A sense of negativity towards non- British peoples that had germinated in Australian society from the early days of colonisation had its roots cemented in the White Australia policy through to the war years and beyond as discussed in the introduction.130 As a non-English speaking migrant who had not yet taken out Australian citizenship Frank faced his own share of discrimination even before he met Katie.

The stereotyping of Spaniards in Australia started long before Frank arrived. It had its beginnings in the early 1900s when they arrived to satisfy labour shortages in the Northern Territory and in Queensland, before becoming well established in northern Queensland in the cane growing industry. They had come from the Spanish regions of Catalonia and Andalusia as cheap labour for British firms where there was surfeit labour and low wages, and to a lesser extent they came from the Basque Country region. Many were anarchists who had fled Spain when fascist sentiment ebbed and flowed and they first moved to France and England and to North and South America before escaping the ‘corruption and crimes of old Europe’ to freedom in frontier Australia.

Up until the 1950s while living in Queensland and in Victoria the Spaniards involved themselves in transnational debates while at the same time noticing Australia’s race relations and industrial injustice. Here they found that not only was Australia’s Indigenous peoples treated as inferior, so were they. Catalan anarchist Salvador Torrents who migrated here in 1915 ridiculed claims that Australians had civilised the Aboriginals when their own behaviour was fraught with the ‘consumption of alcohol and gambling’. In Cuba and Argentina the Spaniards claimed to have lived a superior

129 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 23/09/1946. 130 Geoffrey Sherington, Australia's Immigrants: the Australian experience, Sydney, NSW, George Allen & Unwin, 1989.

111 existence while it was the Blacks who worked the cane fields. Consequently, they felt that perhaps they should just go back so they could live as white people. In northern Queensland they worked in trying conditions in the hot, humid cane fields and they lived in basic isolated barracks but then during the interwar years they headed to Melbourne where they established themselves in cafes and hotels and became leading entrepreneurs. In the years preceding Spain’s civil war and up until they got word of Franco’s victory the anarchists in Australia remained as anti fascist campaigners, backing communist sentiment in Australia and in turn gaining support for their own cause. Right wing Anglo-Australians meanwhile were not only uncomfortable with an assumed anti-British sentiment among the Spanish, but the apparent inability of non-English speakers to learn English was deemed abhorrent, a sentiment that would trickle through to Frank as a non-English speaking migrant.

Stereotypes are naïve, founded without an understanding of cultures or world current affairs and they spawn feelings in an unthinking public. Frank was a staunch Catholic with political views that were the opposite of Spaniards on the east coast but he too, was not exempt from racism. As a non-English speaking autodidact peasant ‘dago’ he found himself marginalised because of his background, with increased ostracism from white Australians when he married an Aboriginal woman. During WWII when he worked in the southwest he had been reported to the authorities as being a ‘spy’, and on another occasion in Perth while taking photographs with his box camera, the police asked him what he was he doing. They suggested to him that he might be better off going north.131 Later, while working on stations in the Kimberley he had to report to the police station at Fitzroy Crossing and inform the authorities of his whereabouts and on occasion, he them sent a letter.132 During both WWI and WWII in allied countries the practice of interning people without trial if they were considered to be a risk to a Nation’s security was practised, and Australia was no exception. The Australian government’s WWII internment policy appeased public

131 Pepita Pregelj, personal communication, July 2014. 132 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 20/03/1946; see Robert Mason, 'No Arms Other than Paper: Salvador Torrents and the Formation of Hispanic Migrant Identity in Northern Australia, 1916–50', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2010; Robert Mason, 'Anarchism, Communism and Hispanidad: Australian Spanish Migrants and the Civil War', Immigrants & Minorities, vol. 27, no. 1, 2009; and Keene, ‘, 2001’.

112 opinion by, among other things, establishing internment camps for ‘Enemy Aliens’.133 The German Pallottine missionaries were all sent to Alice Springs for a short period during WWII.134 Katie’s sister Frances Ward recalled:

We were in Beagle Bay when they came and arrested all the Germans. All the Japanese were sent to Melbourne. The Irish and Australian nuns were affected [too]. I remember the priests and brothers being carted off in trucks. I remember the Japs bombing Broome. People were evacuated from Broome to Beagle Bay.135

People from any country that was considered to even loosely have sympathies with Hitler’s Germany were interned. Yet despite the Spanish government being an ally of Germany and a Fascist state Frank was probably spared because Spain, fresh from their own Civil War, was not involved in WWII.136 Nevertheless, that did not stop people from being suspicious of him.

My parents’ marriage on the 8th of December 1946, celebrated by Bishop Riable was the first ever to be held in the new church and Gertie Fraser and Tom Puertollano were in attendance as the bridesmaid and the best man.137 Katie and Frank married without government interference, even though she had not taken out citizenship, but Katie did gain the ‘blessing’ of the church.

To understand what bonded my parents as a couple is to recognise and to respect their devotion to the traditions of Catholicism. Throughout their marriage they remained faithful to the Church, which was clearly the key to their strong relationship. Knowing how they functioned is to understand the Catholic Church’s values inscribed in seven sacraments (rites) that manifested in their actions. According to the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth: “The whole liturgical life of the church revolves around the

133 Klaus Neumann, In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia during World War 2, Canberra, ACT, National Archives of Australia, 2006, pp.7-9. 134 Choo, Mission Girls, 2001, p.134. 135 Frances Ward interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 06/09/2003. 136 Neumann, In the Interest of National Security, p.10; see Noel W Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, Sydney, NSW, N. Lamidey 1974; F Lafitte, The Internment of Aliens, New York, USA, Penguin Books, 1940; Choo, Mission Girls, pp.249-251. 137 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, May, 2003; see Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 08/12/1946. The Church was replaced during the 1960s. It was used a community center for social gatherings and as a youth center until it was demolished in the 1970s to make way for a new presbytery.

113 Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacrament”.138 The sacrament promises its followers an idyllic existence in the ‘next life’ if they abide by its teachings and engage with them in this life: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage and Holy Orders.139

From the time of their marriage Katie and Frank remained committed to this belief system, upholding the rules that guided them and their children through their rites of passage. With the birth of each child, suitable Godparents were sought and the baby baptised and given a Christian name within weeks; and we all attended Catholic schools in both Derby and Geraldton. We each received our Eucharist (Holy Communion) in the first year of school and in our teens we were Confirmed to become a ‘Soldier of God’. Marriage too, was a sacrament. As a family we attended Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation even having the service said in our home on the stations by a visiting priest. And the “Rosary” and other meditative prayers were recited as often as practicable.140 In all likelihood, Frank had no reason to question his worldview and the reasons why we prayed. His mother, Maria Casanova had made sure of that by sending him away from the influences of communism when he was a child. Katie on the other hand, may have held doubts about the virtues of Christianity given her health was often poorly. Even though she

138 “There are seven sacraments in the Catholic tradition they are grouped under three headings. The first group are [sic] called the Sacraments of Initiation and they are the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. The second group are [sic] called the Sacraments of Healing and they are the sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick. The third group are called the Vocational Sacraments and they are the sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders.” Scott P Richert, Catholicism Guide, http://catholicism.about.com/, 2007, (accessed 11/08/2013) accessed 10/08/2013; and Catholic Archdiocese of Perth. 139 Baptism – becoming a member of the Church (as children we were told this was when we became a ‘child of God’). Confirmation – the perfection of Baptism (when you became a ‘soldier of God’). Eucharist – receiving Christ in the form of bread (commonly known as Communion), Penance – atonement in the form of prayers after confessing your sins to a priest. Anointing of the Sick – previously called ‘the last rites’ administered by a priest, or a proxy, at the hour of one’s death. Today, it is also administered to the gravely ill. Both Katie and Frank received their ‘last rites’. Frank several times in the two weeks in the lead up to his death, even by the Bishop. He had effectively kept them guessing. Marriage – is between two Christians (one has to be a Catholic). Holy Orders – priesthood (a man is incorporated into the priesthood of Christ, at one of three levels: the episcopate, the priesthood, or the diaconate. Women cannot become priests). 140 “The origins of the rosary are "sketchy" at best. The use of "prayer beads" and the repeated recitation of prayers to aid in meditation stem from the earliest days of the Church and has roots in pre-Christian times. Evidence exists from the Middle Ages that strings of beads were used to count Our Fathers and Hail Marys” [in] Washington Canon Law Society of America, Code of Canon Law, in 20064 Codex Iuris Canonici, Washington, DC America Canon Law Society of America, 1983, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_INDEX.HTM, (accessed 07/07/2015).

114 prayed to God, her condition never really improved. She sometimes complained to us that God had not helped her. Nonetheless, she continued her prayer rituals saying the Rosary and receiving the Eucharist.

Following their marriage, Katie and Frank took up residence in one of the workers’ cottages on the side of the hill, below the bosses’ house. In 1946 Liveringa was home to several people including the Fraser and Ozies families.141 It employed around fifty people and had an itinerant full-descent Aboriginal population with some people living at Willumbah. The full-descent men worked with stock and they helped to build the station’s infrastructure. Stockyards, fences, windmills, tanks, and troughs were erected and on horseback they mustered the sheep, while the full-descent women worked in the manager’s house and they helped Pat Rose with the gardening. Similar to the way in which full-descent women worked on stations in the East Kimberley and the Northern Territory, according to historian Ann McGrath, women who were considered responsible and reliable also cared for the manager’s children. She claims the women were proud of their roles but received little gratitude in return and the white children usually disowned them later in life.142

But Audrey Bullough, the second eldest of Kim and Pat Rose’s four children, clearly showed affection for the women who looked after her. She remembered Fanny carrying her, and Kitty was a great favourite with the children. Topsy, she remembered as being ‘boss’ in the bottom kitchen: “The King Pin. She made all the bread cut it up and distributed it to all the people”.143 Bullough remembers several people and she proudly displays photos of the station workers along the wall of her modest home in Perth, recalling everybody’s names. Patsy Yambo, who lived in the Aboriginal compound, remembered Pat Rose as being good to bush people. Patsy worked in the top house doing cleaning for Mrs. Rose along with Topsy, Aunty Maggie (Fulgentius’s sister-in-law who lived in the compound) and Wabbi.144 Katie

141 Fulgentius and Phillipena were based at Willumbah, a Liveringa outstation. 142 Ann McGrath, Born in the cattle: Aborigines in cattle country, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987, p.63. 143 Audrey Bullough, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 23/01/2012. In the early 1950s, a kitchen was installed in the top house, where Rose and his family lived. Until that time, all the cooking was done in the main kitchen, situated half way up the side of the hill, and then carried up to their dining room. 144 Patsy & Dickie Yambo, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 02/09/2003.

115 worked in the cookhouse too and Audrey remembered her with fondness, and how she would tell stories about her childhood experiences at Beagle Bay. Katie received a cash payment for her work, while the full-descent people were paid with flour, sugar and tea will be discussed later in this chapter. Pastoralists postulated that Aboriginal people’s ‘culture would be destroyed by the evils associated by money’ while they themselves consumed the profits gained through the loyalty and hard work of Aboriginal stockmen and women.145

Outside of their station duties and before Katie and Frank had children they spent their time exploring the surrounding terrain. They took long walks through the hills, picnicked by the billabong where they fished and set their jarramba (fresh water prawn) traps and Frank would shoot crocodiles. Either Fulgentius or Tony Ozies, as amateur taxidermists, would remove the crocodiles’ flesh, treat and then stuff the dry carcasses, and place marbles in the eye sockets, that always fascinated me as a child.146 With their truck Katie and Frank enjoyed venturing into the bush but with less durable vehicles than the off road four-wheel drives of today, it seems there were always problems. An axle would break, flat tyres were regular, and getting bogged or losing their way was common. Frank seemed to have spent a lot time with his head under the bonnet doing repairs. It was how he learned about mechanics. His own truck he would ‘pull it to pieces and put it together again’.147 He probably bought his Chevrolet truck from the KPC because the company upgraded their work vehicles once they reached 40,000 miles.148

To boost their income Frank engaged in the ‘business’ of culling pests that preyed on stock. The local Shire offered a generous bounty that encouraged workers to craft innovative ways to catch predators. They baited marauding dingoes and the wedge-

145 Sharman Stone, Aborigines in White Australia: A documentary history of the attitudes affecting official policy and the Australian Aborigine, 1697-1973, Adelaide, SA, The Griffin Press, 1974, p. p.122; see Tim Rowse, White flour, white power: from rations to citizenship in central Australia Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2002; and Dawn May, Aboriginal labour and the cattle industry: Queensland from white settlement to the present / Dawn May, Melbourne, VIC, Cambridge University Press 1994. 146 Gertie AhMat, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 21/08/2003. 147 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, 16/05/2003. 148 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 02/11/1946; see Kimberley Pastoral Company, Records, 1891-1963, [ACC1240A], Perth, Battye Library.

116 tailed eagles that attacked and mauled newborn lambs. They smeared a goat or kangaroo carcass with poison then placed it under lumps of spinifex to attract the predators. Frank and Fulgentius competed to see who could trap the most and occasionally, Kim Rose would give Frank a few eagles on the quiet, since Frank had less opportunity to catch a bounty than did his father-in-law out in the far reaches of the property.149 Tony Ozies proudly described how he went about the business of culling pests:

Chicken Hawks were worth 5 shillings. I caught about 300 over ten years. Dingoes paid one pound ten, and I caught about 100 one year. I caught the one that was killing the sheep at Mt. Anderson and Liveringa and Myroodah, “Stumpy”. 70 quid for whoever could catch him. I put a trap and bait with strychnine to catch the prize dingo “Stumpy”. You could see the dingo’s track where he crept up to the trap [and] you could see what the dingo was thinking. He avoided the poisoned bait and scratched around until he found what he thought was “good” meat. You could see him start to wobble. In the end, the three managers, Godbehere and the two Roses and the Shire all paid me 70 quid, each!150

From time to time Katie stayed with Phillipena at Willumbah, especially when Fulgentius was away in the stock camp. And in turn her younger siblings, Dottie, Jimmy and Leena would visit her at Liveringa during the holidays. Together they explored the hills and swam in the flood-ways and the creeks often with the Rose children too, when on holidays from their boarding schools in Perth. They watched Aboriginal people cut and pound mangroves to spread over the water so the fish couldn’t breathe and then spear the fish that came to the surface.151

Then along with the kids from the camp, the Fraser siblings learned from Fulgentius to service windmills, saddle horses, chop wood, and cook in camp ovens. ‘Pop’ as they called him, showed them how to keep the meat fresh by hanging water bags on the inside walls of the spinifex-topped meat house that he had built.152 Leena, almost

149 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 27/03/1947. 150 Ozies, 12/08/2003; see B Allen & P West, 'Influence of dingoes on sheep distribution in Australia', Australian Veterinary Journal, vol. 71, no. 7, 2013, pp.261-267; Brad Purcell, Competition between humans and dingoes, in Dingo, Collingwod, Vic, CSIRO, Publishing, 2010. 151 Audrey Bullough, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 23/01/2012. 152 Gertie AhMat, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 21/08/2003.

117 twenty years Katie’s junior, recalled how excited she would become when the monks at New Norcia sent perishables to Fulgentius, reaffirming his ongoing relationship with the Spanish missionaries:

Grandpa was brought up with the Spanish and the Germans, they used to send him crates of dried pears, dried apricots, dried peaches and two crates of wine. The wine was wrapped up in this straw and we’d always treasure it and look after it and take it out of the boxes without dropping it; that was our job. Every November December.153

As they did at Beagle Bay, each evening the family together chanted the Rosary and Fulgentius encouraged people from the camp to join in. But alongside their Catholic rituals Fulgentius and Phillipena continued to acknowledge and respect Nigena people’s customs and beliefs. Cyril Puertollano the eldest of their grandchildren was very aware of our grandparents’ decisions. For example, how they made sure that people had provisions to take on their long walks to nearby stations at lore time. Grandpa, a good humoured yet empathetic and considerate man he never pressured anyone into becoming a Catholic: “[he] knew they had certain tribal duties they had to go and do. He respected that”.154 Nevertheless, he continued as a catechist among Aboriginal people, guiding them towards Catholicism.

During the school term the Fraser children stayed with Aggie and Tom Puertollano in Derby. With no Catholic school in the town, they attended the state school. Jim reasons that Aggie as Fulgentius’ favourite daughter probably felt a sense of responsibility as she took on the role of caring for her siblings, ensuring they were well cared for and that they went to school. Her own children were not much younger than Leena.155 Other Fraser siblings Frances, Edna and Gertie also found lodgings with the Puertollanos. The young Frasers did not see a lot of their parents during this time, and it was Fulgentius who would visit his daughters on his trips into town.156 They respected the goodwill of Aggie and Tom for the care extended to them and they helped with expenses and they paid their rent:

153 Leena Fraser, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 30/08/2003. 154 Cyril Puertollano, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 01/09/2003. 155 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003. 156 Edna Fraser, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 28/08/2003.

118 Aggie looked after us and she ran a tight ship. If I went to dances, she’d make sure we had a bodyguard, such as Uncle Billy Watson – “Bluegum”. She was concerned because there were a lot of soldiers around; [but] we never got mixed up with them.157

The ‘mission girls’ were able to find work easily enough and they took on domestic roles in Derby and in Perth. In Derby, Frances worked as a housemaid at the Club Hotel earning about £5 a week. Working there too as the cook was Granny Gypsy, or Granny Gippy, as she was affectionately called.158 Frances later worked for Mrs. Coleman who owned and ran a kiosk while her husband Gillis Coleman, ran the powerhouse in the days before it became a government concern. No one had refrigerators and Coleman made large ice blocks that the townspeople placed in iceboxes to keep their food cool. Frances helped Mrs. Coleman to bake bread and on movie nights they made meat pies while during the day, they prepared and sold lemon squashes (crushed ice) and raspberry cordials.159 Frances then accepted an offer to venture south with the Colemans and she moved to Perth. Her family missed her and as soon as Edna had the opportunity she followed Frances.

Edna’s move to Perth to work as a mission-trained domestic was not unusual. The St. John of God Sisters often found employment for young Aboriginal mission women with white Catholic families. Some of the Fraser women’s friends from Beagle Bay had already moved to the city. In 1947 Mrs. O’Hara of Beaconsfield, the mother of seven boys, whose husband was a horse trainer, wrote to Fr. Francis in Broome seeking domestic help. Edna was offered the position and keen to be near Frances, she accepted. She remained happily employed in the O’Hara household for over a year: “I’d help her hang out the clothes. I kept her floors nicely polished. I had my own room, sat at the same table and I wasn’t treated any differently. We said the Rosary every night. I really enjoyed this experience”.160 Gertie too worked as a domestic in Perth when she was a teenager. Mrs and Dr Daley-Smith of Nedlands employed her for three years during the mid 1940s. The couple had five daughters ranging in age from four months to thirteen years and Gertie, not much older than the

157 Edna Fraser, 28/08/2003. 158 Granny Gypsy is Phillipena’s cousin-sister who had been removed from her mother with Phillipena when they were children - see Chapter 2. 159 Ward, 06/09/2003. 160 Edna Fraser, 28/08/2003.

119 eldest, looked after them. She went with the family on holidays to Esperance and on Saturdays they all went to confession, then to the beach for an ice cream. On her days off, Gertie met up with the other mission girls in the city.161 But when Frances now married to a white man Bill Ward, who later became the curator of Queens Gardens for many years, decided to return to Derby to show off her new baby Phillipa (named after Phillipena), Edna went with her. They arrived in Derby on board the state ship “Koolinda” the night that Aggie’s youngest daughter “Shirley” was born, the 13th December, 1948.162

Meantime, Katie and Frank were unsettled at Liveringa and since Frank does not give a specific reason why, I can only speculate. By the end of March 1947 Katie was pregnant and she may have wanted to be closer to medical attention. Perhaps she felt uneasy being pregnant while in the employment of white people given that she and all of her siblings had been delivered by Aboriginal midwives and bearing in mind both Tony Ozies’ account and Frank’s experience with the Millards. Frank’s wage was also an issue. He received £4 per week and accommodation. When he notified the management on the 4th of April that he would be leaving, he was immediately promised a pay rise of £1, which pleased him. However by the end of August they had moved to Derby. They found lodgings with Aggie and Tom until they were able to secure their own accommodation in the form of a house rented from the St. John of God Sisters.

Frank worked on concrete jobs around town, he did repairs in people’s homes and he returned to work on the Church, overlaying the bitumen floor with concrete and adding steps up to the altar. Wanting a change from construction work he tried his hand at lesser labouring jobs including working on the docks when ships were in port. The State Shipping Service (SSS) was a vital link to and from the north transporting cargo, passengers and stock. Derby, was a major shipping port from where cattle were sent to Perth and exported to Singapore. Ships on the Singapore route, the Charon and the Gorgon, were specifically built to berth at wharves that experienced extreme tide movements. The base of the ships had been strengthened to allow the vessel to settle on the mud at low tide, ideal for the Derby jetty with its eleven metre

161 Gertie Ahmat, personal communication, 22/05/2012. 162 Edna Fraser, 28/08/2003.

120 high tides, and two metre low tides.163 (See Chapter 6). On the 4th December 1947 Frank started work as a shop clerk at the general store “McGovern and Thompson”. There, he worked behind the counter and being multi-skilled was a bonus to the store owners, because he would also tend to any maintenance. Moreover, whenever a cargo vessel was in port his workload increased as he packaged up station orders and distributed cases of fruit and vegetables.164

Katie and Frank’s first child arrived almost thirteen months after they were married. Catalina Dolores [Catherine Delores] was born on the 27th December 1947. The baby did not survive, passing away four days later on the 31st December in the Derby hospital. There was no explanation given for her death and Katie and Frank were left to contemplate why. She was supposedly born healthy. December was very hot and the hospital did not have cribs, but rather prams that were covered with mosquito nets.165 It is likely that the baby died from what we know today as cot death or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Grief stricken, two white women who had baptised the infant consoled them. Frank’s diary entries often evoke the depth of devotion with which he embraced Catholicism and from which on the sudden loss of his first-born, he drew solace. Living far from his family and perhaps the empathy of his mother and his siblings, especially his sisters, he confided in his diary which may have provided him with some comfort:

Today had the very sad news of the death of my infant daughter Catalina Dolores. Great sadness because God is the Honour of everything and our love belongs to Him. She will be an Angel close to God looking into the face of God, our Creator. Something is not quite right that she only lived for four days in this world. She was born on the 27th of December at night and God took her away on the 31st of the same month.166

163 Ships Nostalgia, ‘MV Charon 1936’, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd, http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/showthread.php?t=3912, 2000, vol. 3.6.8, (accessed 06/07/2015); see V Semeniuk1 & M Brocx2, 'King Sound and the tide-dominated delta of the Fitzroy River: their geoheritage values', Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, vol. 94, no. 2, 2011, June, pp.151-160 http://www.rswa.org.au/publications/Journal/94(2)/SemeniukBrocx%20pp.151-160.pdf (accessed 26/07/2015). 164 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 01/10/1947. 165 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, 15/05/2003 166 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 31/12/1947.

121 During their Derby interlude Katie and Frank decided to buy a block of land in town only to be confronted with an administrative hurdle. Neither was an Australian citizen. To purchase land a prospective buyer (as Frank understood it) had to be an Australian citizen so they both decided to apply for citizenship status. As noted in the previous chapter, Katie had become eligible to apply for Citizenship in 1944 when the government passed legislation that effectively superseded exemptions. It meant that she could apply, provisionally, to become an Australian citizen under the Western Australian Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act, 1944-1951.167 Now again, Katie was being faced with controlling laws based on western ideologies. As a noviciate she had been expected to deny her Aboriginal heritage. The provisions demanded that if she wanted to be a citizen, she had to abandon her traditional customs and agree to live as westerners do. It promised to give her limited rights if she could prove, among other things, that she had adopted a ‘civilised life’. The declaration included this statement: “For the two years prior to the date hereof I have dissolved native and tribal association except with respect to lineal descendants or native relations of the first degree”.168 Katie, like many other people who had initially ignored the ‘offer’ of citizenship saw it as ludicrous that a piece of paper could change her from being an Aboriginal and she initially chose not to apply.169 Frances had already declared a self-imposed boycott of the provision: “I never applied for citizenship; didn’t apply for it, didn’t believe I needed it.”170 But now, it had become imperative if she and Frank were to buy a block of land. Frank was the first to apply and at the age of 27 on the 17th April 1948 he became a naturalised Australian.171 Katie followed on the

167 Brian Galligan, & Winsome Roberts, Australian Citizenship: see you in Australia, Carlton, Vic, Melbourne University Press, 2004, p.34; see The National Museum of Australia, ‘Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act, 1944-1951, Western Australia: An Act to provide for the acquisition of full rights of citizenship by aborigine natives’, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights, Canberra, 2014, http://indigenousrights.net.au/resources/documents/western_australia_natives_citizenshi p_rights_act_1944, (accessed 06/07/2015). 168 In the lead up to the new legislation, selected Aboriginal people did become eligible under Commonwealth law for a variety of benefits that included child endowment in 1941, followed by old age, invalid and maternity benefits and unemployment and sickness benefits. J B Beyrer, 'Family Allowances in Australia', in Jill Roe (ed.), Social policy in Australia: some perspectives 1901-1975, Stanmore, NSW, Cassell Australia, 1976; see McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, pp.64-69. 169 Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: The Australian Experience, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1982, pp.170-171. 170 Ward, 06/09/2003. 171 Commonwealth of Australia, Certificate of Naturalization, Minister of State for Immigration, Canberra, Commonwealth Government Printer, 1948.

122 23rd September 1948 for a fee of 10/-.172 She also became eligible to receive child endowment payments.173 On paper, she had denounced her Aboriginal affiliations:

1. The applicant has dissolved tribal and native associations and has adopted the manners and habits of civilized life. 2. Lives according to white standards in a good dwelling adjacent to Police Station. 3. The applicant is a clean living young woman of good character, sober, trustworthy, not addicted to drink and would not supply liquor to natives. 4. Catherine’s parents hold Exemption Certificates. 5. Citizenship is conducive to her welfare, and the privilege would not be abused.174

However, Katie continued to mix with her Aboriginal family and friends. She spoke Aboriginal languages at any opportunity and she and Frank and her whole extended family continued to hunt and savour bush culinary delights. They bought the block then Frank returned to work at Liveringa in July, 1948 and by the end of the year, Katie had joined him. He returned to where work was secure and they continued their life at Liveringa as they had before they left. Frank resumed his role as a carpenter and as an all round handyman working from the blacksmiths’ workshop, while Katie returned to the cookhouse. Together, they planned to try again to start a family.

Working alongside the Rodriguez and the Fraser families and propping up the pastoral industry in the West Kimberley was a readily available cheap and poorly- treated, full-descent Aboriginal workforce, which included our relatives. Employers were governed by the Native Administration Act (WA 1936) and for them to employ Aboriginal workers they were required to hold a permit and contribute £1 per year for every person to the Aboriginal Medical Fund. There was no requirement to submit the names of employees just the number of workers, as did the KPC in 1946 when they sent a cheque for £35 to the Commissioner of Native Affairs to cover the Native

172 Dept of Native Affairs, Katherine Fraser, ‘Personal file’, item 879/43, DAA, 1943, 11/10/1948. 173 Dept of Native Affairs, 28/10/1950. 174 Dept of Native Affairs, 30/06/1948.

123 Medical Contribution for upper Liveringa to the period ending 30th June, 1947.175 Additionally, Liveringa was supposed to provide suitable living conditions with enough food and drinking and bathing water but little notice was taken of this requirement.

In 1947 the station’s Aboriginal population, like on most Kimberley stations, were living in spinifex huts though according to the Native Welfare inspector they appeared healthy and well clothed.176 The KPC was reluctant to pay proper wages because as Rose claimed, it could upset the neighbouring stations that were not as financially grounded as the KPC. At Noonkanbah Station one hundred full-descent Aboriginals were camped with approximately sixty percent able to work. There, on the traditional homelands of the ‘Upper’ Nigena people, the station was becoming ‘home’ to displaced peoples who had relocated there after their lands were taken for pastoralism, and after interference to their waterholes in the desert. Walmajarri, Mangala and Dualin/Yulbaridja were ‘accommodated’ by Nigena.177 On Noonkanbah too, mixed-descent employees received wages but the full-descent workers sometimes received work clothes and blankets in lieu of wages. The management’s logic was that the ‘natives’ were more content without wages, free from the vices of alcohol and gambling.178 The year before, Fulgentius, loyal to his Nigena countrymen, had found himself in a spot of bother for giving work to men from Myroodah Station who had moved to Liveringa. The neighbouring station managers, possessive of their workers, complained to Kim Rose about his actions and he was reprimanded.179

During the 1940s in the Pilbara, the Aboriginal pastoral workers were experiencing similar treatment. Consequently, marrngu (Aboriginal) workers took matters into

175 Mary Ann Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 2002, p.157. Upper Liveringa was the main homestead – lower Liveringa was an outstation several miles down the river, closer to Derby. 176 Dept of Native Affairs, Liveringa Station. 177 Eric Kolig, in Tonkinson (ed.), Going It Alone?: Prospects for Aboriginal Autonomy, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1990, p.240. 178 Dept of Native Affairs, Liveringa Station. 179 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries; see Ann Scrimgeour, 'We only want our rights and freedom: The Pilbara pastoral workers strike, 1946–1949', History Australia, vol. 11, no. 2, 2014, p.108; Michael Hess, 'Black and Red: The Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike, 1946', Aboriginal History vol. 18, no. 1, 1994, p.66; Stone, Aborigines in White Australia: p.122.

124 their own hands and challenged unfair working and living conditions. To them receiving rations in exchange for labour was effectively intimidation that humiliated and kept them subservient to their bosses. Anne Scrimgeour contends that pastoralists downplayed the way in which they treated their Aboriginal labour by casting themselves as their carers, who gave marrngu a place to live while allowing them access to country.180 Following a large meeting of twenty-three language groups at Skull Springs near Nullagine in 1942, Pilbara Aboriginal leaders sought the help of a walypila (white man) prospector Don McLeod to commence a campaign against their treatment.181 Their aim ultimately was to reclaim their independence. McLeod, a unionist with the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) suggested the marrngu leaders organise a major strike to coincide both with International Workers’ Day the 1st of May in 1946 and with the beginning of the mustering and shearing season.

In the preceding years, marrngu leaders Clancy McKenna and Dooley Binbin had gained widespread support from other station workers and their families on twenty- five pastoral properties. Their demands for a ‘30 shilling minimum weekly wage, the right to elect their own representatives and the right to freedom of movement’ were clearly articulated to the Department of Native Affairs. Over time the strike, which had been slow to start and even nearly dissipated because of communication difficulties across stations, became a resilient cooperative marrngu effort.182 Nonetheless, as it developed some people did suffer significant personal hardship. The police were called in and 'key leaders' jailed but the strikers were always quick to replace their jailed representative with another.183 Michael Hess claims that the strike, which lasted for three years and is one of Australia’s longest running industrial standoffs, was effected by ‘thoughtful determination and valiant solidarity’, that had the workers been white people, it would have earned a place of honour in Australian labour history.184

180 Ann Scrimgeour, ‘We only want our rights and freedom’, pp.106-107. 181 Monty Hale Minyjun, 'Chp. 2 Strike Time, 1946-50', in Anne Scrimgeour (ed.), Kurlumariny: We come from the desert, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012, p.20; see Verity Burgmann, 'The Aboriginal Movement', Power, profit and protest: Australian social movements and globalisation, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwim, 2003, pp.52-55. 182 Hess, ‘Black and Red’, p.74. 183 Hess, p.73. 184 Hess, p.68.

125 Their actions attracted widespread support among unions nationally and community organisations in Perth, while in the Port of Fremantle unionists refused to handle wool from any northwest station that had used Aboriginal workers as cheap labour. Eventually, as the strike numbers grew marrngu split into two groups. To support themselves those based at the 12 Mile near Port Hedland took up ‘fishing, dryshelling, kangarooing and prospecting activities’ while the second group at Moolyella near Marble Bar 200 kms east of Port Hedland mined alluvial tin for a living.185 The strike, which had become a ‘war of attrition’ between government forces and strikers and their supporters, lasted until 1949.186 A reaction to these Pilbara events reached into the West Kimberley causing the KPC to take notice. The strikers’ actions pricked the conscious of the Native Affairs Department in Derby who did not want any such unrest to spread to the Kimberley. In 1949 a travelling inspector who was concerned about the inadequate living conditions at Liveringa reported that Rose had claimed to be handling the matter carefully because labour was scarce. It was a tribal custom for Aboriginal people to be mobile he argued, therefore he never pressured them into staying:

Regarding housing he [Rose] said he found it difficult to make the natives “stay put” but admitted that he had never pressed them to any

185 Scrimgeour, ‘We only want our rights and freedom’, pp.117-118; see Anne Scrimgeour, 'Battlin’ for their rights: Aboriginal activism and the Leper Line', Aboriginal History, vol. 36, 2012, p.47. 186 The strike failed to reform labour relations but it did achieve some improvements for marrngu who were now in a better position to at least negotiate wages and conditions on pastoral properties. Their campaign according to Hess, while it did not stop exploitation it was a forerunner to the land rights and outstations’ movement thirty years later and their history was deserving of closer analysis. Hess, ‘Black and Red’, p.82; see Bob Boughton, 'Assimilation and Anti-Communism: A Reflection on Gerald Peel's Isles of the Torres Strait', in Tim Rowse (ed.), Contesting Assimilation, Perth, WA, API Network, Curtin University, 2005, p.147; Minoru Hokari, 'The Gurindji Walk-Off', Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback, Sydney, NSW, University of NSW Press, 2011; D W McLeod, How the West was lost: the native question in the development of Western Australia, Port Hedland, WA, The Author, 1984; and The National Museum of Australia, ‘Aboriginal Cooperative Begins’, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights, Canberra, 2014, http://indigenousrights.net.au/ (accessed 15/11/2014). Scrimgeour meanwhile argues that the Pilbara pastoral workers’ political activism lasted well beyond the strike. She claims the their fight for Aborigial rights continued and is largely overlooked in Aboriginal studies. While their actions had led to improvements it was limited to pastoral stations south of the 20th parallel. Section 10 of the Native Administration Act Amendment 1905-1940 (that was carried over into the Native Welfare Act 1954) was an attempt to stop any spread of leprosy from the Kimberley to the south of the state. Aboriginal people were not permitted to cross what was termed the ‘leper line’ without a permit. Scrimgeour exposes how one decade on, Pilbara Aboriginal people were dyfing Section 10 that had retricted their movement. Their activism challenged an unjust law that did lead to a reduction in the unfairness pastoral workers experienced at and Mandora Stations, north of the 20th parallel; see Scrimgeour, 'Battlin’ for their rights’.

126 great extent because it was a tribal custom and also labour was not too plentiful and had to be handled carefully.187

Despite Rose’s excuse the Commissioner of Native Affairs Acting Inspector for the North West T. E. Jensen instructed the KPC to improve conditions as soon as possible by erecting all-weather huts, an ablution block with water connections and septic system, and cement floors with proper drainage. Forty-four gallon drums were to be placed around the camp for rubbish and were to be emptied regularly. The Acting Commissioner McBeath linked the suggested improvements to unrest in the Pilbara. In a letter to the KPC he cautioned:

It is hoped that the recommendations made by Mr. Jensen will be favourably considered, especially as I am convinced that unrest such as has been experienced in the Port Hedland and Marble Bar Districts over the past two years can be largely avoided if the situation is met with common sense and sympathetic interest, and the implementation of a gradual improvement in the natives’ general living conditions and dietary scale.188

The advice was well received and the KPC acted quickly upon it. By 1950 improvements were underway. In accordance with management’s instructions Frank began a building program to improve living conditions for Aboriginal workers. In July he began installing two toilets in the Aboriginal enclosure and by mid-October he had commenced work on a large nissen hut for all the full-descent Aboriginal residents to share.189 Liveringa management’s attitude to their Aboriginal community continued to satisfy the travelling Native Affairs inspector:

187 Dept of Native Affairs., Liveringa Station, ‘Employment. Living and General Conditions’, item 733/47, SROWA, 20/08/1947. 188 Dept of Native Affairs, Liveringa; see Scrimgeour, ‘Battlin’ for their rights.’ 189 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 16/10/1950: “The Nissen hut was designed and patented in 1917 by Peter Nissen, a middle aged army Major. It was a prefabricated shelter made in the shape of a half cylinder. A corrugated sheet of metal formed its shell and plasterboard and concrete were used in its construction. Materials for these huts were cheap and they could be quickly assembled and ready for use. On average it took six men only four hours to assemble a Nissen hut. But, what was designed as cheap, easily transportable, rapid-assembly accommodation for army hospitals, canteens, armaments and military personnel, lingered after the war to take on a new role as housing for thousands of immigrants to Australia in the 1950s (see Migrant Hostels). The huts solved the problem of where to billet large numbers of people but were unsightly and utilitarian rather than homely and the atmosphere inside them was unpleasantly hot and humid.” see Ten Pound Pom, ‘Nissen Huts’, Museum/hostels, 2011 http://tenpoundpom.com/index.php, (accessed 12/07/2015).

127 Definite progress here since my last visit and I anticipate a very good compound eventually. Appears to be no lessening of the Manager’s enthusiasm. The tree planting is an excellent idea and I shall try to sell the idea all throughout the Kimberleys.190

Frank’s employment at Liveringa meant that he was a significant contributor to the station’s overall building program. He built the married workmen’s cottages, the Aboriginal’s nissen hut, the swimming pool, the meat house and extensions and renovations to existing structures. His craftsmanship went beyond construction. He was involved with the landscaping and forming the garden terracing on the hill surrounding the homestead plus, he made furniture for his family. He worked on windmills and fencing throughout the station and he helped during shearing time. Respect for Frank’s skill and work ethic was not lost on BHP’s chief general manager and friend of the Roses, Essington Lewis, who would sometimes retreat to Liveringa during his business trips to the BHP sites in Yampi Sound. Lewis would visit Frank on location, sometimes bringing tools and oranges from South Australia and even rolling up his sleeves and helping Frank.191 Audrey Bullough also acknowledged Frank’s work:

Some of the beautiful things I remember that Frank made, you can see how creative the Spanish are. Look at Gaudi! Thinking of early days, when Mum tried to do something with a garden on the rock it was probably Frank who suggested the terracing, turning it into something spectacular. And look at Kim’s [Durack] house, his mansion. They would seek his advice about landscaping and buildings. Frank must have been brilliant and had engineering feats. He put in septic tanks before the ‘big shots’ of Derby had such modern luxuries. The meat- house was state of the arts, specifically designed with dripping tray – and covered with flywire. Under the meat-house was the dairy.192

The station’s full-descent population who were expected to all live together in the nissen hut, with its wire ‘tray’ beds fitted to the walls, did not readily take to the new structure as the management had hoped. Not only because of the racist attitudes from those who dictated that such types of dwellings were suitable for them, but because bush people were always going to reject it in favour of living outdoors. Moreover, it

190 Dept of Native Affairs, Liveringa Station, 20/08/1947. 191 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 20/07/1948; see Alan Trengove, 'Essington Lewis', What's good for Australia...!: the story of BHP Stanmore, NSW, Cassell Australia, 1975. 192 Audrey Bullough, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 23/01/2012.

128 was inappropriate given that ‘marriage’ related taboos whereby women avoid eye contact with their sons-in-law meant they were never allowed to be in each other’s presence. Outdoor living in ‘disposable’ humpies was Aboriginal people’s nomadic way of life where they could adhere to their traditional mores.193 Some people just slept in the shearing shed. As for the toilets, Frank decided they were nothing more than a novelty. Soon, they were full of stones and bottles and people preferred to use the bush.

No non-Aboriginal folk were ever involved with the birth of the Aboriginal babies, they were delivered by Aboriginal midwives. Patsy “Ginya” Yambo’s first son Phillip was born in a small dry creek bed near the shearer’s quarters at Liveringa and their second child Magdalene, was born in the shearing shed at Myroodah Station because she arrived during lore time. It was raining and the family had walked there, carrying their food and swags. Her remaining thirteen children were born in the Derby hospital, after she and husband Dickie had moved to town.194

Katie and Frank’s children were all were born in the Derby hospital too. With faith never faltering, on the 11th of March 1949 my parents began a nine-day novena (nine consecutive days of prayer) to St Joseph for another child. Their hopes were realised that year on the 10th of November with the arrival of a healthy daughter. They named her Josephine Kathleen after Frank’s brother Jose in Argentina, and in all likelihood after St. Joseph, and after Katie. This child became known as “Pepita”, meaning Josephine in Spanish. Fifteen months later on the 3rd February 1951, their first son arrived and he was named Francis James after Frank and probably after Katie’s brother Jim and perhaps too, Katie’s Nyumi, Jimmy Kassim. He became affectionately known as Franky.

193 Robert Tonkinson, 'Aboriginal ‘Difference’ and ‘Autonomy’ Then and Now: Four Decades of Change in a Western Desert Society', Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp.41-60; see Bob Tonkinson (ed.), Environmental and Historical Setting, Robert C Kiste and Eugene Ogan , Menlo Park, California, Cummings Publishing Co Inc, 1974. 194 Yambo, 02/09/2003.

129 In the same year that Franky arrived, when pastoral leases in the area were still largely underdeveloped, Frank started to investigate buying a lease.195 Initially, he was keen to have a property beyond the Leopold Ranges some 200 kms northwest of Liveringa in Ngarinyin country but when Kim Rose made him aware of a small 21,043 hectares (52,000 acres) lease called “Backland Downs” Frank became interested. Attached to the KPC lease, it had been taken up by Campbell Dempster in 1937 and returned to the Lands Department in 1943, possibly because it was pindan country, away from any river water source (hence its name) and in need of serious development.196 For my parents the property was conveniently located. It was close to their income source at Liveringa and it was close to family support in Fulgentius and Phillipena at Willumbah. Furthermore, it was only 100 kms from Derby. The lease remained a possibility and on the 24th January 1952, Frank signed an agreement with the KPC.197 Just seventy-three short years after Alexander Forrest in 1879 had reported good pasturelands in the Fitzroy River region, my parents purchased their own lease for £27.6.0 rent per year.198 The KPC papers were officially signed by company directors John Forrest (the son of Alexander Forrest) and W.E.C. McLarty: “[a]nd the Common Seal placed thereon in the presence of the Board”.199

With a sense of excitement Frank with Fulgentius and two relatives Dicky Yambo and Bewie set out to investigate the lease and after cutting their way through the scrub from Willumbah they found a bore and little else.200 Frank renamed the lease “Debesa” and then immediately began laying down the homestead foundations.201 But it would be several years before they were in a position to relocate permanently to the small property. (Discussed in Chps 5 and 6). Excited about the prospect of owning their own property and from the time they had tentatively secured the lease, Frank travelled to “Backland Downs” regularly:

195 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 30/07/1951. 196 Kimberley Pastoral Company, Records, 1891-1963, [ACC1240A], Perth, Battye Library. 197 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 24/01/1952. 198 Landgate, Pastoral Lease: Kimberley Division, Minister for Lands, Perth, WA, Landgate, 1953. 199 Kimberley Pastoral Company, Records, 1891-1963. 200 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 28/10/1951. 201 Frank’s grand-niece, Jackie Vasquez who lives in A Corunna in Galicia, explained the meaning of Debesa in an email to me: “In Galicia we call ‘debesa’ the forest with cork and holm oaks that only grow in southeast of Galicia, in Môn Forte too. It’s a kind of farm in central and south Spain where are holm oaks, cork oaks and grass in the middle of trees to feed pigs, bulls, cows, horses in very big extensions.”

130

Today with the old man [Fulgentius] and young Jim I went to my block of land. The country looks much better and we found ducks at the swamp. It certainly looks very good with all the green feed around the place. The sorghum I put [in] 2 weeks ago just start to come up.202

Around this time, Kim Durack, an agricultural scientist and ‘visionary’ living in the East Kimberley, saw the potential for crop growing on the Fitzroy floodplains.203 Durack was a grandson of the pioneering pastoralist Patsy Durack of Argyle Station and in the previous decade, after the Durack family’s many years of unprofitable cattle husbandry, Kim Durack had investigated new ideas for their properties in the East Kimberley. He realised the potential for irrigation pastures in the valley region and during the mid 1940s with his brother William, he successfully grew sorghum and millet. But he was disappointed when his father sold their East Kimberley properties. With the same vision he then looked to the West Kimberley, to the Fitzroy River region, to continue his research. In 1951 Durack began negotiations with the KPC to experiment with growing rice alongside Uralla Creek a few kilometres from the Liveringa homestead. Durack was a friend of Kim Rose which is probably why he was able to gain support from the KPC.204 He then went about the business of securing support from government and private interests for his research project. An 8,560-hectare (10,000 acres) plot was excised from the Liveringa lease, despite it being the best lambing area on the station, and it was named “Camballin”.205 He organised an abundance of equipment and supplies to be transported to the site then with his sister Elizabeth Durack (who became an acclaimed Western Australian artist) he set off from Perth on the 7th of November 1952 in a Ford truck towing a purpose built caravan that he named “Miss Kimberley”. Travelling over sandy roads and hampered with vehicle troubles they arrived at Camballin two weeks later to begin his experiments. The rice fields were to be situated on the floodplains between the high ground and Uralla Creek so he

202 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 26/01/1952. 203 No full-descent people lived there at the time. They were in camps at Liveringa and on surrounding stations supporting the pastoral industry. see Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, Oral History, 21/08/2003. 204 Kimberley Pastoral Company, Records, 1891-1963; see Brenda Niall, True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack, Melbourne, VIC, The Text Publishing Company, 2012. 205 Minister of Lands, Pastoral Lease: The Transfer of Land Act, 1893, Landgate, Perth WA, 1949.

131 strategically positioned “Miss Kimberley” under the very same boab tree where Fulgentius was born, overlooking the Fitzroy floodplains.

The area was considered potentially ideal for rice paddies. It was practically free of trees and shrubs and the clay was well suited to growing rice because it could hold water. But shortcomings lay with the floodplain’s ability to hold water during the dry season. Despite adequate rainfall in the upper catchment of the Fitzroy during the northern ‘wet’, by midyear the river had stopped flowing. Therefore, to establish a successful rice production a suitable irrigation scheme was necessary. During the experimental stage, Durack encountered many problems that affected the crop yield, which were eventually addressed. Difficulties like the right selection of seeds, the best time to seed, weeding, contending with flood damage, water shortages, and water birds.206 But not least of the problems was the unpredictability of floods. Some years the waters rose very high even flooding the area where he was camped. Other years Durack would wait and wait for the floods to come that never did, like during the 1951-52 ‘wet’ that was recorded as being the driest in fifty years.207

Over seven years Kim Durack studied the water levels, experimented with varieties of rice and grasses, and fought off the bird life that took a liking to the new grasses. Sometimes a worker would camp in the field to ward them off or Durack would use his gun to deal with the perennial pests. Native companions (brolgas), the magnificent northern Australian water cranes that danced and fed on the river’s floodplain grasses, proved to be the most destructive.208 During this time Durack sketched what he believed would be the best method of operations and he succeeded in convincing the Western Australian government to direct the Public Works Department (PWD) to implement an irrigation system.

In April of 1953, Frank visited the Camballin paddy fields and spoke to Kim Durack about employment. Durack needed help and he was only too aware of Frank’s

206 G C Bolton, Durack, Kimberley Michael (Kim) (1917–1968), in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra, ACT, ANU Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1996, vol. 14, (MUP). 207 F. H. Bauer, F H., ‘Durack family papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 1986. 208 “All day working on the shed, preparing for cementing a place 20’x10’ Kim shot today six native companions.” [in] Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 01/07/1953; see Official Opening: Camballin Irrigation Area, 4th December, Perth, Battye Library, 1961.

132 reputation and Katie’ cooking capabilities. A husband and wife team would benefit his project. Durack wrote to the Secretary of Northern Developments in Sydney:

Wages have not amounted to a great deal the last twelve months. I intend to install a married couple on a permanent basis in a few weeks time. I have a very good man in mind . . . I don’t know how things will work out but I hope that the wife will cook. I have not decided on wages to be paid pending certainty of employment. It would need to be something in excess of the basic wage. The man in question is held in high esteem for his ability throughout the country where he has worked for many years . . .209

Within a few weeks Frank began working for Durack at Camballin, closer to Fulgentius and Phillipena at Willumbah and closer to his small lease. Katie, by this time heavily pregnant, relocated from Liveringa to Derby while Fulgentius, Phillipena and her sister Dottie, who had had a daughter “Kerry” on the 16th May, helped Frank to look after Pepita and Franky. Frank’s first project at Camballin was to lay the foundations for a shed that would become the family’s temporary home. Later he built a cottage as their permanent home. The cottage had a flywire-enclosed mess attached from where Katie would work. Frank, with his off-sider a chap named Chook Fowler, constructed whatever Durack needed. Sheds, cottages, outbuildings and a poultry yard and he also worked in the rice field.210 With Katie in Derby, he would visit the children at Willumbah and sometimes took them to Camballin where they seemed to enjoy being with their father. He would also bring the Fraser family over to see the new crop-growing venture.211 He found Durack’s experiments quite remarkable as he took an interest in the research while becoming excited alongside his boss as they both admired the first crop of Zenith rice. Frank relished the opportunities to tend to the crops when Durack went away on business trips to Perth and Sydney.212

On the 27th June Katie gave birth to another daughter. I was christened Mary Therese Jacintha [sic] but officially I was Jacinta, and in adulthood I became known as

209 Kim Durack, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, Kim Durack Business Correspondence 1937 – 1958’, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 12/05/1953. 210 Chook Fowler is mentioned in several of Frank’s diary entries; and in Kim Durack’s work journal. 211 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 14, 17 & 27/06/1953. 212 Rodriguez Snr, 20/07/1953.

133 Cindy.213 As the year drew to a close, my parents settled into life at Camballin. Katie cooked for the workers and for her family while Frank sometimes worked at Liveringa on various projects, but at every possible moment he would travel to Debesa to progress their new home. From November that year Kimberley people in the sweltering heat watched with anticipation each evening as the ‘build up’ to the ‘wet’ season produced patchy storm clouds that would roll in from the east, with little or no rain. On the 8th December Katie and Frank went in to Derby with the family to attend church to celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary. They purchased a windmill and returned to Camballin via Debesa, Frank pleased that the station now had two windmills. By the last day of 1953 little rain had fallen in the West Kimberley but decent falls further east had filled the tributaries of the Fitzroy River that flowed downstream to Camballin, running a bank at the Uralla bridge and over the road to the delight of the rice growing research team. The year wound up with a Christmas party at Camballin that was attended by managers and employees from Liveringa and Willumbah. Kim Durack and the Rose family then left for their holidays in the south, the full-descent people headed to ceremonial commitments on nearby stations, Fulgentius and Phillipena stayed on at Willumbah, while Katie and Frank remained at Camballin, close to Debesa.

213 Brother Ernest, C S C; 'The Fatima Message: From Heaven, a Light for Our Times', A Story of Our Lady of Fatima, u/d, http://fatima.ageofmary.com/overview/, (accessed 24/08/2013). I was named after Jacinta of Fatima, a shepherd child in Portugal who together with two other child shepherds, Francisco and Lucy, is believed by Catholics to have witnessed the appearance of Mary (the Mother of Jesus) who asked the children to pray the Rosary regularly to help extol the virtues Jesus in the hearts and minds of the people.

134 Chapter 4 Debesa: 1953 – 1958

The Debesa homestead in 1953 was little more than a tent and a bough shed alongside a windmill in the red pindan dirt, surrounded by low scrub. It was situated 20 kms north of Liveringa on the northern (permeable) boundary of Nigena country, beyond the floodplains of the Fitzroy valley. A narrow bush track led from the main road to the campsite where Katie and Frank knew that in time they would relocate permanently to and it would become their ‘place’. By the end of the year, there were two windmills that pumped good quality water into the tanks and troughs. (Perhaps if Campbell Dempster, the previous owner and the Kimberley Pastoral Company, had realised what good water Debesa produced they may have been more inclined to develop the lease with livestock.) In the intervening years however, Katie and Frank would have to remain at Camballin where they had an income. Willumbah was already a special place that the extended Fraser family frequented. Most of the narratives in this section are from their adolescent memories. Like Camballin, the Willumbah homestead sat close to the floodplains with its fields of ribbon-like grasses carpeting the greyish-brown clay. In the ‘dry’, the clay formed deep cracks that absorbed the rain during the ‘wet’, turning it to pasty clay potholes under the weight of hooved stock.

Kim Durack must have intended to remain permanently at Camballin because he arranged to have his dream home built on the edge of the floodplains. He contracted two Italian builders to build a stately Greek styled home that he called the “Parthenon” close to where he camped under the boab tree. Their employment however, was short lived. Life in remote Australia far from any town took its toll as the builders suffered culture shock, experienced language difficulties and found the heat unbearable.1 Both soon became sick and by early 1954 they had returned to Perth. Frank seems to think that a lack of finance on Durack’s part was another reason for the Italians’ withdrawal from the contract. Work on the Parthenon had hardly begun and now any plans lay in abeyance with stones piled high at the site

1 Kim Durack, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, Kim Durack Business Correspondence 1937 – 1958’, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 02/02/1953.

135 alongside an arch that was intended to adorn the end of the roof, while Durack contemplated how to proceed with his ‘dream home’.2

Willumbah was often abuzz with activity. It was home to several people including the full-descent people who lived in the ‘camp’. The Frasers’ house was made with corrugated iron walls and cement floors throughout and an asbestos wall separated the kitchen with its wood stove, sink, shelving and pantry cupboards. Everyone slept in the main area of the house on camp beds and swags and on the verandahs, and a fence surrounded the yard.3 Nearby was a meat house with its pillars made from local timber. It was enclosed with flywire and topped with a spinifex roof similar to the bough sheds found in the region. Further away was the work shed, the stables, and the stockyards where the horses were brought in for feed, saddling and grooming and beyond that were a few bough sheds where the full-descent people ‘camped’ during the day. At night, lugging their swags along the road they would move closer to Fulgentius and Phillipena in the main building, perhaps because some were our relatives.4

Katie and Frank and the children regularly visited Willumbah while relatives came from Derby on weekends and during holiday times. The outstation was a nucleus for the extended family during the 1950s and 60s and as I interviewed the family in 2003 their youthful recollections were complementary of one another demonstrating solidarity between the extended family.5 The interaction between the Fraser descendants was strong and they were supportive of one another. Their attitude and loyalty had had its grounding in the way in which they had been reared at Beagle Bay. As established in the previous chapters, Fulgentius and Phillipena Fraser as stolen generations’ children had always been close to their own children. Perhaps they

2 James Fraser & Frank Rodriguez Snr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 21/08/2003. 3 Leena Fraser, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 30/08/2003. 4 Pat Bergmann, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 04/09/2003. 5 A solidarity that existed in the lifestyle of other marginalised peoples in the region too. see Paul Marshall (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right, Now We Go 'Side the River, Along That Sundown Way: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1988; Hawke, Steve, A Town is Born: The Story of Fitzroy Crossing, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2013; Exile and the Kingdom, dir. Frank Rijavec, Lindfield, NSW, Film Australia, 2005 [video recording]; Bruce Shaw (ed.), When the dust come in between: Aboriginal viewpoints in the East Kimberley prior to 1982, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1992; and Noel Olive, Karijini Mirlimirli: Aboriginal histories from the Pilbara, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997.

136 feared that they might lose them, and their grandchildren, in the same way that they had been ‘removed’ from their families. dispossession and dispersal are probably the catalysts that brought Aboriginal families together with such close bonds in the period after being dismissed from missions. This was a time when they learned to adapt to life in a wider, non-Aboriginal society, which they had no idea about.

During the school holidays Tom Puertollano would take Aggie and their children, Cyril, Pat and Shirley to Willumbah and he would then return to his work in Derby.6 There they spent time with Jimmy and Leena, with the young Rodriguez children, and with extended families both mixed and full-descent who camped at Willumbah. They went out to the stockyards, cleaned troughs, shepherded the sheep into yards in preparation for the muster for shearing at Liveringa, and they helped to milk the goats. The boys learned ‘firestick farming’. With a box of wax matches Jimmy and Cyril would jump on and off the cart running ahead to set the spinifex alight on either side of the track, in readiness for the wet season.7 The long-standing indigenous custom of ‘firestick farming’ to encourage regrowth was now being used to ensure fresh fodder for ‘introduced’ animals.8 Horse riding was a challenge for the town kids and they looked upon it reluctantly. Cyril admitted to not liking horse riding unlike Jimmy and Leena who eased into stock life, especially Leena who claims to have wanted to be a jillaroo.9 Shirley recalled that the only time she ever rode a horse it bolted towards where Fulgentius was bringing sheep into the yard and she was almost struck by a low branch.10 Fulgentius also trained young non-Aboriginal jackaroos in stock work. They called him “Fraser” and some came from Broome and others from Perth but all had received their formal education at Colleges in Perth.11

6 Shirley Rickerby, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 01/09/2003. 7 Cyril Puertollano, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 01/09/2003; see Marshall, (ed.), Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1988. 8 M H Monroe, M H; ‘Fire-Stick Farmers, in Australia: The Land Where Time Began’, A biography of the Australian continent, 2014, http://austhrutime.com/fire-stick_farmers.htm, (accessed 06/07/2015). 9 Leena Fraser, 30/08/2003; see I grew up as a Jillaroo, dir. Fraser, https://soundcloud.com/abcwa/i-grew-up-as-a-jillaroo-meet-lena-buckle-fraser Australian Broadcasting Commission, 2014. 10 Rickerby, 01/09/2003. 11 June and Henry Gooch, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 31/08/2003; see Tony Ozies, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 12/08/2003; and Leena Fraser, 30/08/2003.

137 The children had free range at Willumbah. They climbed boab trees looking for rainwater trapped in the hollows of the branches and they cracked open the nuts to eat the dry pulp. They indulged in mugabala (bush banana that grows on a vine), kuungerberries (small sweet berries on a low hard, thorny bush) and ngili ngili (bush chewing gum). They wandered through the scrub and floodplains and Jimmy with his nephew Cyril, just four years his junior, would shoot birds with their shanghai (slingshot) and a pea rifle.12 With our full-descent relatives Gerry and Amy (married name unknown) and Patsy and Dickie Yambo and their children, the Frasers grandchildren would trek down to the creeks, some hitching a ride on the horse and cart to cross the potholed tracks.13 They looked forward to the long walk to Uralla and Snake Creeks to swim and fish where the crocodiles did not seem interested in people. In those days the freshwater Johnston crocodiles were considered as ‘friendly’ and not prone to attacking unless accidently disturbed.14

The river was a healthy source of fresh fish and wild life. The men mostly, hunted turkeys (bustard) and barni (goanna) on the floodplains in the outlying areas of Liveringa Station. The day was spent fishing for barramundi, catfish, jarrambas, shark, stingray, and swordfish all caught with a fishing line.15 The children learned to catch jarramba by attaching a thread to the end of a thin tree branch, tying bait to the thread and dangling the line in the creek until they felt a nibble, then quickly flicking their catch onto the bank. “They taught us a lot you know” Shirley Rickerby stated about our full-descent families.16 Pat Bergmann recalls catching jarrambas in their dresses. Sitting in the shallows of the river the girls held their dress skirt out under the water and as the jarrambas swam over the skirt they would fold in their catch.17 Sometimes they grilled the fish in an open fire or they would take them back to Willumbah. The jarrambas were tossed into a billycan of salted boiling water and

12 Cyril Puertollano, 01/09/2003. 13 see Patsy & Dickie Yambo, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 2003. Patsy’s Aboriginal name is Ginyagardadu and Dickie’s is Yumburrah. Their surname Yambo is derived from Dickie’s Nigena name, in Kerry McCarthy, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 30/12/2003. 14 Australian Museum ‘Freshwater Crocodile’, Nature Culture Discover, Sydney, 2014, http://australianmuseum.net.au/freshwater-crocodile (25/03/2014); see, I grew up as a Jillaroo, dir. Hilary Scales, https://soundcloud.com/abcwa/i-grew-up-as-a-jillaroo-meet- lena-buckle-fraser Australian Broadcasting Commission, 2014. 15 Aggie Puertollano, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 2003. 16 Rickerby, 01/09/2003. 17 Bergmann, 04/09/2003; see I grew up as a Jillaroo, dir. Hilary Scales.

138 when cooked and peeled and seasoned with salt or dipped in vinegar.18 Phillipena with some of the women from the camp remained at home cooking for everyone at Willumbah.19 She would prepare the bounty along with meat that Fulgentius had salted and hung to cure in the meat house. Their main meat source was mutton, but occasionally there was beef and kangaroo.

Frank worked on various jobs in the district. With his family he traversed bush tracks that connected the windmills where sheep clustered:

I just remember that we did a lot of travelling. Probably makes sense. We were on the move a lot; that’s for sure between Myroodah and Noonkanbah and Lulugui and over all those flats (flood plains). Back and forth you know between Myroodah and Liveringa.20

Pepita and Shirley remembered the year Christmas was held under a boab tree at Camballin adorned with lights, near the stone house. It was the wet season, ‘flood time’ and the only way to get there from Willumbah to join the Rodriguez’s was for Fulgentius to take everyone by horse and cart, the ‘long way around’. Shirley came without a dress that Christmas, and Katie made one for her to wear to the party.21

The Fraser children had a good rapport with the full-descent and the white kids on Liveringa, but my town cousins interacted less with the white station manager’s family unlike Leena and Jim. They did not have an opinion about the way the white people lived though speaking figuratively, Cyril’s remarks provide a sense of their perspective:

I always got the impression that it was the master and his slaves. I mean they never acted in that way, but there was always that feeling that you were being dealt with, you were below them. “Them” and “us” sort of thing. I always felt that. And that’s why I think, whenever they came out to the station, old Kim Rose and his sons and daughters or even old Gooch occasionally, I’d be out at the windmills or gone out shooting somewhere.22

18 Aggie Puertollano, 28/08 2003; see Bergmann, 04/09/2003. 19 Rickerby, 01/09/2003; see Yambo, 02/09/2003. 20 Pepita Pregelj, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 07/09/2003. 21 Pregelj, 07/09/2003; see Rickerby, 01/09/2003. 22 Cyril Puertollano, 01/09/2003.

139

Pat expressed a similar view. When the manager Kim Rose visited Willumbah, like her brother Cyril, Pat shied away. The children would politely wait around, say ‘hello’ and then disappear while Phillipena served the boss tea in china cups with saucers she kept for such occasions.23

Pastoralists and Kim Durack alike depended on a good wet but despite its obvious benefits, a lot of rain presented problems for Fulgentius. With sheep stranded near the floodplains he would send Jimmy with a group of eight or more Aboriginal lads to force the stock away from the floods and up into the safety of the sand hills: “We lived and stayed up there with the sheep for a couple of weeks until the water subsided”.24 The floods were the result of local downpours that swelled with the waters that had gushed down the riverbed from the northern reaches of the Fitzroy. They came from the northeast towards Blina Station where, Frank and Jim recalled, there was a huge lake that overflowed and ‘raced’ past Liveringa and down the river to Yeeda Station, closer to where the river emptied into the sea.25

In 1954, Frank began the process of stocking Debesa, buying a flock of twenty sheep from Downs Station for £1 each. The Kimberley had experienced a late wet that year and it took him five days to cart the sheep the 60 kms from Quanbun to Debesa, over sloppy gravel roads. West Kimberley people had grown accustomed to travelling on dirt roads as they persevered with the rough surface conditions. Up until the late 1940s, the main road between the townships of Derby and Fitzroy Crossing ran alongside the river, connecting the stations, but with its wide expanding floodplains the road could only be used in the dry season. It is probably the reason there was always a lot of traffic passing through the Liveringa homestead in those days. Even when a direct link from Derby to Fitzroy Crossing was opened away from the floodplains in the 1950s it was a gravel road, subject to weather conditions and often closing during the height of the wet season. Today, the homestead with its heritage listed buildings lies 20 kms away from the busy Great Northern Highway.26

23 Bergmann, 04/09/2003. 24 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003. 25 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003. 26 Leigh Edmonds, The Vital Link, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1997, p.121.

140 Torrential downpours would scour the road forming potholes, filling them with mud that dried into soft, fine ‘bull dust’. Not obvious to the driver of a moving vehicle these holes had the potential to damage tyres and wheel rims.27 So when Frank’s truck became bogged, he corralled the sheep for a day to let the road dry out a little while he worked the truck out of the mire.28 Thus began the stocking of Debesa as a sheep station.

From the time that the Kimberley was first opened up for pastoralism the methods of getting cattle to port moved through various phases. In the early days, drovers mustered the cattle to port along routes that followed the river. They rested the animals, courtesy (or not) of the sheep stations, where the route passed by windmills and water holes. But the long haul took its toll. While the livestock may have left in good condition by the time the muster arrived at port, often several months later, their condition had deteriorated. The animals had lost weight and were fatigued and some had died, all of which resulted in poor sales. In the northern Kimberley, for a couple of stations at least, the problem was solved momentarily when an innovative scheme to ‘air beef’ commenced at in the early 1950s.29 An abattoir was established (Frank worked there briefly during the construction phase) where cattle were slaughtered. The beef was packed on site and then freighted in aircraft fitted with refrigeration to Wyndham for export.30 This proved to be a much better way to deal with the dilemma of poor quality meat but it was not cost effective and the scheme relied heavily on government funding. Moreover, only stations in the immediate vicinity benefitted from it. Therefore, the Western Australian government asked that the Commonwealth assist in developing the beef industry by improving roads, which coincided with the advent of high-powered road trains. But even then, the condition of cattle on arrival at the meatworks was not good. The cattle were battered and bruised after having travelled over rough roads with tight bends that still

27 Edmonds, p.165. 28 Frank Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, Battye Library, Perth, 1944 - 1969, 17/02/1954; see Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003. 29 Malcolm Uren & F Parrick, Servant of the State: The History of the Main Roads Department 1926 - 1976, Perth, WA, Commissioner of Main Roads, Western Australia, 1976, vol. Abridged Edition; see The story of the air beef project in north west Australia, Sydney, NSW, F.H. Johnston for Air Beef, 1951; Lindsay Gordon Blythe, Reminiscences of L.G. Blythe: comprising of early life on Kimberley stations, airbeef and building of roads, Perth, WA, Battye Library, 1977; Craig Mostyn Group, Go west young man, http://www.craigmostyn.com.au/about/history/, Craig Mostyn Group, 2014, pp.63-64. 30 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 07/02/1949.

141 resulted in a loss of income for the pastoralists.31 The upside of improved roads by the Main Roads Department (MRD) was the benefit to sheep stations since they too used the roads to transport wool to the port of Derby for despatch to markets. It was some years before the bituminised, all weather, Great Northern National Highway passed through the region away from the floodplains. It skirted the Debesa boundary for 40 kms, while improving the capacity for stations to not only transport cattle to the meatworks, but the mobility of station peoples in general.

Debesa’s development progressed steadily while Katie and Frank continued to source an income elsewhere. Living at Camballin, my father remained as the builder and all round on-site labourer, he even installed several cattle pits (run-throughs) for the KPC. At times the whole family stayed out with him and it was not unusual to find Katie and the children camped near a windmill while he had gone into Derby to collect parts and stores.32 In November of 1954 he started building a house at Debesa but since he and Katie did not expect to relocate there in the foreseeable future, construction was sporadic. He set up a tent near the windmill and he built a bough shed for their short visits. Like elsewhere in the district, the bough shed posts were cut from local trees and the roof was made of spinifex spread over wire mesh.33 With the help of friends he had selected suitable river stones and sand from the bed of the Fitzroy River and carted them back to Debesa, where they hand mixed the cement and poured it into the timber framework to the height of the string levels, stretched out across the red dirt. Katie and Frank’s home had started to materialise.

As a builder, Frank was in demand. His services were wanted not only by neighbouring stations but also by townspeople and Derby’s Catholic fraternity. The Catholic Church was progressing its affairs in the region where finance was an obvious problem for them. In late 1954, the St. John of God Sisters approached Frank to build them a convent. He agreed but he could not settle on a start date immediately. The nuns had been living in a cottage in Derby since October 1945 with

31 Uren & Parrick, Servant of the State, pp.21-22. 32 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 23/05/1954. 33 Frank Rodriguez Jnr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 24/08/2003.

142 the intention of starting a school as soon as a building could be rented or purchased.34 In the interim, Catholic children attended the state school and they would go to the Sisters’ cottage each afternoon for religious instruction.35 The Sisters had already asked Bishop Riable in 1952 for assistance, arguing that because it would also be used as a school he should finance a convent. But the Bishop refused probably because of financial constraints. He advised them that while he could supply some building materials and they could use the Church as a school, they should have the convent built at their own expense.36 The nuns took up his offer and opened their first schoolroom with twenty-one children in the nave of the Church, separated from the altar with a curtain. Among the first students were Cyril and Pat Puertollano.37

There was no fanfare on opening day. Father Francis, the senior priest in the region, celebrated Benediction (a blessing by moving a monstrance containing a host, in front of the congregation) and he then introduced the children to the principal Sr. Ignatius, who had been the head teacher in Broome. With no resources the school got underway and two weeks later essential teaching items began to arrive.38

On the 3rd January 1955 Jimmy Fraser, then sixteen years old, started working with Frank at Debesa. They had just tilled a paddock in preparation to plant kapok and were laying a cement floor when Kim Durack arrived on the scene. He asked Frank whether he would complete his Parthenon that the Italians had started two years earlier at Camballin and abandoned. A good-hearted man, my father knew that there was no other stonemason to build the house, and he agreed. On the 27th February, he started on the stone walls of Durack’s Parthenon, that Frank called the “stone house” but with limited money on the part of the Northern Land Development (NLD) it would be a smaller version of the grandeur Durack had first envisaged. Durack

34 In 1954 Aboriginal people who had not become Australian citizens were not included in the census count and the population was estimated to total 1,060 people in the West Kimberley (includes the townships of Derby and Fitzroy Crossing). 1,033 people were identified as being British while the remainder were included as being born outside of Australia; and 23% of the West Kimberley population were Catholics which meant that the Church would have been keen to get established both for their parishioners. 35 Brigidia Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, Derby Chronicle, SAC Archives Rossmoyne (draft manuscript), WA, 8.393; see Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003; Leena Fraser, 30/08/2003. 36 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1952, 8.336. 37 Bergmann, 04/09/2003. 38 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1954, 8.393.

143 supplied some of the materials while much of the building was made from the river sand and stones that were readily available and Frank carted them with his truck to the site.39 A hard worker, he laboured tirelessly on the stone house working long hours in the often stifling tropical heat and young Jimmy was expected to do the same. He worked alongside Frank for almost three years both at Debesa and at Camballin: “Frank showed me how to do it. It was all done by hand, with a hand-mixer, a small hand-mixer. Those corner bricks. Yeah, I must have made hundreds.”40 As they shaped the large colonnades and poured cement into the pillar frames the Parthenon began to take shape. Then they commenced plastering the inner walls. Frank was also assisted by both twenty-one year Pat Begley who had just completed a carpenter’s apprenticeship in Perth and had headed north to earn some money and, an English carpenter John Hall.41 (Begley would later become a one third partner in Debesa.)

Frank divided his work commitments between Debesa and the stone house. In March 1955 he purchased another seventy sheep, this time from Noonkanbah Station, and released them into a paddock increasing his flock to ninety. He then embarked on his first muster in pindan country in preparation for his very first shearing program. He borrowed horses from Fulgentius at Willumbah and soon he met his first big challenge, the impenetrability of the ‘backcountry’. With the wet season over it meant that the fast growing feathertop threeawn grass, with seeds that resembled a spearhead, were at least six feet high making it difficult to find the sheep.42 He only found seven. Losing stock was not new to Frank. His mind probably drifted back to his sister’s farm at the village of Norcedas where as a seven-year-old shepherd boy he had fallen asleep and the animals wandered off. And he would have remembered

39 “This was to be a solidly-built stone and concrete homestead with wide verandahs and tall columns, considerably more Mediterranean in appearance than one expected in the Kimberley. The builder, Frank Rodriguez, a Spanish stonemason and refugee from the horrors of his homeland’s civil war, was responsible for much of the construction at Liveringa and Camballin in the 1950s and 1960s” in Jim Anderson, 'Liveringa Homestead Group', in John (ed.), Register of Heritage Places, Group 10 11/12/1998, Perth, WA, Register of Heritage Places, 1997, Register of Heritage Places - Assessment Doc’ Liveringa Homestead. 40 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/ 2003; see Pat Begley, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 28/01/ 2012. 41 Pat Begley, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 28/01/ 2012. 42 Kathryn Ryan, Common plants in the Kimberley, in Dept of Agriculture and Food, https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/rangelands/common-plants-kimberley , Dept of Agriculture and Food, Perth WA, 2014.

144 being punished with no tea, until they were found. Now at Debesa he had lost his own sheep. In the ensuing days the sheep emerged in small clusters from the scrub. To obtain the necessary equipment for shearing he borrowed both a shearing plant and a shearer for a day from Liveringa. The shearer, who Frank called ‘the expert’, sheared seventy-four sheep and Frank completed the remaining stragglers. He was roustabout and wool classer. He sorted the wool, throwing the fleece onto a makeshift sorting table, removing the sheep’s daglock then rolling it into a tight bundle and placing the fleece into a large wool bale. When full it was tightly secured with metal clamps, and branded with the Debesa stamp, with the help of his station hands they were loaded onto his Chevrolet truck, and tied down with rope for transport to the Derby wharf. The first batch of wool from Debesa would have only produced a few bales, perhaps three or four.43 Stock numbers increased over the years and mustering became more manageable as the sheep munched their way through the dense scrub stunting the growth of the ‘backcountry’ for the lifespan of the sheep station.

Katie was pregnant again when she moved to Derby with the children in 1955 and Frank soon joined her on the 10th May after suspending building operations at Camballin for a few months to be with her. This pregnancy did not go smoothly and Katie was admitted to hospital on a couple of occasions. The baby who they named Phillip John was born a ‘blue baby’ on the 26th May and he was rushed by RFDS to Perth for a blood transfusion. The procedure was successful and he was returned home one week later.44 During this interlude in Derby, Frank supplemented his income by doing construction work for the Club Hotel and for the businessman Lou Kent, and he again worked with the wharf gangs, unloading and loading cargo and cattle vessels. He also saw this as an opportune time to fulfil the St. John of God Sisters’ request and build their convent. During the construction phase he continued with developing Debesa most weekends and he worked on the stone house at

43 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 22/07/1955 44 Anoxemia or ‘blue baby syndrome’ is caused by a defect that prevents the heart from receiving enough oxygen, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_316.html (accessed 4/3/2013). Phillip’s distressing arrival into the world had little effect on him physically as he went on to become a strong and healthy young adult who excelled in basketball and cross-country running. He was also musically adept, playing rhythm guitar with a popular local Derby band the “Benning Brothers”.

145 Camballin.45 In Derby, Frank spent long hours building the convent so as to complete it as soon as practicable. It took him three months from July the 1st to September 24th.46 In terms of payment for Church related business Frank generally only ever charged a nominal fee. Yet it is conceivable that he also donated a percentage of his weekly earnings as required under Canon Law.47 He always contributed to the two collections that are a part of the Sunday service in the Catholic Church. The ‘collections’ are a system whereby the congregation donates money towards the upkeep of the Church. On the first collection he would donate a small amount of cash in coin and notes and in the second, he placed an undisclosed amount in a sealed envelope and placed it in the tray.

Katie turned thirty-five on the 24th of November and the family returned to Camballin. Durack’s Parthenon was emerging and despite the necessary interruptions he was delighted with the progress. He wrote to the NLD: “F. Rodriguez is doing a magnificent job he is the only person in the country who could do the job.”48 At Camballin Katie prepared the workers’ meals and the two older children, Pepita and Franky helped to look after me (a toddler). They often played by the creek collecting small crabs that they would let loose through the cottage, and they became friends with Andy Miller, Durack’s nephew who sometimes spent his school holidays at Camballin. Andy taught the younger children to trap birds under a box and to steal

45 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 1955 46 Rodriguez Snr, 24/09/1955. 47 Canon Law Society of America, in 20064 Codex Iuris Canonici, Washington, DC America Canon Law Society of America, 1983, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_INDEX.HTM. 48 During a 1986 presentation about Kim Durack’s rice growing experiments, Mr Bauer claimed: “Durack attended, of course, to the innumerable maintenance matters, often with minimal help, and played a major role in negotiations with the W.A. government which I will shortly mention. He also hired a Spanish stonemason from Derby to start work on what must still be the most remarkable station house in the Kimberleys. I don’t know how much it cost, but he may have got into a spot of bother with the other shareholders over “The Colonades” or, as some less generous people called it, “The Parthenon”. [In fact, it was Durack himself who called the building the “Parthenon”.] Towards the end of the 1950s the experiments looked promising and Durack was nudged out and replaced by an experienced rice grower. Roads were built, a dam was built and in 1961 a sturdy barrage with collapsible floodgates was positioned across the mighty Fitzroy River valley ten miles from the emerging township of Camballin. Durack was not at the official opening of the town and the irrigation site in 1961. He had reluctantly let go of his dream and moved to Canberra where he worked as a government stores’ clerk and he studied philosophy. At just 51 he died from staphylococcal pneumonia (complications from influenza). The Northern Developments Company continued with the scheme. F H Bauer, ‘Durack family papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 1986.

146 birds’ eggs from their nests.49 Each weekend Frank with Jimmy headed to Debesa from Camballin to check on the property. They inspected the water troughs and ensured that the sheep were all okay.

In March 1956 Katie appears to have had a partial stroke and she was taken into the

Derby hospital.50 This is my earliest childhood memory. My mother’s face looked sad and distorted. Clearly she was not well, and I must have been alarmed to remember this event. I can still see her sitting up in the passenger seat of a truck that was taking her to town, and baby Phillip being handed up to her, probably by my father since Kim Durack was away and Frank was in charge:

Kim Durack arrived from Derby. The letter I got from Katie is from the hospital. She is there and things don’t look good. But God knows best. The flood waters are disappearing very rapidly. The weather keeping very hot. We are working on the end of the building. That is on the columns and gables.51

Katie was discharged later in the month.52

As mustering time approached in 1956 Frank again put Durack’s Parthenon on hold while he attended to his small but significant shearing program. With an intermittent work schedule it would take Frank two years to complete the building at Camballin. Helping him at Debesa on this occasion was Pat Shadforth, a mixed-descent man and friend of the family. Each year, different people were there to help, and each year the tally of sheep sheared at Debesa increased. In 1954 he had registered his flock and was issued with a “Certificate of Registration of Stock Brands” earmark.53 One hundred and six sheep were shorn and sixteen lambs tailed and branded (ear marked) in 1956. The wool was compacted and Frank trucked the bales to the Derby jetty for their journey to market.54 He then bought another one hundred sheep. This time, they were ewes from nearby Ellendale Station that was under the management of Mr and

49 Pepita Pregelj, personal communication, 15/08/2014. 50 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 12/03/1956. 51 Rodriguez Snr, 14/03/1956. 52 Rodriguez Snr, 29/04/1956. 53 Agricultural Department, Certificate of Registration of Stock Brands, Brands Act, 1904-1956, Registrar of Brands, Perth, WA, Agricultural Department, 1954, 1960. 54 On Debesa the workers cooked the lambs’ tails, hangi style, buried under hot embers. To eat, the burnt wool was pulled back from the bone to reveal deliciously cooked flesh.

147 Mrs Bell-Blay, a couple who was well liked and respected by Aboriginal people. Dora Hunter, a relative of the Frasers, had worked at Ellendale in the mid 1940s when she was a teenager and she shared a room with Mrs Bell and everyone sat and ate at the same dining room table. Mrs. Bell was not having any segregation unlike at Mt Anderson where Dora had worked for Canny and Joan Rose. In their employ she recalls it being a lonely existence.55 Her experience perhaps was similar to that of the young women in Ann McGrath’s accounts of life in the homesteads in northern Australia, where each morning they had to wash, change their clothes and brush their hair before starting work.56 At Mt Anderson, Dora slept on a bed in the hay shed, made her own clothes and never set foot in the boss’s house until the 1970s when her brothers John, Ivan and Harry Watson bought the station.57 In 1959, long after Dora had left Ellendale, the Bells maintained a positive attitude towards their Aboriginal station hands as noted in a Native Welfare inspector’s report: “The natives at this station are happy, receive the same meals as are prepared for the owner and manager”.58

In June 1956 with shearing completed, Frank and Jimmy returned to work on the stone house, but not before helping Durack to sow the rice crop. With no one permanently based at Debesa it was vulnerable to exploitation. Goods were stolen, exploration companies bulldozed seismic tracks through the pindan downing fences without resetting them, and dingoes attacked and mauled ewes and lambs. To deal with the dingo problem Frank baited the bush dogs in the same way as they had at Liveringa. He smothered clumps of meat with poison and placed them in the spinifex and now, he also set deadly jaw traps buried in the loose earth with a clump of meat nestled on top of the concealed trap to attract dingoes. On one occasion the theft of goods - shearing bits, tools and a petrol pump led Frank to have his suspicions and take matters into his own hands. After reporting the theft to the police he confronted the Bell Brothers workers who were contracted to WAPET to grade the seismic tracks and they returned to him a petrol pump, but no tools.59

55 Dora Hunter, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 21/08/2003. 56 Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1989, p.66. 57 Hunter, 21/08/2003; see Marshall (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra. 58 Dept of Native Affairs, Ellendale Station, ‘Native Matters’, item 1930/0304, SROWA, 1959, 19/04/1959. 59 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 30/06/1956.

148

With no cash flow Frank engaged in a system of bartering to stock Debesa. Bartering is what monetised economies grew out of. It was initially a fair exchange of goods and services between people who had products that the other did not and they would agree on its value before swapping.60 Large sheep stations surrounded Debesa and the exchange of goods and services therefore suited him. He partook in a form of bartering that can be best described as ‘personal goods barter’ whereby he would make a profit from the wool off the sheep that he had swapped for his building expertise.61 Sheep in exchange for his skills appears to have been a satisfactory arrangement but it was not necessarily fair. Through bartering, Frank avoided the cost of buying sheep from the south and from other stations, but the bigger station managers did not treat him equally. In April 1957 for example he entered into an agreement with Quanbun Downs Station. He erected and cemented a tank in exchange for 1,000 wethers (castrated male sheep) and on completion of the job it took his stockmen fifteen days to muster them to Debesa.62 Jeff Rose was the manager at Quanbun and he would not sell ewes to Frank, only wethers.63 Rose needed a builder and Frank obliged, but as Jimmy Fraser pointed out, any pastoral competition from my father (albeit inadvertent) was treated with contempt:

They’d give him sheep with cancer ears. He’d have to cut all the ears off. But he took them and we ended up getting some good wool out of them. Kim Rose and them, Liveringa were really cruel to him, after all the work he done, and he wanted to buy sheep off them, he was going to be opposition to them.64

Two years later in 1959 Horry Miller, who would come to hold one-third a share in the property, commented on the way in which one pastoralist treated Frank. He had been promised 750 ewes by Duncan Beaton, the manager of Noonkanbah Station in exchange for building the Country Women’s Association (CWA) hostel in Derby.

60 Ann Jordan, 'From Bartering to Bills: The History of Money', Appleseeds, vol. 7, no. 7, 2005, 1 of 1; see Nicholas Thomas, 'The cultural dynamics of peripheral exchange', in Caroline Humphrey & Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds.), Barter, exchange and value: an anthropological approach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.21. 61 Williard E Stone, ‘Barter: An Ancient and Modern Practice’, Occasional paper, 1982. ISSN 0159-6187, Deakin University Waurn Ponds, Vic. 62 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 30/05/1957. 63 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08,2003. 64 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003; see Horry Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971, 07/05/1960.

149 Miller was concerned that Beaton, who he saw as being ‘a touchy man to deal with’, might try to use Frank and not pay him appropriately because he considered Frank his inferior. The cost of building the hostel was more than expected and Miller claims that Beaton expected Frank to bear the losses and not be compensated with more sheep.65

On the other hand, bartering was not part of any pact between Katie and Frank and their family and companions. Being well supported by family and friends is how Frank initially managed the lease and my parents endeavoured to repay people the best way that they could as they did with Fulgentius and Phillipena. These were mutual arrangements, par for the course in my family. They helped each other out. For instance, Frank would work on Fulgentius’s vehicle, and he would take Fulgentius and Phillipena and the children to town or wherever they needed to go, and my grandparents helped with the children, while Fulgentius was there for the muster at Debesa. As an experienced stockman my grandfather was a valued asset; together with Frank they put in miles of fencing and they maintained windmills. Sometimes extended family like Tony and Ellen Ozies who lived at Liveringa would check on the property when it was unmanned and they would gather the ripe, tasty watermelons that had sprung from the seeds Frank had tossed around the windmills. The families always visited each other whether they were at Willumbah, Camballin, Liveringa, Debesa or Derby and even when Fulgentius was out in the lamb-tailing camp Katie and Frank and the children would call on him and his stock workers to see how things were going.

Katie and Frank were eager that their children receive a good education in Catholic schools, beyond what they themselves had achieved, and was the reason they moved to Derby in 1957. The previous year the Catholic Church, always intent on increasing educational opportunities for Catholic children in the Kimberley began the school year with twenty-seven pupils under a spinifex-roofed bough shed with earthen floor, near the church. There were one hundred and eighty parishioners in Derby, and another one hundred confined to the Leprosarium.66 Katie and Frank rented a State Housing Commission (SHC) house in Stanley Street and Pepita began school that

65 Miller, 03/03/1959 66 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1956, 8.446.

150 year at the Holy Rosary School. The state house was a prefabricated home designed and cut to specifications then transported to Derby and assembled on site. The houses were built to suit the tropical climate, with a reinforced roof to withstand cyclones.67 The rooms had large bottom shutters with smaller top windows that opened outward and could be closed and bolted during adverse weather. A large living area was set in the middle of the house and its windows were fitted with louvres. The bathroom and wash-house were on a partially closed-in back veranda. Katie’s family lived nearby. Aggie and Tom Puertollano owned their own home in Loch Street that ran at an angle to Stanley Street while Leena Fraser now with two toddlers and married to Alf Buckle lived in a SHC house in Delawarr Street directly behind Katie and Frank. By the end of 1956 Frank had completed the stone masonry work on the house at Camballin and he was working at Quanbun Station doing more construction for Jeff Rose.

Things were improving for missionaries in Derby in 1957. The Department of Lands and Surveys Under Secretary P A Smythe wrote to the Commissioner of Native Welfare in Perth advising him that land had been allocated in Derby to both the ‘United Aborigines Mission Limited and the Pious Society of Missions Incorporated’ (the Catholic Church) to build Native hostels. Lot numbers 528 and 529 were labelled as reserve numbers 24904 and 24905 respectively and had been selected for

“Native Purposes” and announced in the Western Australian Government gazette.68 However, the Catholic Church’s tenet was to provide for all Catholics, regardless of ethnicity, and a concerned Bishop Riable wrote to the Derby resident priest Fr Joe Kearney. Kearney had only recently moved into the new presbytery in Derby and his jurisdiction covered most of the Kimberley from Wyndham to Halls Creek and outlying stations, including Debesa, and Cockatoo and Koolan Islands in Yampi Sound. The Bishop’s concern that the government would only assist them financially if the hostel was just for Aboriginal students, was evident:

I enclose a letter which I received from Mr. Anderson, Native Dept, Perth for your perusal and comment. I think it needs careful scrutiny

67 Dept of Indigenous Affairs, ‘Reconciling The Past: Government control of Aboriginal monies in Western Australia, 1905-1972’, Report of the Stolen Wages Taskforce, Perth, WA, DIA, 2008. 68 P. S. Smythe., Native Hostels – Derby file, ‘Letter’, Lands and Surveys, item 481/51, SROWA, 1958, 24/01/1958.

151 as to the property rights of a building that is erected on crown land. Since our idea is to open our hostel to all catholic children who go either to that ‘White Elephant’ technical High School or to our own parochial school and on the other hand need not all be children under the Native Welfare Act, it is more than doubtful, if the Government will give any assistance. In any case we have in mind to build that hostel on our own ground and be independent and safeguard our property rights.69

The Catholic Church did receive government funding.70 The hostel was to be built on a site on the corner of Wodehouse and Ashley Streets in Derby, across the road from where the United Aborigines Mission (UAM) was to be built. Both hostels were to be constructed for the purposes of accommodating students so they could attend primary, secondary and technical schools in Derby. Kearney contracted Frank to build the Catholic hostel and he began construction on the 14th May 1958, undertaking to complete the building in time for the commencement of the 1959 school year.71 Working with Frank on the hostel, which would be named “St Josephs”, were carpenters Pat Begley and Brian Flynn, and later Bob Jodrell joined them. The construction was not without its challenges. It was being built on a slope that posed alignment dilemmas, and the builders found it difficult to dig into the hard, red ground. The Boucher designed frame that had been built to specifications by the company in Perth, arrived with the ceiling joists four inches off centre.72 Despite these setbacks and given the era and distance from Perth, the hostel was on track to be completed on time. During the construction phase Frank and the builders would go to Debesa to continue the homestead, check on the stock and erect more windmills. Each windmill, he named after one of his children. The first was named “Pepita’s”. Always on the lookout for a ‘killer’ on their return to Derby, the group would down a bullock and share the meat with extended family. In Derby, the builders camped at the construction site and they had their meals at Katie and Frank’s home in Stanley

69 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1957, 8.492. 70 Fr Joseph Kearney, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 06/02/2012. 71 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 14/05/1958; see Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1958, 8.528; and Fr Joseph Kearney, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 06/02/2012. 72 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 11/08/1958; see Pat Begley, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 28/01/ 2012.

152 Street, prepared by Katie.73 Meanwhile, the Debesa sheep numbers gradually increased and Frank continued with his system of purchasing and bartering.

In the previous year, Horry Miller, a Western Australian aviator and co-founder of MacRobertson Miller Airlines (MMA), husband of the historian Mary Durack, and brother-in-law of Kim Durack began to show an interest in Debesa. Miller had moved to Broome in the mid 1940s with the possibility of finding a replacement business, as it seemed inevitable that bigger airline companies would eventually supersede smaller companies like MMA. As the self-imposed Regional Manager for the company Miller managed the northern ports and his six children would spend holidays with him in Broome and Mary Durack sometimes lived there too. But given her profession as a writer she generally lived in Perth with her children close to libraries and relevant resources and suitable schools. In the early 1950s Miller had already investigated the possibility of leasing Dampier Downs, a dilapidated sheep station north of Broome. The lease had no stock, plenty of wild donkeys and dingoes and it had been on the market since the Depression years. Miller and Mary tried living there briefly but with no farming background it was a hopeless situation for them both and after six months he abandoned the idea.74 But not, it seems, the idea of having a well-managed small property in the Kimberley.

Twenty years Frank’s senior Miller approached him in Derby about going into business together. In all likelihood, he would have met Katie and Frank at Camballin and he would have been acutely aware of the hard working Spaniard with an Aboriginal wife and four young children who was developing a small lease with no financial backing. Frank, always cautious of Miller (throughout their partnership), later suspected the reason Miller had been keen to negotiate with him over Debesa was not only to find an alternative to his airline business, but because his brother-in- law Kim Durack had struggled to pay Frank properly for the stone house. Durack had paid Frank £100 a month or whenever he had the money from which Frank paid Jimmy Fraser his wages: “No big money from Durack for that building. I was hoping

73 Pat Begley, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 28/01/ 2012 74 Niall, True North, pp.130-132.

153 for £1400, and Kim told me there was no more money”.75 Nonetheless, Miller’s proposition to Frank must have appealed to the ambitious thirty-seven year old builder who was eager to establish his own pastoral property in the region, but with no finance to inject it was a struggle. Surely, to have an assumed ‘financial’ businessman like Miller in the partnership would be beneficial. The proposition had potential.

Miller regularly visited Frank throughout 1958 at Debesa and on building sites in Derby to discuss the Debesa proposal. With him on some occasions was Cyril Gare, the Secretary of MMA and Miller’s friend and confidante. Miller had no pastoral acumen but he was well connected and he did have his own small family company, “Miller Investments”. It seems from his correspondence to Gare that he did not always clearly articulate his intentions in relation to Debesa. Frank on the other hand, lacked any business identity but he was a very capable station manager. Moreover, despite already having gone into partnership with Frank, Pat Begley had regarded Debesa as only an idea and he would have been keen to let go of his share.76 Begley’s interests were in the south and Miller could take over his one-third share. By early 1958 Frank and Miller were in negotiations and they agreed to go into partnership. Miller Investments worked on the finer details of the agreement, Miller wrote to Gare:

I have just read through the agreement. The part about Clause II will have to be to be altered, as it may not be possible for F. Rodriguez to devote his whole time to the working of the property, and it might even be a disadvantage, as he can do certain work which is in demand by other neighbouring stations, from time to time and get paid with sheep. Also his family have to be provided for and if there is not sufficient return from the station, he will have to seek some means to keep them. The clause which would give H. Miller control and management of the policy of the partnership could also be altered, as Rodriguez is the senior partner and has the better knowledge of how to work the property. This could come under ordinary agreement between the partners on the best ways and means.77

75 Fraser & Rodriguez Snr, 21/08/2003; see Kim Durack, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’. 76 Pat Begley, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth, 28/01/ 2012. 77 Miller, Durack Family Papers, 10/02/1958.

154

During this period as Frank continued building the hostel and while he deliberated Miller’s proposal he and Tom Puertollano were awarded a papal honour the Pro

Ecclesia et Pontifice.78 On the recommendation of Bishop Raible they received a medal and a certificate signed and blessed by Pope Pius XII. It was the ultimate atonement from the Holy Pope in Rome for services to the Catholic Church:

23rd July1949 Francis Rodriguez and Family Derby humbly beg the Apostolic Blessing and a Plenary Indulgence at the hour of death on condition that being truly sorry for their sins but unable to receive the last Sacraments they shall at least invoke with their lips and heart the Holy Name of Jesus.79

Frank was clearly proud of this ‘award’ as it is one of the few items that remained with his possessions when he died. Perhaps it gave him a sense of relief to know that his family would be taken care of in the spiritual world. It meant that at their time of death should any member of his family not be in a position to receive their last rites, they would be conditionally sanctified, if they prayed in the name of Jesus.

Towards the end of 1958 as the hostel neared completion and Frank began work on the Country Women’s Association (CWA) cottage in Derby, he and Miller signed the Debesa lease. Frank would have two-thirds share in the partnership and Miller one- third, taking over Pat Begley’s share. Begley was paid £750 cash on the 31st October 1958 and Frank and Miller commenced their partnership on the 1st November 1958.80 Now the family could move to Debesa sooner rather than later and Frank endeavoured to have the house ready for early 1959. He progressed the buildings installing essential additions and ablutions. In mid-1958 he secured another 582 ewes from Laurel Downs Station and that year nine bales of wool were produced from the Debesa stock.

As another busy year drew to a close in the life of Katie and Frank Rodriguez, the first of several relatives from Spain arrived in Derby. Jose Vasquez (Pepe) was

78 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1958, 8.529. 79 The certificate remains with Pepita Pregelj in Broome. 80 Minister of Lands, Transfer: The Transfer of Land Act 1893 - 1950, Landgate, Perth, WA, 1958.

155 Frank’s eldest sister Dolores’s son, and my first cousin. We called him Joe. He had arrived in Australia with his younger brother Julio the previous year to work in the cane fields in Queensland.81 Both were eager to see their tio (uncle) so Frank had little trouble in enticing them to relocate and work in the rice fields at Camballin. Joe was the first to arrive on New Year’s Eve 1958. His arrival was the perfect Christmas gift for Frank who had not seen any of his family in twenty-one years. He loaded his four young children onto the back of his Chevrolet truck and headed to the Derby airport to meet Joe. Frank then wrote in his diary using Spanish words mingled with English that suggest the emotional excitement with which he embraced the arrival of his nephew. He referred to Joe as mi sobrino (my nephew) and he said it was a Grande Navedad (grand Christmas).82 He then made plans to show his nephew around Derby before taking him to visit Debesa that he was developing into a sheep station and a home for his family.

81 We pronounced Julio’s name with a j and not an h as the Spanish do. 82 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 31/12/1958.

156 Chapter 5 Debesa: 1959 – 1969

Frank worked extremely hard to have the homestead liveable before the family relocated to Debesa from Derby in early 1959. The foundations that he laid in 1956 had materialised into a large room with asbestos wall panelling and a cement floor. I recall as a small child sitting alongside Katie on the step of that room. With my little bare feet buried in the soft, warm red pindan she taught me to write my name, Jacinta, in the sand with a stick. Inside, boxes and paraphernalia that had come with the move from Derby were piled high. That room became the office and storeroom complete with two kerosene fridges. Cement floors inlaid with river stones stretched out for four metres right around the centre room to include a kitchen, a dining room and two bedrooms. Frank walled the house with corrugated iron sheets that he cut wide windows into, each with a push-out shutter held open by a strong timber slat. Katie prettied the bedroom windows with curtains made from lightweight gingham that swayed in the occasional breeze and Frank made furniture, some from timber crates that Katie fronted with colourful material. He then fixed timber shelving along the bedroom walls and painted them white. The bathroom and washhouse extended from the main structure and a corrugated iron roof topped the homestead. Essentially, the house was a closed-in verandah. When dust storms billowed in across the paddocks enveloping the buildings with red dirt, and when electrical thunderstorms flashed lightning then thunder cracked overhead and torrential rain fell, the shutters were quickly drawn in.

Moving to Debesa meant that Katie and Frank had to make some decisions about how their children would be best educated. During the 1960s several students from the Kimberley were sent to boarding schools in the south and the Rodriguez and Puertollanos opted to do the same. They sent their eldest daughters to Stella Maris Presentation College, a Catholic school in Geraldton. Pepita was nine years of age and Pat Puertollano thirteen when they embarked on the MacRobertson Miller Airlines (MMA) flight to Geraldton on the 9th February 1959. They were the first two

157 Aboriginal girls to ever board at the all girls’ college.1 Cyril Puertollano then sixteen also left for a Catholic boarding school that year, to Aquinas College in Perth. He had successfully passed his Junior Certificate with six subjects in 1958 and according to the Holy Rosary Parish chronicles (in the Pallottine archives) he was the first ‘coloured boy’ to do so in Derby.2 Meanwhile, Katie and Frank remained undecided about where to school Franky who was eight, while Phillip and I at four and six respectively were considered to be too young for school. Just over a month later on the 19th March 1959 the feast of St Joseph, who was the patron saint of the universal Church, of fathers, and of builders, Katie and Frank handed back the Stanley Street keys to the State Housing Commission (SHC). My parents then attended Mass in the Holy Rosary Church, received Holy Communion and headed with their three younger children to live permanently at Debesa. With them were Joe and Julio Vasquez. For two days Frank’s nephews stayed and helped him to prepare for shearing before they left for Camballin to work in the rice fields for Kim Durack, and Northern Development Pty Ltd.

Debesa picked up momentum after Katie and Frank relocated there, though Frank still needed to divide his time between Camballin and Debesa and occasionally he worked on surrounding stations and in Derby.3 Through trial and error they learned to manage their lease. The best time to shear sheep it was realised was straight after the wet season, before the introduced weeds like gallon’s curse could become caught in the fleece and ruin good quality wool, or pierce the sheep’s eye, blinding the animal such that sometimes it would have to be put down. Even more lethal was the corkscrew grass that had a very sharp point with the potential to penetrate the sheep’s wool when damp, then make its way into the sheep’s body and eventually piercing the heart.4 They also noticed during the shearing program of 1959 that sheep were disappearing. It was soon discovered that some had ‘escaped’ from the paddocks near the main road as they fed on the verges. Horry Miller believed they were pushed into

1 Frank Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, Battye Library, Perth, 1944 - 1969, 09/02/1959; see Pepita Pregelj, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 07/09/2003. 2 Brigidia Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, Derby Chronicle, SAC Archives Rossmoyne (draft manuscript), WA, 1959, 9.62. 3 Horry Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971, 10/02/1958. 4 R J Petheram, 'The Kimberley Scene,' in R.J. Petheram and B. Kok. (eds), Plants of the Kimberley Region of Western Australia, Perth, UWA Press, 1983), p.43.

158 the Liveringa paddocks. He also suspected that some of the ewes had found their way back to Quanbun Station from where they had been purchased, forty kilometres away.5 Consequently, Frank improved the boundary fences and then purchased more sheep from Noonkanbah Station to replenish the flock. On that occasion, it took two stockmen with three horses more than eleven days to muster the 750 ewes to Debesa from Noonkanbah.6 With shearing over for another year they contracted the driller Leo Gugeri to sink several bores.7 The readily available, fresh clean water that sprouted wherever a bore was cast down into the water tables below the earth was indeed one of Debesa’s finest redeeming features. As already mentioned, an unanticipated asset given the station’s remoteness from any river system and its floodplains. Frank cleared the scrub with a triangular shaped fire plough made from heavy iron girders that he had welded together and towed behind the tractor. He built dams and roads with a bulldozer and he maintained the windmills, tanks, troughs and fences.

Katie, despite the onset of diabetes, was a resilient and resourceful woman and a crucial part of Debesa’s development. Like the mixed-descent Aboriginal wives of other white land developers, Frank Lacy at Mt Elizabeth Station and Fred Russ at Gibb River Station in the northwest of the Kimberley, Katie was a ‘right hand woman’ to Frank. Katie, Teresa Lacy and Laura Russ’s contribution to pastoralism was different to the way in which white pastoralists relied on, and used, full-descent women earlier in the century in the East Kimberley and the Northern Territory as discussed by historian Ann McGrath. McGrath argued that Aboriginal people excelled in stock work and made a significant contribution to northern Australia’s economy.8 She paid particular attention to the contribution of Aboriginal women who worked with stock, partaking in men’s traditional roles, and engaging in sexual relationships with white men.9 Katie’s contribution to the pastoral industry on the other hand was based on a very different set of circumstances. She was mission raised and trained to work for white people. She and Frank’s contribution to

5 ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 03/06/1960. 6 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 21/04-01/05/1959; Miller, Durack Family Papers, 15, 11/04/1959. 7 Gugeri, God before Gugeri. Michael Gugeri is the son of Leo Gugeri, a driller, and he collated his accounts of Kimberley life from the time Leo had arrived in the region in early 1900s. 8 Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1989. 9 McGrath, ‘Chp.3 Stockcamp and House & Chp.4 Black Velvet’, Born in the Cattle.

159 pastoralism was brought on by their commitment to one another as a married couple. They worked together to develop their own small lease. There was no coercion.

My parents’ distribution of tasks appears balanced in terms of the division of labour. While Frank generally attended to ‘men’s’ work and Katie to ‘women’s’ they clearly relied on one another. As small landowners they were mostly on their own at Debesa. Frank relied on Katie to help with stock work and he would help with domestic chores: cooking, laundering and gardening. While he may well have possessed McGrath’s virtues of ‘brawn, courage, toughness and durability’ that she claims were necessary to run a pastoral property, Frank relied on Katie to help run fences, load trucks and pull windmills and she would reluctantly drive the Land Rover when Frank needed her to.10 Katie was a stoic matriarch who stood five feet five inches tall with a well-rounded figure and long dark hair that she wore in a bun at the back of her head. Her stern face suggested a forthright individual, but under the serious exterior was a warm and thoughtful woman who people would bring their problems to, and she would listen.11 Katie’s contribution at Debesa did not go unnoticed by her nieces Pat Bergmann and Shirley Rickerby, who are sisters and the daughters of Aggie and Tom Puertollano. Both reminisced about my mother in interviews with me. When spending time during the school holidays at Debesa in her adolescent years, Pat was often by Katie’s side, helping her and learning from her while the younger children went off to play: “Your mother was always there for me”.12 Shirley too remembered how hard she worked:

Your mother was quite spritely you know, in those early days before she got her diabetes. Your mother was as strong as a lion. Full on. She used to work, work and work. I remember her doing the washing all the time in Debesa, by hand; a large pile of clothes on washing day, not just a little bit of clothes.13

On washing day, Katie and Frank often laundered the clothes by hand together, while during the short muster and shearing times the stockmen’s partners came and helped her with the washing. Generally, the help was from our full-descent family as

10 Pregelj, Oral History, 07/09/2003; see McGrath, p.49; Nixon, Perth, WA, Vanguard Service Print, 1978. 11 Pregelj, Oral History, 07/09/2003. 12 Bergmann, 04/09/2003. 13 Rickerby, 01/09/2003.

160 discussed elsewhere in this chapter. A huge copper tub sat over a fire in the sun in which the bed linen and towels simmered while the rest of the clothes were scrubbed on washboards immersed in the two large troughs that Frank had installed in the washhouse. Secured onto a clothesline with long, straight wooden pegs the clothes dried quickly in the Kimberley sun.

In the kitchen, in between the wood stove and the sink was a treasured large blue table that Frank had made and it was where Katie prepared the food. When making bread she would roll out generous batches of dough giving us small pieces to form shapes and when the hot loaves came out of the oven she tossed them from their baking trays onto the floured table. My younger brother Phillip and I were allowed to gouge out a small hole in the end of the loaf to extract some of the warm, fresh bread. She cooked steaks and chops, not in a frypan, but on the stove hotplate (barbeque style), something that I was not consciously aware of until I brought a friend home from boarding school one year and she was fascinated. I was even a little embarrassed, ‘don’t white people do this’? Katie prepared three cooked meals each day over that hot stove, and later to our delight, she would make ice cream and jelly despite the stifling hot weather. Her workload increased with the arrival of the shearers, and whenever Miller was there she was the perfect host, impressing him with her culinary expertise. She made smoko twice a day for the two shearers, the wool classer and the roustabouts.

Opposite the sink stood a kitchenette and a five-foot high pantry cupboard that was enclosed with flywire. Perched on top of the pantry was a battery-operated wireless. Each night, Frank stood with his left ear pressed against it as he fiddled the dial and listened to the news courtesy of ABC shortwave transmitters. The reception was poor, especially at night when the atmospheric conditions brought interference from foreign radio stations, probably Indonesia, that would crackle and surge over the Perth station. Our closed-in verandah was perfect for Phillip and I to play hide and seek after the evening meal, while the two older children did the dishes. We would run right around the house, into the center room, hiding between the kerosene fridges and screaming when found, only to be chastised by Frank who was trying to listen to the news above the already static reception. Frank was always interested in world events while Katie enjoyed the sport, especially cricket, and they both liked Blue Hills, a

161 popular ‘soap opera’ that ran on ABC radio for twenty-seven years.14 On school holidays we tuned into an afternoon request session called Yours for the Asking on the ABC, to hear the songs we had requested for our boarding school friends and vice versa.

Stretching north and east across the earth from the house was couch lawn, bordered with a hardy buxus type hedge, a variety of flowering plants, oleanders, bougainvillea, frangipani and hibiscus and a few poinciana, mango, and lemon trees and a cashew tree all planted by my parents. But anything they planted on the western side had little protection from the hot afternoon sun and they struggled to survive. Katie and Frank were ‘green-fingered’ and they had no trouble nurturing healthy vegetable gardens that provided the station’s produce. They even supplied the Main Roads’ workers with vegetables at times sold tomatoes and watermelons to shops in Derby. Annexed onto the western side of the house was a spinifex bough shed, and beyond that outside of the yard grew our improvised ‘cubby house’; a huge boab tree. It belonged to the family of trees that once held a significant role in northern indigenous Australian cultures as a food source, water storage, medicine, raw materials for rope, cloth, twine, boats and for religious ceremonies and even entombment.15 Our ‘cubby house’ had grown in three sections. The main trunk with a girth of about ten metres stood upright and its branches reached fifteen meters into the sky while a large branch half the width of the trunk stretched out like a forearm to the north rising thirty degrees from the ground before smaller branches sprouted skyward. Franky and Phillip chopped steps into that huge forearm with a tomahawk while on the main trunk they nailed dog spikes so they could climb into the higher branches. The third limb, the narrowest of the three, stretched west, close and parallel to the ground at a perfect height for a small child to use as a kitchen bench. There, I made mud cakes that my siblings pretended to eat, and where we all soaked the dry boab-nut pulp in water sweetened with sugar. Living under the tree was a harmless

14 National Film and Sound Archive, ‘Blue Hills 1930-1970s’, Radio Series Collection Guide 34:143521, 1998, http://www.nfsa.gov.au/site_media/uploads/file/2011/12/05/NFSA_Radio_series_collect ion_amended.pdf, (accessed 06/07/2015). 15 Jack Pettigrew, Origins of the Australian Boab (Adansonia gregorii), http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/Boab%20Origins.html, UQ Australian Institute of Biotechnology and Nanotechnology (AIBN), u/d.

162 Carpet snake that Frank did not want to alert us to. Absorbed in our childhood gratifications we were oblivious to its existence until it came out to die.16

As children, we did not seem to particularly notice the oppressive, hot and humid heat that came with the “Build Up” to, and during, the wet season. Thunderstorms appeared in the late afternoons that Katie and Frank surely prayed would deliver cooling rains. But often there was nothing. As the season progressed and an atmospheric low-pressure system formed off the coast, it was an indication that a cyclone was brewing with a promise of decent rainfall. Well before the advent of fans or air-conditioning Debesa folk made do with the wide, screen-less windows through which any breeze could flow, along with insects and the odd bird. Some days the heat was so intense inside the house, Katie would soak a blanket in water then hang it dripping wet in a doorway to catch what little breeze wafted through, slightly cooling the kitchen. But within a very short time the blanket was dry. Even when Miller purchased a small second-hand 12 volt power plant it was not enough to generate electricity for luxuries like fans. Nonetheless, the noisy, smelly motor that sat alongside the wash-house wall did bring a sense of modernity. Previously, the house was lit at night with kerosene-fuelled tilly and hurricane lamps and now, there was one light globe hanging from the roof in the kitchen, the dining room, the two bedrooms and the bathroom. When a light was switched on, by tugging at a cord hanging from next to the globe, a bright light shone down. But as other lights were switched on, each globe became dimmer. A light shone brightest when only one or two lights were on at a time. Consequently, the tilly and hurricane lamps and battery- powered torches remained in use as dependable night-light sources for several years.

We slept on folding camp beds that after tea were dragged out on to the lawn, rather than sleeping in the house, which had become hot during the day from the sun beating onto the corrugated iron walls and the roof. When mosquitoes were particularly bothersome Katie and Frank built a small fire with kuungerberry tree branches to let the piquant scented smoke drift around us as a deterrent. They then rubbed our arms and legs with “Dimp”, a commonly used and effective repellent with a very strong odour, which may have had more to do with the desired effect than the lotion itself.

16 Pepita Pregelj, personal communication, 15/08/2014

163 We sat on the beds and said the Rosary in the still night air. Cicadas chirped in the trees and the frogs’ jolly cacophony resonated from near the washhouse to interrupt the stillness of the night. An occasional soft pounding noise meant a kangaroo passing, or a quiet disturbance nearby could cause the sheep to bleat, or the horses to bray, while a rustle under a bed meant a snake or lizard was present that would send us into giggles as we quickly pulled our legs up onto the bed. Later, as we lay back snuggling our pets and peering into the night sky to spot satellites amidst the myriad of stars, a passenger jet would pass over on its way to Singapore from the eastern states. As we listened intently, Katie and Frank told us stories and explained the various formations in the bright galaxy: The Milky Way, The Southern Cross, The Saucepan. Katie pointed to and retold the mythology of The Seven Sisters as she had heard it, probably on the mission, and we squinted to count the seven stars, until we fell asleep. In astronomy, the Seven Sisters are a cluster of stars known as the Pleiades. Nigena woman Munya Andrews was so inspired by the nights she spent as a child during the 1960s under the Kimberley sky exploring the brilliant display of the cosmos, she wrote a book about the Seven Sisters. From her adoptive grandmother Candice Cox, a Nigena woman on Noonkanbah Station, Andrews learned how Aboriginal people are connected to the cluster: “[w]e are the same mob as them Munya. We are the same people. We come from the same country.”17 Like Andrews, I too could imagine a cousin from the cluster dropping down to visit us.

The additional buildings on Debesa included the shearers’ quarters that could accommodate up to four people, the combined workshop and garage and the ‘Blackfullas camp’. All were made of the same standard building materials of timber, corrugated iron and asbestos with cement floors. Intended as a temporary residence for part-time workers the camp was situated some distance from the main building in keeping with the larger homesteads on pastoral properties throughout northern Australia.18 It had a kitchen and wood stove, and a sleeping area separated by timber slats with no wall panelling (a job that Frank had intended to complete in due course)

17 Munya Andrews, The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades: Stories from Around the World, North Melbourne, VIC, Spinifex Press P/L, 2005, p.1; see Duane Hamacher, Stories from the sky: astronomy in Indigenous knowledge, 2014, (accessed 06/03/2015). 18 McGrath, Born in the Cattle; see Tony Smith, 'Aboriginal Labour and the Pastoral Industry in the Kimberley Division of Western Australia: 1960-1975', Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 3, no. 4, 2003, pp.552-570.

164 and three or four camp beds with straw mattresses and pillows. An ablution block stood a few meters from the dwelling, and the quintessential bough shed was where people spent most of their time out of the heat, where they commonly spread their swags on the ground rather than in the house. Alongside the bough shed was a campfire, host to a gurgling billy and occasionally a stew simmered in a camp-oven nestled in the coals. Sometimes we would lie on the camp beds during the day reading comics, and my brothers learned to play the guitar from the stockmen, while listening to Slim Dusty, Buddy Williams and other country singers. Katie was never overly concerned that we spent time at the camp, but Frank was clearly undecided and he sometimes told us not to go down ‘there’. He too, at times felt that full-descent Aboriginal people were inferior to his mixed-descent family.

Katie and Frank ensured their children were kept busy carrying out menial domestic tasks that were significant in the minds of children. No station homestead was ever complete without a fowl yard teeming with chooks, bantams and ducks that produced fresh eggs daily. We fed them, collected their eggs and kept the fowl yard clean, something we all enjoyed. It was fun. The coops were cleaned out and replenished with nesting straw that Frank had bought from Camballin. But we may have thought differently while collecting eggs had we ever come across a snake that sometimes lurked in the coops.19 Gallons of water were used to scour the ducks’ pond, while we soaked each other and squirted the chooks as they escaped up into the Cadjibut tree that the yard was built around.

On the southern side of the fowl yard was the small property’s first water supply. Secure on a cement base under the windmill’s frame sat a diesel motor that Frank serviced regularly as it pumped clean, fresh water into two tanks. From a 2.5metre high tank water was piped to the buildings while the other, a much wider tank that stood 1.5 metres high is where the children swam. Its excess water flowed over into the horses’ troughs. In fact, we swam in tanks located alongside windmills throughout the station. Close by, a small fenced enclosure that was used as a holding yard during shearing time encircled a cluster of Bloodwood trees and a shady Bauhemia tree. In the yard, Frank built a cement pond that also filled with water from

19 Pepita Pregelj, personal communication, 15/08/2014.

165 the tanks’ overflow. William Williams, a stockman who had grown up at Beagle Bay made a bird trap over the pond with the help of Frank, Franky and Miller’s son Andrew. Williams showed them how to spread chicken mesh across the surface and how to make a funnel at the top into which the birds, mainly finches, worked their way in to drink from the pond, and became trapped. The bird-trapping venture was short-lived however. Perhaps Andrew, who had been at Debesa on school holidays took some back to Perth, but mostly the birds were cared for in a cage made from an old cot, only to be released by the younger children (for which we were firmly scolded) and the caged birds idea came to an end.20 Benefitting too from the generous water supply were the vegetable gardens. Each year a garden was toiled in a different location to let the previous year’s soil regenerate.

From a very early age Franky was learning to run a station. He spent a lot of time with Frank as demonstrated by the following diary entries. The first is from 1959 when at just eight years of age, he steered a truck as Frank pulled it out from a bog with a Land Rover:

In the morning went to get the truck. We towed it with the Land Rover. Franky steer same, done a great job.21

This morning very early 2am arrive from Derby with all the family T.G. In the afternoon sent William y Franky to look for sheep on the main roadside going to Derby.22

About the station is very hot and tonight is raining. Franky y I today got a good killer in the dam paddock.23

This morning sheared 5 more sheep. In the afternoon Franky y I went mustering in the house paddock into Pepita’s. Mr. J. Ponton brought the mail out for us from Derby.24

In September of 1959 my parents sought to have their eldest son schooled by correspondence. A teacher arrived at Debesa to make the necessary arrangements but Franky’s engagement with schoolwork was minimal and he achieved little because he

20 Frank Rodriguez Jnr, personal communication, 23/11/2014. 21 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 11/12/1959. 22 Rodriguez Snr, 11/05/1962. 23 Rodriguez Snr, 15/12/1962. 24 Rodriguez Snr, 23/05/1963.

166 spent most of his time out with Frank.25 In the following February at the age of nine, he was sent to board at St Joseph’s Hostel, which was under the management of Mr. and Mrs. Rykers. From there, he attended the Holy Rosary School in Derby then later that year I joined him. I had already turned seven when I began school in September of 1960. Towards the end of the year Franky became very sick with an undiagnosed illness and Katie and Frank were so concerned they took no chances and removed us both from the hostel before the school term finished. Earlier that year, children at the hostel had become sick with influenza or pneumonia, which may have influenced their decision.26 The following year in 1961 Franky was sent to St. Patricks Christian Brothers College in Geraldton. I was placed with Aggie and Tom in Derby but in the second school term while still seven years of age I was sent to Geraldton to Stella Maris College (where I remained until completing Year 10 in 1969). Phillip commenced his schooling in Derby in 1962, the year he turned seven. He also boarded with Aggie and Tom. For three years this arrangement remained in place, then in 1965 he joined his siblings on the plane to Geraldton.

In keeping with key points in this thesis that explore how Katie and Frank shared religious understandings, it is clear that they agreed that their children attend Catholic schools where practicable and that they develop a similar worldview to themselves. Apart from Phillip who completed his high school in Derby where there was no Catholic upper school, we only ever attended two schools each, one in Derby and the other in Geraldton, both Catholic. Perhaps our parents wanted to protect us, given we came from a very sheltered upbringing living on the small, isolated sheep station for ten years and being sent to single gender Catholic boarding schools. Our major social interactions were limited to the three school terms away among other students, where we nonetheless were constrained by dormitory living, and homesickness. I loved being with my mother, and I missed her terribly in the first few years. I hated returning to boarding school. I would protest to my parents, to little effect. Walking stubbornly across the tarmac to the MMA’s DC3 passenger airline and without looking back at them, I would cry until I was buckled in with the seatbelt. With the four children away at school, Katie and Frank had peace of mind confident that we were in good care while being educated under the direction of Catholic nuns and

25 Frank Rodriguez Snr, in Diaries, Battye Library, Perth, 1944 – 1969, 24/10/1959. 26 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1960, 9.17.

167 brothers. Academically, Pepita did very well and we both learned the art of speech and to play music. She learned to play the piano and cello and I was taught to play the violin. Both boys excelled in sport as cross-country champions and Franky did well in football and Phillip later in Derby, in basketball.

Away at boarding schools, our only method of communication to our parents and friends was by handwritten letters. Katie wrote to us at least once a fortnight, sending pocket money and sometimes a food parcel. At Debesa there were no telephones, no regular postal delivery and the mail was either collected on a store run to town, or when someone travelling past would leave mail in the roadside mailbox. Frank had fashioned the box from a forty-four gallon drum by cutting a flap door into the front of it, he then painted it white and in black he inscribed DEBESA along the side and rested it on four standards (metal fence posts). Travellers sometimes paid a courtesy visit to bring the station mail the three kilometres in to the homestead from the main road. An impromptu visit was always welcomed. The “bush telegraph” (word of mouth) would have been a vital conduit for communication. It was also a chance for social interaction, for conversation and to discuss station life in general between neighbours. In the mid 1960s communication technology arrived at Debesa when a pedal radio was purchased and Frank joined the Out Post Radio (OPR) community that operated out of Derby.

Visitors to the station were generally extended family and during the school holidays the Puertollano siblings stayed for a few days between Debesa and Willumbah; occasionally the Fraser’s grandchildren from Darwin and Perth visited. Cyril Puertollano after returning from Perth in the mid 1960s where he had worked for three years after finishing Year 12 at Aquinas College was a regular visitor. He loved going out to Debesa. It was perfectly located in the middle of miles of bush where he could hunt kangaroo, wild turkey and ducks with his rifle and it was close to his preferred savannah, the grassed Fitzroy valley floodplains that always had an abundance of kangaroos. No station was without guns. Frank kept a 303 rifle that he used to down a bullock, a 22 rifle for smaller prey like sheep, kangaroo and bush turkey and a shotgun for ducks. Our main meat source was mutton but when a bullock wandered onto the Debesa swamp country it became a prized ‘killer’ and it was shared with family in Derby. Other meat sources included chook, pigeon and

168 even barni (yellow bellied goanna). The stockmen enjoyed hunting down a barni while out mustering and Miller sometimes brought fresh fish from Broome.27

Tom Puertollano, who was Frank’s closet friend, worked for the Main Roads Department (MRD) responsible for upgrading and building major roads throughout the region. As a truck driver his job was to dump loads of gravel onto the roads that were then graded and levelled as they maintained the existing roads and created new passages, which meant that Tom was often camped nearby. Therefore he, too, was a regular visitor to Debesa. Frank’s diaries are littered with entries that show my Uncle Tom had called in, such as the time Frank was bitten along the inner arm by a centipede and Tom was there to get him to the hospital for treatment. For Cyril, Tom’s job was an opportunity to spend time with his father and to be in the bush. He helped him load the truck and occasionally Frank would be there to help. The main road that ran alongside the whole length of Debesa proved a boon for Katie and Frank as Tom often delivered mail or stores. Occasionally he came in just to have a meal with Katie and Frank and to spend the night. The MRD workers camped in tents at various sites between Derby and Fitzroy Crossing and in turn, my parents would deliver produce to the camp and visit Tom.

Full-descent people who worked at Debesa usually came from nearby station camps, from the Reserve on Panton Street in Derby, and from Mowanjum.28 Those who came from the station camps were mostly my parents’ contemporaries and were generally Nigena, Walmatjarri and Bunuba peoples. The Aboriginal workers respected Katie and Frank, a respect that was mutual. As children we never knew their surnames or even if they had one. We would address each person by his or her first name while white people we called ‘mister and missus’ and the mixed-descent people tended to be ‘aunty and uncle’. Some of our most engaging times were with our extended full-descent Aboriginal relatives. But they were only ever at Debesa for as long as the work was there. Sammy and Maisy and their small daughter lived at Debesa in 1959. He worked as an off-sider to Frank and she helped Katie during the

27 Pregelj, 07/09/2003. 28 Smith, ‘Aboriginal Labour and the Pastoral Industry in the Kimberley Division of Western Australia: 1960-1975’.

169 off-shearing period.29 Intermittently over the years others like Dominic, Freney, William Williams and Gerry and Amy with their youngest daughter Aggie were at Debesa for the mustering and shearing round. Freney (referred to as Briny in Frank’s diaries) is an outpatient today at the Broome Dialysis Unit and he often recalls his times at Debesa to Pepita where she is a registered clinic nurse. His memories complement Frank’s diary entries, like the occasion when “Patsy” a stock horse threw him. Frank had expected him to be able to master the mare.30 That was a prominent trait of my father’s. Not only had he adapted to working with stock in the Kimberley’s apparent harsh environment, he became skilled in station tasks and he expected his employees, and his children, to do the same. But in respect to Aboriginal people’s belief systems, both my parents were always considerate of their employees’ obligations to attend customary lore commitments. Frank would take people to wherever they needed to be. He would then collect them following ceremony time. Indeed, it seems that Katie and Frank as devout Catholics appreciated their Aboriginal workers’ right to continue their own religious practices.

Katie’s Nigena heritage was never in question by fellow stockman who did not hesitate to teach her young sons essential life skills. Local Aboriginal peoples know their connections to one another and they knew exactly who Fulgentius and Phillipena’s families were. They took pleasure in teaching Frank’s Aboriginal sons because there were things they should know that their white father could not teach them. Franky was taught to saddle and ride horses and muster the sheep and he learned skills similar to orienteering, in “Blackfulla” way. He learned customary survival skills and to use his instincts. He was taught how to survive on bush tucker, what was edible and what was not and how to prepare food. And he learned to trap a barni underground without chasing it across country like they sometimes did when out mustering.31 We all learned to catch ducks in the dam paddock. With reeds covering our heads we learned to swim slowly and quietly towards the ducks as they fed on water plants, attempting to grab them by their legs.32

29 Pregelj, Oral History, 07/09/2003; see Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 21/07/1959. 30 Rodriguez Snr, 30/01/1963, 18/02/1963; Pepita Pregelj, personal communication, 15/08/2014. 31 Frank Rodriguez Jnr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth 24/08/2003. 32 Pepita Pregelj, personal communication, 15/08/2014.

170 As a young boy Franky learned from the stockmen, and it was Gerry, an Elder, who recalled the stories of survival to him. As they walked together in the dam paddock with its natural camping grounds and swamps, Gerry referred to boab trees as ‘planting trees’ and he showed them to Franky. This was an area that he used to walk through with his travelling companions. Using colloquial place names the old man described how his people journeyed from the Liveringa Ranges (Grant Ranges) through the dam area to the Ranges (Leopold Ranges) north to near Windjana Gorge in Bunaba people’s country. They carried survival tools from one location to the next, through pindan country where there were no rivers. Other tools and utensils were buried at the base of the ‘planting trees’ probably to lighten their load and for use on their return journey. Here in the sandy pindan, where there were no rocks, were ‘foreign’ portable tools - water containers and spearheads amid chips of stone buried below the earth. This was different to tools found in 1828 on the east of Australia that were placed under a sheet of bark.33 Perhaps here, it was because of the heat that tools were buried for protection under particular trees. Together, the pair dug almost a metre deep to retrieve items that were once used to grind boab nuts:

I could guarantee that I could go to one of those boab trees now and do exactly what Gerry showed me, and say, ‘Well. This is one of the old planting areas’, and I bet I could find tools.34

Was this Wunan’s route as described by the Worrorra, Ngarrinyin and Wunambal peoples who lived in the country to the north of Debesa?35 Wunan is the Law passed on by the Wandjina spirits that determines the systems of sharing and trading among people in the north Kimberley.36 Franky was shown burial sites that suggested people spent many months living on the route. This was such a familiar place to my brother and now for the first time, he was hearing stories about his Aboriginal people’s relationship with a landscape that to him was meaningful from a very different cultural perspective. To Franky, the land was where sheep grazed and matured for economic purposes. He took some items home only to have them taken by a visitor to

33 B Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2011, pp 131-132. 34 Rodriguez Jnr, 24/08/2003. 35 Discussed in Chapter 3. 36 Mary Anne Jebb, Mowanjum: 50 years community history, Derby, Western Australia, Mowanjum Aboriginal Community and Mowanjum Artists Spirit of the Wandjina Aboriginal Corporation, 2009.

171 Debesa who had shown an interest in them. While it is likely that Katie and the Aboriginal stock workers were aware of the ‘traditional’ benefits of the swamp areas, little did we appreciate its significance to Aboriginal peoples. It was significant to us too, but for very different reasons. We were parochially attached to the dam paddock. It was where Frank hunted ducks, built dams and it was where we would swim.

On visits to Liveringa from Debesa, Katie went prepared. Food and other essentials were packed for the extended families who lived in the camp and she and Frank would stop near the compound as Pepita recalled: “Aunty Maggie and Uncle Rodney used to walk across from those blimey huts to our Land Rover and Mum would give them, whatever we had”.37 Sometimes Katie’s full-descent family camped at Debesa where she enjoyed having the company of her family. Two elderly women, Topsy who I called Nundula and Aunty Maggie who I called Lidgeun, kept the gardens watered, helped with the cooking and they prepared our clothes before we returned to boarding school. Together with Katie they cleaned our tunics, blazers, ties, and berets and they washed and starched our school blouses, shirts, trousers and even the sheets, pillowcases and serviettes before ironing them with wood stove irons in the humid climate. Six stove irons were placed on the wood stove hotplates to heat. When ready, they were removed with a clasp-on handle, rubbed with a cloth or rubbed in the sand to clean any black heat marks off before ironing the clothes. When the iron cooled it was exchanged for another. The cases were then neatly packed with school clothes, casual wear and essentials like toiletries that Katie had purchased in town for our twelve-week school term away.

My parents visited Derby fortnightly to restock, purchase equipment, arrange the transport of sheep, and return Phillip for schooling after he had spent a weekend with them, and sometimes Katie stayed for a few days.38 In Derby they spent time with family and if it was ‘picture’ night, they stayed over with Aggie and Tom. Movies were always referred to as ‘pictures’ in the region. Rather than shop locally, Katie found it more convenient, and probably a much better selection, to order most of our

37 Pregelj, Oral History, 07/09/2003. 38 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 20/04/63, 25/05/1963, 07/06/1963, 25/10/63.

172 clothes from Boans in Perth and from Winns in Sydney.39 I would sit with her and together we thumbed through the catalogues as she helped me select my own casuals. We were probably the best-dressed kids when we went to town because she made sure we wore our nicest casuals, and that we were scrubbed and our hair was washed. The school uniforms were ordered from a specialist uniform shop in Geraldton and they would be ready for collection when we returned after the holidays.

The height of activity at Debesa occurred at shearing time and it often coincided with the school holidays when everyone was expected to help. We steered the sheep through the yards in readiness for shearing and caught and held lambs for tailing. Flipping the lamb onto its back and grasping its legs, a hind leg and the opposite front leg clasped together, the animal was heaved onto the tailing bench and held firmly. Frank swiftly and thoroughly perforated the ear with the Debesa earmark, severed the tail with a very sharp, tailing knife and he neutered the male lambs with rubber bands. The tail wound was treated immediately, daubed with a kerosene soaked rag before the lamb was released to run off bleating into the flock.40 The severed tail was thrown onto a mounting pile of tails that were later placed onto the hot coals that had been prepared in the ground. Pepita savoured the memory: “There’d be a big fire and we’d set them alight, and when roasted we’d pull off the skins and eat the flesh, beautiful.”41

Aside from killing animals for sustenance, Frank never hesitated to deal humanely with animals that needed to be euthanised. He disposed of feral kittens born in the spinifex ceiling of the shearing shed and he shot injured animals. Emus were destroyed when found half strangled after having run into a fence, and he would put to ‘sleep’ hairless joeys found in the pouch of a gunned down kangaroo. Older joeys we kept as pets. A substitute pouch was made by attaching a hessian rice bag low down on a wall in the storeroom, that the joey could tumble in to at will. When fully

39 David Hough, Boans for service: the story of a department store 1895 - 1986 Circa Vintage, Claremont, WA The Estate of FT Boan, 2009. 40 I realised as a young child, whenever I visited farms with school boarders in the Geraldton region, that their sheep attracted blowflies, whereas they were not a problem in the Kimberley. Perhaps it was too hot. 41 Pregelj, Oral History, 07/09/2003; ABC Rural, dir. Brann, 10/11/2010, http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/content/2010/s3062796.htm. This source contains photos donated to the ABC by Frank.

173 grown they went back to the bush. Sometimes a doe with joey would return and stand near the house in the shade of a tree, we assume to introduce us to her young. Others may have succumbed to a rifle bullet. Like the time Frank found, on closer inspection, that a kangaroo he had shot for our dinner was branded with a neighbouring sheep station’s earmark.

Catholic values continued as the mainstay of the Rodriguez family. Katie and Frank adhered strictly to Holy Days of Obligation, when Catholics attended church and refrained from working. Living in the bush where there was no church the obligatory ‘day off’ was a welcome relief from work. Together with the stock workers the family spent the day scrambling among the hills or resting by the river. In the Erskine Ranges 20 kms from the homestead towards Fitzroy Crossing, we climbed into the caves treading carefully among the animal bones while flippantly suggesting that they were peoples’ relics. We would take in the landscape as far as the eye could see, south towards the Fitzroy River valley floodplains. On the flat grasslands below the hills, the full-descent women smashed the top of a waist high anthill, to collect the grasses that had been stored by ants. The grasses were gathered for medicinal purposes, in particular stomach ailments.

When the Puertollano family came from Derby we would all meet at Willumbah and with Fulgentius and Phillipena go fishing and netting for jarrumbas at Yurala Creek, like they had in the previous decade.42 The women fished for bream or catfish while the men hunted down a kangaroo, hung it from a tree, skinned it, and cooked it over the fire; the offal was used for bait. After the meal, Frank and Tom would indulge in a siesta, snoozing on their backs on a canvas spread under the trees. On other occasions we visited the Ozies family at Liveringa and fished in the billabong while the older children climbed in the hills.

Kimberley social gatherings included the yearly race round. An important event on anyone’s calendar. People gravitated to Derby from outlying stations and Kimberley towns and Frank would take the stock workers and their families and Katie to town and he would return to Debesa. With the children away at boarding school it must

42 As discussed in Chapter 4.

174 have provided some relief for Katie from the laborious station duties. She missed the company of her sisters and her extended family from Beagle Bay, while Frank very likely did not know how to relax away from his work, other than on Sundays. In 1963 when Kimberley people prepared to play host to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip during their Australian tour, Katie was caught up in the hype and she and Aggie made plans. They asked Tom to drive them to Broome. Even Miller earlier in the year had written to Gare about the impending Royal Tour:

The visit of the Queen to Broome has caused a remarkable outpouring of cash to improve it for her 90 minute visit. All roads are being widened gravelled and bitumised and great gardening projects in front of the gaol especially, to make it look like a happy home, not the narrow stone cells, with only a high grille [sic], entirely unsuited to modern ideas, which are hidden behind the tin fence . . . there will be a great influx of people from everywhere which will probably outnumber the local population.43

The royal couple was scheduled to visit , Kununurra and Broome before boarding their ship Britannica that had berthed at the old Broome jetty.44 Derby people travelled by road only to become bogged on the gravel main road between the two towns. With several vehicles making the trip the road had turned into a quagmire following the recent monsoon season.45 The visit did not interest Frank and he scribed: “All day shearing. Katie did see the Queen in Broome, after having some trouble to get there due to bad roads.”46

It is hard to attest precisely how Frank felt about having his nephews nearby at Camballin. He and Katie made regular visits to the research farm to see how they were faring. In time, both Joe and Julio returned to Galicia to marry their childhood sweethearts and to bring them out to Australia. It was Joe who married first. His wife, Visita, a vivacious woman had little trouble mixing in with Katie’s extended Aboriginal family. They liked her and the feeling was mutual. Interracial relationships did not faze her and she and Joe made friends with full-descent people from Liveringa too. Frank even named a windmill after her. Another of Frank’s

43 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 52-13/02/1963. 44 St John of God Heritage Centre, 'When The Queen Came . . . 1963 Jubilee Exhibition’, 2013, http://heritage.ssjg.org.au/Home-Page.aspx, (accessed 28/07/2014). 45 Frank Rodriguez Snr, personal communication, May 2003. 46 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 21/03/1963.

175 nephews, Elogio, an older brother of Joe and Julio arrived at Camballin with his wife Maria and two sons, Jose Luis and Fernando in the mid 1960s. Maria too, had no trouble being accepted into the extended Fraser family. She loved the lifestyle at Camballin and she remained saddened at having to leave when the family moved to Kununurra and then to Perth before Sydney by the early 1970s. Saturday night to Camballin for the pictures was a regular outing. The picture was watched either from the back of the Land Rover or sitting on blankets on the ground with a smattering of other moviegoers. But it was never for certain that a picture would be shown. People would arrive at Camballin only to find that the reel had not arrived or as on one occasion, flying ants had built their nest in the projector. Despite being disappointed those times turned into quality time in the company of our Spanish relatives. Like the impromptu visit to Debesa from passing travellers, Katie and Frank made the most of the outing in the company of his nephews and their families where they could indulge in Galician cuisine, and Frank could have conversations in Galego.

In time, other members of the same family moved here though most eventually returned to Galicia. For a period Joe and Visita lived at Camballin. Like Katie and Frank, their first-born suffered complications and died in the Derby hospital in October 1961 at childbirth. The devastated couple came to terms with their loss and within two years a second child was born. Not wanting to take any risks Visita flew to Perth for the birth of Carlos, and he was born in King Edward Memorial hospital. One year later, Visita due to have another child left Carlos with Katie and Frank at Debesa and their daughter Marise was born in Derby; Pat Puertollano was her Godmother. In July 1964 Joe and Visita moved to Kununurra to work on the Ord Irrigation scheme and their next child Paul was born in the Wyndham hospital. In 1965 they returned to Galicia where Xavier, the youngest child was born and he has never been to Australia. Julio returned to Spain in the late 1960s to marry his childhood sweetheart Milagros and they bought a fish and chip shop in South Terrace, Fremantle. Their only child Jackie was born in King Edward Hospital and they returned to Spain by the middle 1970s. Jesus (whose nickname is Susu) married his childhood sweetheart Mundita in Spain and returned briefly to live in Fremantle. Their eldest brother Eulgio with his family never returned to Spain. Francesca Vasquez, their sister, arrived with her husband Manuel Gonzalez in Sydney in 1970 with their young sons. Joe and Julio established a successful business together in A

176 Corunna in northern Galicia selling Galician china souvenirs - plates, mugs and salt and peppershakers - and they named their business “Cangaroo Souvenirs”. Both Julio and Joe and their wives have returned for a holiday to Australia, and to visit Camballin and Kununurra. At Camballin Joe and Visita unexpectedly met up with some of our full-descent family and the reunion was both exciting and emotional. In Derby, the family met with Aggie who was overwhelmed to see Visita again; the two had become close friends in the 1960s.

Regardless of the overriding thrust by governments that all Australian people would eventually become assimilated into an anglo-Australian way of life as British citizens, my parents continued to embrace their respective cultural customs.47 Their children might have been receiving an English and Catholic orientated education, but living at Debesa meant that we were not denied the opportunity to learn about bush life. By the time we had moved to Debesa, we already knew much about the foods offered in the ‘bush pantry’. We knew how to collect and eat ngili-ngili (small, chewy vine berries), nalgut (peanut sized crunchy onion like bulbs) and sugar bag (bush honey). Frank, too, had been learning about Australian bush foods from the time he first came to the Kimberley in 1944. He ensured that we knew a little about our Spanish heritage too, and he taught us the names of table items like mantequilla (butter), pan (bread), azúcar (sugar) and agua (water); he taught Katie to make tortillas (potato omelette). Frank often reminisced about his childhood, and he would attempt to teach us to speak Spanish. Clearly, it was difficult for us to learn another language when not immersed in the culture. With no other speakers to support him, we never took him seriously and therefore we never learned his languages.

Horry Miller meantime, from long before he had signed the partnership deed with Frank, was adamant that small landowners with the right combination of skills could survive in the north and Debesa was a case in point. With Debesa managed by Frank and supported by Katie and business matters being handled by Miller Investments, this small lease had potential. Frank’s value as a multi-skilled manager was not lost on Miller:

47 As discussed in Chapter 1 – Assimilation.

177 Main thing about Debesa is that the working expenses are kept very low because of having such a good craftsman and worker as Frank; that’s why everyone in the Kimberley wanted to keep him there and use him as they wished, without Frank getting ahead, as they all wanted him to work for next to nothing.48

Moreover, it is probable that Frank held a similar view even before Miller’s arrival knowing full well that an adequately functioning lease would take time to accomplish while he worked intermittently off-site in the region to secure an income. Mary Durack on the other hand saw her husband’s involvement at Debesa as nothing more than a hobby. According to Brenda Niall, who penned Mary and her artist sister Elizabeth’s joint biography, Durack did not seem to mind that her husband was spending money on the property: “[s]o long as the old boy was happy”.49 But to my parents, Debesa was no hobby. It was much, much more. It was their family home. It was the place that shaped their livelihood, and it was where they belonged and had planned to live for the rest of their lives. As people who came from marginalised backgrounds they had a very different view of Debesa to that of members of Western Australia’s social elite like Miller and Durack. Moreover, when comparing Debesa to Dampier Downs Niall described Debesa as an equally ill-chosen investment suggesting it too, was totally neglected.50 On the contrary, unlike the abandoned Dampier Downs, Debesa was being fastidiously developed since 1952, a few years before Miller approached Frank in Derby in 1958 in his search for a small pastoral enterprise in which to invest.

Cyril Gare, meanwhile, from early in Miller’s venture had not shared his optimism for the sustainability of a small lease. He would have had the Dampier Downs experience on his mind when he wrote to Miller in July of 1961, outlining his concerns for such a proposition. The size of the property, he had contended, was not big enough to carry sufficient sheep for a profitable return, thus denying the partners a profit.51 Miller had responded immediately:

48 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 07/07/1961. 49 Brenda Niall, True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack, Melbourne, VIC, The Text Publishing Company, 2012, p.185. 50 Niall, p.210. 51 Cyril Gare, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2 1956 – 1971, Perth, Battye Library, 04/07/1961. Cyril Gare’s character provides an interesting perspective, given his involvement with Aboriginal people while he was Miller Investment’s bookkeeper, and Miller’s confident:- In Perth in 1952 the Native Welfare Council was formed to help assimilate

178

I consider that Debesa is as sound an investment as any other in this country, taking into consideration that we do not plan to become a large profit making concern . . . I just happen to be one of the few who can see that there is something in putting capital into land if it has potential and an interest for the people working it.52

During the 1960s Miller made regular visits to Debesa from his base in Broome. He usually stayed for one night and he would contribute to the development of the lease, but not always in ways that Frank found helpful. The machinery he bought was second-hand and run down, which only added to the challenges Frank was already dealing with in his role as the manager.53 Miller, a tall man with a stooped stature and a rather large pointed nose, a protruding chin and thin, receding grey hair always seemed to wear a slight grin. Before he would leave Broome for Debesa, if Mary Durack was there she would ensure he had provisions for the journey that would

Aboriginal people; and one of its members was Cyril Gare who became its president in 1957. During the 1960s it then became the Aboriginal Advancement Council and its focus remained on assisting southwest Aboriginal people to adjust to white society. The Council was closely aligned to the Department of Native Welfare and non-Aboriginal humanitarians in Perth were intent on grooming Noongars with western traits. The members were: “concerned with doing good deeds, on account of the rapid increase in the number of Aborigines in Perth after the war, the plight of Aborigines had come to receive a great deal more attention.” As volunteers they offered Aboriginal people advice on housekeeping, budgeting, parenting and encouraging children to attend school. By the mid 1960s there were twenty-five organisations that came under the umbrella of the council, with Gare as its head, all committed to assimilating Black people. When Gare was elected as the Advancement Council’s head in 1957 it was around the time he and Miller approached Frank about going into partnership at Debesa. Interestingly then, for the duration of the Miller/Rodriguez partnership Gare was not only Miller Investments accountant, but he was Head of a significant Aboriginal Affairs organisation in Perth. He is described as being a domineering leader and the council was not without its infighting as white people jostled for control and power while advocating for the rights of Aboriginal peoples. Few Noongars made any attempt to gain positions on those organisations because generally they were considered not suitable unless, they fit the image of the white man, the ideal middle class Australian. They were considered inept for any position and most Aboriginal people refused to bow to white supremacy at any rate. Neither did they accept being pushed towards ‘white’ goals so they avoided becoming members of organisations formed in their best interests. By 1969 Aboriginal people were being encouraged to fill positions, and Gare found a suitable contender in Jack Davis. Originally from the north of the state but reared in the south, Davis had established himself as a poet and ‘with his liberal orientation in political matters’ had an ability to mix with white people. Gare became Davis’s primary patron and he endorsed Davis as President of the Aboriginal Advancement Council: Michael C Howard, Aborignal Politics in Southwestern Australia, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1981, pp.76 – 101. When Gare stepped down in 1970 it is unlikely that either Frank or Katie were aware of his role with Aboriginal organisations in Perth. I am left to speculate as to whether his style and attitude played a role in the way that he managed Debesa’s books. Did Gare therefore, harbor a similar perception about one interracial, marginalised family in the West Kimberley, that he did of Noongars, as being inept? Indeed, my father never warmed to Gare. He felt that it was Gare, rather than Miller, who mismanaged Debesa’s affairs; Frank Rodriguez, personal communication, May, 2003; see Miller, Durack Family Papers, 31/10/1971. 52 Miller, Durack Family Papers, 07/07/1961. 53 Rodriguez Jnr, 24/08/2003.

179 inevitably be unpalatable by the time he arrived as his youngest daughter Marie Rose Megaw attested to: “The sherry bottle was full of hot water and the packet of Devon Creams had melted with ants all over them”.54 Miller had no way of letting Katie and Frank know of his imminent arrival so he would just make his way to the station whenever it was convenient for him. His Land Rover could be heard on approach to the homestead before it emerged slowly through the bush. Someone would call out “Mr Miller’s here”. Frank addressed him as Horry in conversations, while to us he was always “Mr. Miller”. In his diaries however, Frank referred to him as Mr Miller. For some reason, Miller never came into the Debesa homestead via the road commonly used. He preferred to travel along a sandy, longer and less used entry point.

On the odd occasion he would bring one of his six children and Marie Rose (who was about the same age as Pepita) reminisced about her visits. I interviewed Marie for this thesis and she recalled ways in which our small family lived. Saying the Rosary together under the clearest, brightest night sky and Katie and Frank talking quietly after the children were supposed to be asleep. She remembered the wood stove with its seemingly endless burning embers and Katie’s lamb chops and tomato relish. And she remembered scuffling with the children on the lawns, swimming in the tanks, laughing at the frogs in the toilet, and, she remembered ‘our’ boab tree. The cashew tree, she claimed, was bigger than the one at their home in Broome; she loved the smell released from tomato leaves when she crushed them between her fingers. And she recalled how humanely and discreetly Frank had dealt with a sheep that had a growth on its head.55

Miller’s impromptu trips to Debesa continued while at the same time his MMA business was experiencing mounting problems in Derby with staffing and accommodation. It also had difficulties on the station rounds when some pastoralists refused to help load and unload cargo planes, adding to the extra duties his pilots were required to carry out.56 On the horizon a larger scale national regime in Australia’s

54 Marie Rose Megaw, Oral History, in Interviews, Cindy Solonec, Perth, WA, Private Collection, 25/01/2012. 55 Marie Rose Megaw, Oral History, in Interviews, Cindy Solonec, Perth, WA, Private Collection, 25/01/2012. 56 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 27/03/1969.

180 civil aviation had emerged and by 1963 Ansett Australia had taken over MMA.57 Furthermore, the sheep industry in the West Kimberley was on the decline. It did not survive into the 1970s therefore any attempt to forge even a slightly profitable small business from Debesa did not eventuate.58

Frank and Miller’s relationship broke down and any shared optimism for Debesa had dissolved. Finances were stretched and Miller despite still being a great advocate of the small landowner began laying the blame on Katie and Frank. His attitude towards the family had become contemptuous. He argued, for example, that the children’s schooling in Geraldton was unnecessary and could not be sustained given the station’s deficient financial status. Moreover, Miller’s complaints about the family’s lifestyle were irrational, given his earlier praise of Katie’s cooking and given that Debesa was self-sustaining. He argued: “[t]hey do not stint themselves in food at Debesa and to see the children carving off slabs of butter to eat bread with rich soup and roast dinner is just not trying to economise.” The irony in his words is the food was not extravagant. The bread was home baked, the roasts locally sourced meats and the vegetables were home grown. Furthermore, Miller was uncomfortable with the way in which Katie and Frank were closely connected to their extended families, both the Nigena and the Galician. He wrote to Gare: “I am pretty sure that Debesa could pay its way if weekend trips to Derby and Camballin, plus schooling and less lavish food were cut.”59 In 1966 three of the children did leave the boarding schools in Geraldton. Pepita had completed Year 11 and Frank Year 9 while Phillip commenced at the Junior High School in Derby. I was the only one to return to boarding school in 1967.60

Frank’s despondency it could be argued was evident by the lack of attention to his diary during 1967. For that year, only forty entries are made that suggest his preoccupation with the mounting conjecture in relation to the survival of Debesa. It is

57 Niall, True North, p.185; see Peckham, The development of MacRobertson Miller Airlines Ltd. in Western Australia, p.100; and ‘Slipstream: official publication of MacRobertson Miller Airlines Ltd.', The Airlines, vol. 4, no. 10, 1960. 58 G C Bolton, The Kimberley pastoral industry, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1954. 59 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 05/06/1966. 60 Pepita was accepted into St John of Gods nursing hospital in Subiaco to train as a registered nurse; Franky joined his father on Debesa; I went on to achieve my Junior Certificate in six subjects and left Stella Maris College in 1969; and Phillip returned to St Patrick’s College in Geraldton in 1973 where he completed Year 12.

181 also probably the reason that Fulgentius’ passing in 1967 is not recorded despite the close relationship he enjoyed with Katie’s family, and indeed, with my grandfather. Following his death on the 4th of July Fulgentius was remembered however, by the Catholic Church when the local priest Father Vincent Finnegan wrote to the Abbot of New Norcia. He referred to him as a ‘pillar of the Church’ for ‘the excellent work’ he had engaged in as he prepared bush people for baptism even right up until his death.61 Fulgentius is buried in the Derby Pioneer Cemetery and Phillipena who passed away in the Numbula Nunga Nursing Home in Derby on the 7th of August 1983, is buried in the ‘new’ Derby Cemetery’s Catholic section.

Miller felt that Debesa had served Katie and Frank’s purpose and that they would be better off without it. Writing to Gare, he claimed that Frank as a qualified builder, Katie as an excellent cook (who could get a job with the Public Works Department), the girl (Pepita) as a nurse, and Franky as a bulldozer driver could get well paid employment, so Debesa should be sold.62 He had Gare devise ‘for sale’ letters and several prospective buyers, even in the United States, were contacted while Miller wondered where Frank was spending money that the station did not have. It is clear too from the correspondence, discussed in the previous chapter, that Frank never hid anything from Miller Investments, as demonstrated in a letter he sent to the company in early 1969.63 Within a couple of months, frustrated at not knowing what was going on, my father wrote to Miller:

This letter is to inform you Mr Miller that we have been forced into an unhappy position with Debesa business, and the family are upset as we don’t know for sure what our position [is], and judging by C. Gare’s information, we no longer have legal right to anything here at Debesa.

Unless you give us some positive information as how our position stands, and make it legally clear as the case may be . . . the two bookeepers [sic] you have placed over me C. Gare and D. Gibb have not given me my information as how the sale of Debesa is progressing. My confidence in them is nil. I don’t think they are the right men to help a man in the land for up this parts, as good bookeepers [sic] as they may be. Also repair work to the windmills, fences etc is hampered by the way you fellows try to run the business. There are

61 Nailon, ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, 1967, 5.268. 62 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 25/03/1969. 63 Frank Rodriguez, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971, 18/01/1969.

182 tanks to be cemented, new pipes and pumps to be replaced at least on four windmills and not mention [the] fences all the fires we had here last year.64

On the 27th March 1969, Miller responded to Frank and outlined the difficulties in continuing with Debesa. He had retreated from his long held positive views about small landowners: “The small man cannot succeed in the Kimberley. Unfortunately for me, I did not fully realise the truth about that”.65 Miller went on to lament the takeover of MacRobertson Miller Airlines by a bigger company. Rising costs, salaries, accommodation and the sacking of two hundred and thirty staff were all instances he highlighted that had consequences for the small businessman.66 Katie meanwhile, had made it quite clear to Miller that she did not want to leave Debesa. None of us did.67 To my parents, although not free of problems, Debesa was their rural idyll that offered peace, tranquility, open spaces and a sense of belonging.68 Neither did she want to live in a town. Miller wrote to Gare claiming: “[s]he seems very happy at Debesa with two old age pension natives and a man. She has no work to do at all and plenty of company.”69 Following a visit to Debesa in May, Miller again wrote to Gare about the state of affairs as he saw it. Frank, he said, was complaining that he could not pay the Aboriginal stock workers. Roustabouting was an easy job by Miller’s reckoning, picking the wool up and throwing it onto the sorting table. A couple of ‘stock boys’ were doing the mustering and an old aged ‘native woman’ pensioner doing the cooking because Mrs. Rod (Katie) he said, with her usual diabetes trouble was in Derby.70 Perhaps the situation in 1969 exacerbated Katie’s health as she was hospitalised for two months. She did return to Debesa not expecting to leave but within a short time they were living in Derby.

Following Katie and Frank’s departure, Miller relied on the Aboriginal workers though he had never really connected with us as Aboriginal people and my parents were never quite comfortable in his company. My brother Franky, just seventeen,

64 Rodriguez, 15/03/1969. 65 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 27/03/1969. 66 Miller, 27/03/1969. 67 Miller, 06/05/1969. 68 Sotirios Sarantakos, 'Quality of Family Life on the Farm', Journal of Family Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2000, p.182. 69 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 05/05/1969. 70 Miller, 05/06/1969.

183 remained at Debesa and Miller relied heavily on him even though he had installed his inexperienced son Andrew, who was married with a baby son. Miller himself with no station management experience had little faith in Andrew, despite Andy doing his best to please his father as noted in the lengthy handwritten reports that he would dutifully send to Gare.71 Miller was missing Frank’s expertise while being grateful Franky had been there to help Andrew.72

Following my parents’ departure Debesa was clearly collapsing under the new management and Miller missed the aptness of the Rodriguez men.73 He believed the way to succeed was for Andrew to maintain amicable working relationships with Franky while he was suspicious of Frank. Nonetheless, he hoped that Frank would help with windmill repairs. Miller had become bitter towards my father and he felt that he owed him.74 Frank, on the other hand, felt that Miller Investments had misled him. In March, Miller had surmised to Gare:

Liveringa are quoting their sheep at $1.50 with wool on, a $1.00 off sheared. That $3,000 dollars we are paying Frank would have brought 3,000 sheep. Frank, by the way has contracts at Liveringa, rebuilding and building new quarters etc, getting well paid and I bet putting off any chance of a sale of Debesa to them.75

Katie and Frank believe that they could have remained on Debesa despite the financial situation, given that the property fell into disarray soon after their departure. Within two years Miller Investments sold Debesa to Mr and Mrs Skinner, the owners of two sheep stations near Shay Gap in the Pilbara. By 1973 the Skinners had abandoned the property and the lease was returned to the state government.76 Frank meanwhile worked at nearby Ellendale Station and he only returned to Debesa to support Franky on various jobs and to relocate their possessions to town. On the 6th October 1969, he wrote in his diary: “In the morning went to Derby with the truck

71 Andrew Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971. 72 Miller, ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, 16/11/1969. 73 Miller, 20/02/1970. 74 Miller, 06/05/1970. 75 Miller, 26/03/1970. 76 Through bureaucratic bungling Debesa remained on Miller Investments books in both Miller’s and Frank’s names until the late 1970s. During this time the homestead became a camp for interlopers and in the mid 1970s a family of ten squatted there.

184 from Debesa taking most of the gear. And today we shifted into the new duplex state house. TG.”77 They had been forced from their home; from their ‘place’.

77 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries, 06/09/1969.

185 Chapter 6 Beyond Debesa: 1970 – 1994

Katie and Frank’s three-bedroom duplex, a housing commission home that sat on a 1/3rd-hectare block was a far cry from the 21,000-hectares of bush land that was Debesa. They missed station life. We all did. No longer was there the demanding routine of physical hard labour, nor the satisfaction of working with sheep that they had tended and cherished for fifteen years. They missed their independence and the privacy of owning their own home away from the bustle of town life. At fifty years of age neither were eligible for the aged pension therefore they had to find sources of income. They had ensured that all of their children were reasonably educated, however education expenses had left no money for any long-term retirement plans. Moreover, it is unlikely that they even considered how they would survive, other than receiving a government pension when they reached retirement age, given neither came from an affluent background. They had instilled in their children a strong work ethic and prepared us to be independent young adults. In 1970 Pepita continued with her training to be a registered nurse at St. John of Gods Hospital in Subiaco that she began in 1967. Franky had joined MacRobertson Miller Airlines (MMA) as a ‘persa loader’ in Derby and I became a public servant, working as a phonogram operator for the Postmaster General (PMG) in Derby.1 Phillip attended the Derby Junior High School and during the school holidays he worked with Frank on building sites. My parents’ respective heritages, Nigena and Galician, had long become part of their lifestyle and they faced no associated issues. Their similar religious worldview and similar ethnic displacement had played a major part in strengthening their marriage. Other people of their generation were also of mixed-race relationships, but the concern for white people when their connections intended to marry Aboriginal people continued for several generations following, including my own.2

In contrast to their home at Debesa my parents’ new accommodation was not in the middle of bush abounding with stock and wild life, but nestled on the western edge of

1 A persa loader was the title, perhaps dated now, for airline ground staff. In Derby, they were involved in a cross section of jobs, ticketing, marshalling planes in, loading and unloading cargo and baggage, passenger bus driver. 2 Patricia Dudgeon, Mothers of Sin: Aboriginal women's perceptions of their identity and sexuality, PhD Thesis, Murdoch University, 2007.

186 the peninsula on which Derby had emerged. The duplex had only just been built when Katie and Frank moved in and they immediately set about establishing the gardens. They planted lawns, trees, flowering shrubs, hedges and a vegetable garden. The Derby peninsula with its own unique landscape of red pindan earth is complemented with woody eucalyptus, shrubs and myriads of boab trees. A variety of local distinguishing landmarks and events in the town have been named in honour of the boab tree. The Boab Festival that began in 1961 remains as a significant event fifty-four years on; the Boab Inn was built in 1970; and the Derby Boab News first published in 1977 was the original commercial newspaper in the town.3 The Derby peninsula is slightly elevated and is surrounded by sprawling marshes (mud flats) that are peppered with driftwood, mangroves and tidal creeks that offer alluring fishing spots to the locals. At the end of the peninsula an arch shaped jetty protrudes into the King Sound inlet where oceanographers discovered one of the highest tide variations in the world. Approximately 250 kms west of Derby the tides rush from the Indian Ocean into the expansive King Sound that channels huge volumes of water to heights of eleven meters during high tide and two meters at low tide.4 The water laps the buttresses of the Derby jetty, another popular fishing spot, but it was the tidal creeks that lured Frank.

When the tide was out he would drive over the crusty marsh to throw his net across a creek, hauling in barramundi, salmon, catfish, mullet and mud crabs on a good day.5 The marsh was alluring to people for different reasons. Some walked across the open landscape to sit on the driftwood and look back towards Derby, taking in the view of green foliage that partially hid the houses and offset the seemingly barren marsh. Others used their creative talents to craft driftwood objects, like the tenant in the duplex adjoining Katie and Frank’s, who carved a coffee table stand that became the pride and joy of their modest lounge. He also crafted sculptures to place in the garden. Committee members of the Derby Boab Festival in 1978 came up with the idea of organising a mud football match. They engaged the Shire Council to grade a

3 Derby Boab Festival, ‘Celebrating the West Kimberley Life: July 4 - July 20 2014’, http://derbyboabfestival.org.au/archieves/2014/, (accessed 13/05/2014). Discussed further in this chapter. 4 Abbie Thomas, King of all Tides, in Indepth, http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/05/01/2683462.htm, ABC Science, 2002. 5 Frank Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, Cindy Solonec, 1970-2012, 24/01/1963, 10/08/1975, 26/07/1981.

187 football-sized oval in the marsh on the northeastern side of the town and the Volunteer Fire Brigade filled it half a metre high with water.6 For young people, the marsh and gravel pits on the outskirts of the town offered alternative venues to the pubs for nightlife, parties and socialising.

Derby is where many Aboriginal people off pastoral properties, both full-descent and mixed-descent, had relocated to in the middle of the 1900s and where their affiliations with one another remained intact. The Fraser family may not have embraced traditional kinship systems as such, as earlier discussed, but they supported their full- descent kin despite the legal displacement of Aboriginal peoples by government interventions. Those off missions who had been discharged to stations and towns had developed strong ties. Though not necessarily biologically related, they became ‘aunty or uncle’ to each other’s children, a form of respect that continues today among the descendants of mission-raised children. As for our Spanish relatives, most had left the Kimberley and returned to Spain or moved to the east coast by the time Katie and Frank moved to Derby.

My parents’ social engagements were with long time acquaintances and they befriended their neighbours while family and station people visited them. In contrast to the close proximity in which they lived to us on the stations, our full-descent family, Aunty Maggie ‘Lidgeun’, Topsy ‘Nundulla’ and Patsy and Dickie Yambo eventually lived on the Reserve in Panton Street, on the opposite side of the town. Living on the Reserve did not stop them however from visiting Katie and Frank, and sometimes Aunty Maggie slept over. As she did in Debesa, she would go to help Katie because she knew how sick she was, probably more than anyone else, and she missed her. She knew too that Frank often worked away and she kept her niece company. Meanwhile, Aggie Puertollano constantly called on the reserve mob, always ensuring they had enough food, clothes and other essentials. Patsy and Dickie had relocated to live in Derby when Kim and Pat Rose left Liveringa in 1961. For a few years they lived in Fulgentius and Phillipena’s backyard in Hensman Street and they did menial tasks at the Catholic Church across the road while their children attended the Holy Rosary School. They were remunerated with flour, tea, sugar and

6 Dieter Solonec, personal communication, 14/05/2014.

188 meat. It was not uncommon for full-descent people off the stations to be living the yards of Derby residents, and some people lived in the Puertollanos backyard too. The Yambos later moved to the reserve and lived in a tent for two years while working with Fulgentius who ran a kitchen on the reserve.7 During this period, the Native Welfare Department and the SHC made only feeble attempts to provide adequate housing for full-descent Aboriginal people.8

The Rodriguez marriage remained strong throughout their lives and with their Catholic convictions unfaltering they continued to be involved in the Church. They had lived by the mantra ‘the family that prays together, stays together’.9 Their faith contributed not only to the stability of their family but also to the close-knit congregation. They attended services and special events and Frank sometimes stood as a sponsor for an adolescent at Confirmation time (for instance). He also attended parish meetings while they both had a reasonably active social life within the parish. Frank’s diaries reflect these times but it was their interaction with their children regardless of where we lived that was most prominent for the remainder of their lives. During the 1970s Pepita, Franky and I had dated and married white people who had come to work in the region, just as Katie had done many years earlier. In time, three of us moved away from the West Kimberley. Phillip was the only one to marry a local Aboriginal woman, Lyn Henderson, and he is the only one who remains in Derby today.10 Our Catholic upbringing ensured that Christian values and morals remained a significant influence in our behaviours for many years. When we decided to marry, there was never any question whether we would marry in a Catholic church or not. Three of us wed in the Holy Rosary Church by the long-time resident priest Father Werner Lorenz, while Franky was married in the Catholic Church in Mandurah 100 kms south of Perth. On the 3rd April 1971 Franky and his wife Jackie Wonnacott,

7 Patsy & Dickie Yambo, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth, 02/09/2003. 8 Dept of Native Welfare, Aboriginal Consultative Committee, ‘Letter - F Gare’, 1968, item 1729 WYG25.1, SROWA, 1968, 01/02/1968. 9 Katie Rodriguez, Personal Letter, to Jackie and Frank Rodriguez Jnr, Cindy Solonec, private collection, 11/04/1989. 10 I am the only sibling who did not remain in the Kimberley. Today, Pepita lives in Broome, Franky in Kununurra and Phillip in Derby.

189 presented the first grandchild. They named her “Pepita”.11 All of Katie and Frank’s ten grandchildren were born in either Derby or Kununurra and baptised as Catholics.

Frank continued to work on construction sites at Liveringa while Katie remained in Derby. But they needed financial security so he applied to work with the MRD thus beginning a new phase in his working life, albeit a very short one, in 1971.12 He had never worked for the government in his entire life. He secured a bulldozer driver’s position working near the Great Northern Highway 400 kms south of Derby, close to the and to Anna Plains and Nita Downs Stations. He had driven bulldozers on Debesa building dams and now he was again in the bush making roads and Frank seemed to enjoy this time. The MRD camp near Anna Plains was 250 kms south of Broome and from there he would travel another 185 kms to the worksite. On the access road into Nita Downs he bulldozed scrub from the road verge clearing a path for the Bell Brothers’ scrapers to dig trenches 245 metres long by 12 metres wide that enabled the rains to run off the road during the wet season. As a mason, Frank built grids (run-throughs) on the fence lines to prevent stock from wandering onto the main road and he built cement crossings over floodways.

While working in the area, he took the opportunity to dismantle a tank at nearby Talgarno for Derby businessman, Colin Campbell.13 Talgarno was a small, well- resourced ‘ghost’ town that had been built to support a British rocket venture. In 1946 under the Anglo-Australian Joint Venture the Australian Government had agreed for the British Government to engage in rocket-launching trials from , (an Aboriginal word for a throwing spear with a strong trajectory) in South Australia. The rockets were to be projected 2,000 kms across the outback to the Eighty Mile Beach plummeting somewhere on Anna Plains.14 The Black Knight and the Blue Streak rockets were to soar over the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts to plunge into an area that had been proclaimed the ‘Talgarno Prohibited Area’ in 1958. The exclusion zone also meant that the Yulparija people were forced to abandon their

11 My sister’s name officially is “Josephine”; Pepita is the Spanish alias for Josephine; and Pepe, the alias for Joseph (Jose). 12 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, 03/04/1971. 13 Talgarno means ‘dry country’ in an Aboriginal language from the area, according to Nan Broad, [in] 'The Eighty Mile Beach: False Promise and Harsh Reality', Early Days: Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 6, 2006, p.614. 14 Broad, p.610.

190 homelands.15 Talgarno was built to accommodate 6,000 people. It was to be made up of specialist personnel and support crew and by the 1960s it was complete with ‘airfield and cyclone-proof buildings including a school, a hospital and housing’. But the British rocket experiments never eventuated. With the onset of the Cold War technological advances saw the United States of America’s superior weaponry outclass the British/Australian venture and it consequently folded.16 Talgarno’s disused infrastructure was sold locally and Campbell bought materials to establish a roadhouse alongside the Fitzroy River near Willare Bridge 70 kms south of Derby. Another well-known landmark built from Talgarno materials is the Mangrove Hotel in Broome.17

Frank’s MRD camp close to the Eighty Mile Beach meant that he would find time to savour the peacefulness and to fish off the reefs. But generally on weekends he headed back to Derby. His time with the MRD was short-lived and some of his diary entries hint at his awkwardness in his new workplace. For instance, as a committed Catholic and someone who valued his personal space, Frank observed the behaviours of others that were different to his own. At Debesa he had often worked by himself and he would return home for meals that Katie had prepared, but at the MRD, communal living appears to have been disaffecting for him: “The cook play up and seems to be on the way out is on the metho . . . dios nos perdone [God forgive us].”18 On another occasion he had suggested to a co-worker that syphoning petrol from the work vehicles into his own was stealing. He was told in no uncertain terms, to mind his own business. He did not slip easily into a culture of hard drinking labourers and when he was transferred to a road gang near Fitzroy Crossing to cement floodway crossings he remained at the camp to work, when others headed into town. This diary entry underscores the road workers’ culture according to Frank: “[m]ost of the men went into Fitzroy tonight to spend their pay.” Two days later he continued: “Did some hours of work as most of the men not fit for work after been drinking all

15 Blue Streak rocket program heritage listed, dir. Vanessa Mills, http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/11/09/3061650.htm, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Kimberley, 2013. 16 Broad, Early Days, p.610. 17 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, 19/08/1971; see Blue Streak rocket program heritage listed. 18 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, 04/11/1971.

191 night.”19 My father worked very hard despite the temperature, and while he enjoyed a beer he knew his limits. By the 14th January 1972 he had resigned from the MRD and with Phillip in tow recommenced working at Liveringa on the 20th of January.20 He leaves no hint that he was dissatisfied with his decision to dispense with the government job.

Frank occasionally met other Spanish-speaking people and he seems to have really enjoyed the chance to converse in his own language whenever the opportunity arose. In 1972 he met Maria Damboronia from San Sebastian in northern Spain who was working as a domestic at the Fitzroy Crossing Inn and she became a friend of the family. Later in the year he befriended Jose and Ana Muiňo from Ferrol in northern Galicia who were living in Wyndham. It is conceivable that non-English speaking Europeans residing in small and remote locations were at times called on to be interpreters as was Frank, twice, in 1974. First, when the manager of ALCCO, Charlie Hudson, relieved him of his building projects for one week so Frank could act as an interpreter. A Spanish-speaking businessman, Eduardo Castillo, had arrived in the Kimberley to observe cotton-growing operations at Camballin and on the Ord Irrigation Scheme but his English was limited. (In his diaries, Frank does not reveal which country Castillo came from). He obligingly accompanied the ALCCO party as they showed Castillo the crops at Camballin and then flew to Kununurra where they met with local farmers, the Agricultural Department, the International Harvester dealer and representatives of the CSIRO and the Kununurra cotton granary, but not before Frank had taken Castillo home to meet Katie. My father was not a gregarious character, but he and Katie were very hospitable and they relished the company of interesting people. Frank enjoyed reading and was well informed about topics that related to Spanish history, world events and Catholic literature. Katie would always prepare a tasty meal (as attested to in the previous chapter). Clearly, on this occasion he had readily accepted the opportunity to connect with another Spanish speaker and it seems he and Castillo got along well. On return to the West Kimberley Frank accompanied the Spanish-speaking businessman to Camballin before driving him back to Derby where they enjoyed another meal with Katie before he departed.21 A

19 Rodriguez Snr, 27/11/1971. 20 Rodriguez Snr, 14/01/1972. 21 Rodriguez Snr, 5-16/03/1974.

192 few months later Frank was again asked to be an interpreter, this time, for a court case involving a Spaniard. He explained the case this way:

This morning went to the courthouse to interpret for a Spanish chap about some trouble with firearms outside the Boab Inn fighting with drunk natives, as they want some money from him. His name is Francisco Epelde from Basque Country.22

Early in 1974, Katie and Frank began planning a trip to Spain. After determining that a journey was within their means they applied for Australian passports, arranged to have their money converted to traveller’s cheques, and they received the first of their travel vaccinations. Frank, as a naturalized Australian, had no problem in having his application for a passport approved but Katie did because she had no identification. She had never seen her birth certificate nor likely ever had the need for one so when a request was made to the Catholic Diocese in Broome, Fr. Michael McMahon was able to provide her with a baptismal certificate stating that she was born on the 24th November 1920 at Beagle Bay Mission.23 Like many of her contemporaries it is unlikely that Katie’s birth was ever registered in Western Australia and she may well have been baptised on the day that she was born in her mother’s cottage.

Katie and Frank arrived in Spain on the 2nd August 1974 where they were met by Frank’s niece Aurora Vasquez and her husband Alejandro who lived on the outskirts of Madrid. Frank could hardly contain his excitement as they travelled north to reconnect with his siblings.

Frank’s family Maria Casanova Jose Rodriguez

Manuel Dolores Aurora Amable José Jesús Frank

22 Rodriguez Snr, 17/06/1974. 23 Broome Catholic Diocese, Mary Catherine Fraser, Baptism Certificate, 1974 [issued]. E. J. Dwyer, Broome, WA, Broome Catholic Diocese.

193 They first visited Jesus in Bilbao before travelling west to Galicia where Amable and Dolores both still lived in their villages at Freixio and Nocedas respectively, near Mon Forte de Lemos. But they would not see Jose and Manuel who had both migrated to Argentina after the Civil War. While in the area, Frank made a point of visiting the families of the Spaniards he had met in the Kimberley. First, Maria Damboronia’s relatives and then he and Katie visited the parents of Francisco Epelde, the young man he assisted in the Derby courthouse. Epelde’s parents would have been relieved to know that a Spaniard from northern Spain had assisted their son when he found himself in trouble with the law in a foreign country, and that he was not languishing in some remote Australian gaol. During the 1960s Frank’s nieces and nephews had spread far and wide from their Galician villages as the rural industry was revolutionised and peasantry gave way to modern mechanisation.24 They had moved away in search of employment, to live and work in Australia and in England but most had returned to Spain by the time Katie and Frank visited in 1974. Amable had ten children, nine daughters and one son and it was her youngest daughter Milagros who remained at Freixio and together with her husband Jamie they managed the small dairy farm. On the 30th August my parents arrived in Mon Forte. They had travelled from Barcelona by train through the farming countryside of northern Spain and into the mountainous wine growing area of Galicia observing the rows of vineyards that were terraced into the sides of the mountains. Frank visited his childhood companions in Mon Forte and his slightly muddled diary entry in English and Spanish gives a sense of his elation:

Today at last got to Frejo [sic]. Paca’s husband took us up there on his car. It has been a happy day to be able to see home again after so many years over 37. Paca and her children was a great happiness to be with them. The house was much changes, but the neighbourhood is very much the same people not so many left. Perdigon – Pepe dos de Arribo shoquin. Salgueiro y familias [people’s names] also paid a visit to the chapel. Was nice to see the old chapel again.25

24 Juan Pan-Montojo., 'Spanish Agriculture, 1931-1955: Crisis, Wars, and New Policies in the Reshaping of Rural Society', in Segers, Yves., Brassley, Paul., & Van Molle, Leen. (eds.), War, Agriculture, and Food: Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s, Hoboken, Taylor & Francis, 2012. 25 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, 31/07/1974.

194 Freixio, huddled in the mountainous regions, is susceptible to forest fires and Frank spent time helping fight fires during their short stay while Katie remained with his sisters in the villages. Fighting fires was something that he was accustomed to doing on Debesa during the ‘dry’ season where he had effected control burning to create both fire breaks and so that the bush could rejuvenate during the ‘wet’ season.26 They then headed to La Coruña (A Coruña) to meet with his nephews who had worked and lived at Camballin, Kununurra and in Perth. His family who had moved away to the cities return each year to Galicia to spend holidays in the villages and now some travelled with Katie and Frank to visit Samos where he had spent three years as a Benedictine novice monk. Satisfied at having at last returned to Spain with Katie they booked their return journey via Rome, Hong Kong and Darwin and on the 10th September 1974 they arrived back in Derby. Visiting Frank’s homelands and reconnecting with family and friends was the major reason for their overseas trip so it was with no surprise that a large group of people were at the Derby airport to greet them on their return, eager to hear their tales of Spain.27

Back home, Frank continued with contract work at the hospital, for the SHC, at Willare Roadhouse, for individuals in Derby, and he sometimes worked on a state ship when in port. Katie controlled the household duties and she regularly interacted with her extended family. A second granddaughter arrived in April 1973 and by early 1985 between the four of us we had presented Katie and Frank with ten grandchildren. Despite all being baptised as Catholics they did not necessarily receive further sacraments (the Catholic rites of passage). Catholic traditions gradually waned for some of us including myself, and not all of the Rodriguez’s great grandchildren are baptised nor do they attend Church or Catholic schools, much to Frank’s disappointment. Nonetheless, he understood the change in attitudes among his descendants as secular influences and further education challenged our worldviews.

In Derby, the lifestyles of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal folk were cordially distant. A somewhat divided town, Derby’s white population was unlikely to have known how full-descent peoples coped from day to day living on the reserve. Before today’s

26 Rodriguez Snr, 15/08/1974; and 26-27/04/1963. 27 Rodriguez Snr, 10/09/1974.

195 enlightened views about Aboriginal peoples, they were widely stereotyped. Their way of life was generally unknown to local white people, as Raymond Madden, who had grown up in rural Victoria, admitted in 1999. When he returned ‘home’ to research for his PhD in anthropology he claimed to have never had any prolonged association with the local Aboriginal people other than those he went to school with.28 Derby’s transient white population, who were generally from ‘down south’, also took little notice of Aboriginals on a social level. As an employee in the Post Office I was offended by the nature of some telegrams sent in apparent good humor. For instance, when a white man returned south to wed his white bride, it was not unusual for telegrams to the bridegroom to be scripted in the vein of: ‘Why you marry white girl. What about me and the kids. From Mary Lou at Mowanjum’.29

Derby offered a variety of community groups and sporting clubs that were largely embraced by the transient workforce. ‘Outsiders’ are unlikely to have fostered a vision for the town’s future while ‘doing their time’ in a remote region, yet they did contribute to and became involved in the community. Moreover, it is unlikely they embraced Derby with a sense of ‘place’ since they knew they would be transferring out, leaving the town and its Aboriginal population as they had found it. My husband Dieter took advantage of small town activities and he became a member of the Volunteer Fire Brigade, the Derby Boab Festival Committee and we both were members of the Derby ski club, a sport that brings a bemused look from people given Derby is surrounded by tidal mud flats.

We water-skied on a man-made lake that had formed on the floodplains of the Fitzroy River near Willare Bridge. In the early 1970s when the MRD upgraded the Great Northern Highway to an all-weather highway by building steep levee banks on the approaches to the riverfront to prevent floodwaters from damaging the road, a perfect water skiing opportunity was created. The accidental lake was about 800 metres x 200 metres. With speedboat and an 85HP outboard motor and the enthusiasm of young male transients the Derby Ski and Boating Club was formed. Each weekend up

28 Raymond Madden, 'Home-town Anthropolgy', The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 10, no. 3, 1999, p.264. 29 I found such insensitivities hurtful, but it would be years before I knew how to objectively challenge racism.

196 to approximately twenty regulars travelled to the Willare Roadhouse and filled the boat’s fuel tanks before driving another 10 kms towards Broome across the Willare Bridge to where we set up a tarpaulin on the banks of the lake. $1.00 a ski for two laps of the 800 metre circuit, helped to pay for fuel and maintenance of the motor. On a Sunday drive to the river, Katie and Frank sometimes stopped to watch the skiers where occasionally Franky and Phillip too would take their turn learning to water ski, while other passersby stopped to try their luck at skiing or to show off their fishing haul. The lake no longer exists. A steel bridge replaced the levee bank that once created the chance ski lake and the floodwaters continue on their natural trajectory filling the tributaries of the mighty Fitzroy. The bridge is now named ‘Ski Lake’ in honour of those who skied there in the 1970s, their history unknown to the hundreds of travellers who pass over the bridge yearly.30

Derby’s first ever newspaper the, Derby Boab News, was launched in December of 1977, an initiative of the Kimberley Regional Community Education Centre. The fortnightly commercial periodical sold for 5c a copy and was collated and printed by volunteers in their spare time at the Community Education Centre that offered the use of their typing and printing equipment. The newspaper proved to be very popular. Locals now had access to news of interest from their region along with useful information like immunisation clinic times, state shipping arrival times, Meals on Wheels, Shire Council updates, cyclone awareness and sporting round ups, while Derby small businesses supported the paper with advertisements. Given the newspaper was staffed by volunteers there was no priority given to the order in which the contents appeared, and its amateurish presentation with hand drawn images and copious typing errors suggests that the volunteers were under pressure to meet the fortnightly publication. By the middle of 1978 the paper’s output had become a three weekly publication.31 The paper catered for a cross-section of the community and it did not disregard Aboriginal people signifying a sense of inclusiveness at least on paper, if not in practice as already discussed.

The compilation of the Derby Boab News suggests that the producers were interested in local Aboriginal people and their history. A Dreamtime story was a regular feature

30 Dieter Solonec, personal communication, 07/03/2015. 31 Editor, 'Editorial', Derby Boab News, 22/07/1978.

197 conveyed by Mowanjum residents Daisy Utemorrah, Wendy Morlumbun and others. In the 12th May edition under the heading Australiana a piece of local history titled “Tracker Larry” appeared. The story acknowledged the achievements of local identity Larry Kunamarra, a Ngarinyin man who as a teenager had ‘run’ with a gang defending their country from white intruders north of Derby. The gang was led by the famous police tracker turned resistance fighter Jandamarra also known as “Pigeon”.32 In later editions, the paper covered Aboriginal housing issues and other matters related to Aboriginal peoples courtesy of the Northern Division Aboriginal Consultative Committee. But it was the transients who attracted most stories on the social pages, usually about their movements in and out of town. Who was away on relief work, on holidays down south, and who had left town. But in the May 12th edition in 1978, the photos that appeared in the social pages were of my mixed- descent family at a wedding reception in Derby. Angela Bergmann, Leena Fraser, Anthony Buckle, Tom Puertollano and Treena Buckle all feature in the poorly produced black and white snaps.

Meanwhile, people who lived at Mowanjum on the outskirts of Derby were still experiencing inadequate accommodation. By 1978 ongoing housing issues were unresolved, despite promises to the contrary.33 But it seemed that at last, improvements were about to happen if they moved from their current location. As already discussed, Mowanjum people had been relocated several times and now they were facing yet another shift away from their adopted home near the town airport. Most people did not want to move, despite the government claiming that the domestic airport was to become a military airfield. Any rise in noise levels from an expected influx of defence aircraft did not initially daunt Mowanjum people, but following a meeting with a deputation from the Defence Forces in Canberra they agreed to move to yet another site 15 kms from Derby on the Gibb River road. According to the

32 Kunamarra dropped out of Jandamarra’s gang when he was shot in the leg and he was nursed back to health on a station before becoming a stockman. He then went on to become a police tracker in Derby and was recognised as one of the finest trackers in the north. He even spent time in Perth working as a tracker, horse breaker and stable hand. Kunamarra was honoured with the Coronation Medal for loyal and meritorious service and the Derby people pooled together to pay for his return trip to Perth to receive the medal. At the 1966 Boab Festival he was Guest of Honour. He died in 1968 and is buried in the Derby cemetery. see Howard Pedersen & Banjo Woorunmurra, Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1995. 33 Ray Foster, 'New Houses for Mowanjum', Derby Boab News, 1978, p.7.

198 Derby Boab News: “[t]here would be 36 fighter aircraft movements each day with rockets and bombs and also Hercules aircraft coming and going. The older people who could remember the bombing during World War 2 were shaken by this talk.”34 They agreed to move, conditionally. Public servants from the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority negotiated the conditions under which the Mowanjum people supposedly agreed to relocate. The community was assured that money had been set aside for a complete new infrastructure at the new site. At last, Mowanjum people would be provided with decent homes. As the new community emerged, no development had started at the Derby airport.35

In 1978 Frank had the opportunity to visit Spain again when Phillip’s wife Lyn Henderson, representing the Holy Rosary School, was crowned “Boab Queen” at the Derby Boab Festival: “Boab Queen for 1978 was Lyn Rodrigues [sic]; a married woman with a 22 month old baby, Lyn was a popular winner. She is a local girl with family and in-laws both resident in the area.”36 Together with Phillip she decided to travel to Europe that year and they invited Frank to go with them. Another long overseas journey did not appeal to Katie and she was quite content to look after their small daughter. She took the baby and went and stayed with Pepita, who had moved to Kununurra, for the duration of their sojourn. Katie never again travelled overseas though Frank did return once more to Spain, in 1997.

34 Foster, p.7. 35 A Royal Australian Air Force base was opened 30 kms south of Derby in 1988 and named in honour of a former Prime Minister, John Curtin. The Derby airport has never been extended and today remains as a domestic airport 10 kms from the town. And as a final reference to the transient residents of Derby, away from the region many remained friends and some reconnect at reunions. Of the young transients who married local mixed-descent people, adding to the interracial dynamics of the West Kimberley, many remained in the region, while others relocated away generally to the south. Until recent years a Derby Reunion was held every Labour Day long-weekend at the Saw Avenue East picnic area in Perth’s Kings Park. In 2005, I went along to a reunion hoping to meet people I knew. But I was disappointed. Most of the picnickers were much older than me and they had lived in Derby during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Moreover, they had not connected with my parents, and some had only known them in passing. As my two friends and I wondered among the picnickers and the free-standing poster boards littered with old clippings and photos of characters I did not know, we chatted to people and made some connections, realising that we while we may have heard of some people, we did not know them. None of my family was represented and neither were people who knew my parents. Even those at the picnic who had lived in Derby between 1970 and 1996 were public servants who had come to town after we had left in 1978. They too, knew no one. Nonetheless, many of the older folk did know each other and had been meeting in Kings Park in the same spot, for many years. 36 Bob Baker, 'Boab Festival', Derby Boab News, 22/07/1978.

199 While government policies evolved, Katie and Frank took any changes to their lifestyle in their stride. They were aware of Australian politics and national and world news courtesy of the ABC radio and the print media, The West Australian, Sunday Times and the Catholic Record that were scattered around their home. Frank sought further mental stimulation from Spanish newspapers, like the El País usually sent to him by someone in Perth, and he regularly bought the Time magazine, the Readers’ Digest, and the National Geographic. As technological advances reached into the Kimberley they became even more acutely aware of national and international events through the arrival of television in the 1980s. But as a family we never sat around and discussed politics. Our often lively and robust discussions around the table, in the lounge and on the lawns of my parents’ Derby home focused on topical local issues and family. Perhaps my parents in the privacy of their togetherness discussed wider issues, but even as children in the 1960s, because we were mostly away at boarding schools, when on holidays we were immersed in station life as discussed in the previous chapter.

In the 17th January 1978 edition of the Derby Boab News a report that a television transmitter might soon be built in Derby sent the locals into a spin of excited anticipation. In the following edition it was confirmed that the Kimberley would indeed catch up with the rest of the state:

Derby TV! As reported last issue things are happening? An inspection team from Telecom’s Engineering Branch comprising of Mr Don Graham and Mr Bevan Harwood arrived in Derby on 27th of February and visited a prospective site for a TV relay station. Mr. Fraser’s election promise of TV for the country within 3 years at least has been started, so let’s all hope that this project continues rapidly to fulfilment.37

Television arrived in the Kimberley in 1980 seven years after the mining towns in the Pilbara.38 The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was the only station and while TV was a novelty and communities embraced the technology, the advent of

37 Editor, 'Derby TV!', Derby Boab News, 03/03/1978, p.1. 38 Guy Tranter, Television arrives in the NW of Australia, in email, Cindy Solonec, Perth, WA, ABC Document Archives, Sydney, 2014. TV transmitters opened in the regions in: Port Hedland, Roebourne, Dampier, Karratha = 1973; Newman and Pannawonica = 1977; Broome, Derby, Marble Bar, Exmouth, Onslow, Halls Creek and Wyndham = 1980.

200 television forced a culture change not welcomed by everyone. In 1980 television was also beamed into Exmouth on the North West Cape for the first time. With Dieter and our two small daughters I had moved in 1978 to Exmouth, which supported an American Naval Base. Our reactions to television were opposites. My husband had grown up in Perth and television was part of his childhood conditioning. On the other hand I had not been indoctrinated by television and at twenty-seven years of age this was the first time that I ever had a TV in my home. Moreover, despite appreciating the usefulness of the children’s programs Playschool and Sesame Street, it changed our way of life. I hated it. For instance, our Telecom home had a partition between the dining room and the lounge room where the TV took prominence. Dieter found not being able to watch television during meal times frustrating and he made a request to Telecom to have the partition removed, which they obliged almost immediately despite my objection. I found it an intrusion and had considered mealtimes as family time, as conversation time. Nonetheless, television in remote areas brought visual forms of current affairs and other programs into the lives of once isolated communities. Katie and Frank embraced the new medium and it was particularly welcomed by my mother who by the late 1980s was finding it more and more difficult to mobilise her body and she spent long hours confined to the house. Moreover, her eyesight was failing her and it was difficult for her to read. Television at least offered some respite, even through blurred vision. There was nothing wrong with her hearing.

Now with the children living away from Derby, Katie and Frank would travel by road to visit them though most trips were to Kununurra where Franky lived after he had transferred there with MMA in the late 1970s. Frank would use their time in the East Kimberley as a working holiday, where he took on small building contracts. It was on a journey to Kununurra in 1982 that they were involved in a car accident in which Katie was badly injured. On May 25th they had set off from Derby in convoy with Franky and his family who were returning home after holidaying near Broome.

Kununurra was an eight-hour journey and they travelled into the night. Franky travelling ahead had been keeping a check on Katie and Frank in his rear vision mirror and he became concerned when he did not see their headlights for a while, so he turned around and went back. On approach they could see lights of the overturned van on the side of the road and another vehicle had come alongside to assist. Franky

201 knew immediately that there had been an accident and his young family sat silently as they drew closer, not knowing what to expect. Frank had hit a bullock and Katie was injured badly in the roll over:

[b]efore Kna about 20k from town accident happened. Had a bad crash hit a bull and rolled over two or three times. A very frightening experience. An ambulance, the police car and crash tow truck arrived. Then into hospital.39

Her upper chest slightly crushed, her right foot twisted and her right big toe was severely cut while Frank’s right shoulder had been battered. The van was a write off. Katie remained in the Kununurra hospital for two weeks before she was well enough to be transferred to the Derby hospital. Several days later and still experiencing pain across the top of her chest Frank noticed that her ankle had turned a dark, purplish colour.40 Her damaged toe had not improved and gangrene had set in. The Derby- based surgeon chipped away at the foot removing small shreds of gangrene but by the 17th of July he made the decision to send her to Perth for intensive treatment. Katie was transferred to Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital by RFDS and on the 31st of August it was decided that her leg would have to be amputated. Frank immediately made arrangements to join her in Perth. For the next six months, she struggled to regain her health as she dealt with ongoing health complications while learning to walk again with the aid of prosthesis:

This morning left Sir. Charles Gairdner Hospital. Katie spent close to six months in this hospital. TG at last can come home after much suffering in nearly 8 months. Left Perth airport about 6.30am went via Mount Newman, Port Hedland, Broome. Katie had to be transferred on the forklift from one plane to the other. Bob Noble did the handling. Got to Derby about midday, was good to be home again TG.41

39 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, 25/05/1982. 40 Rodriguez Snr, 13/06/1982. 41 Rodriguez Snr, 11/01/1983. Frank often used codes in his diary entries, and on this instance TG meant ‘thank God. Bob Noble a family friend, worked for Ansett Airlines that had completely taken over MMA by the 1980s; see Aviation Heritage Museum; ‘MacRobertson Miller Airlines’, The Bull Creek Collection, 2013, http://www.raafawa.org.au/museum/wa-aviation-history/macrobertson-miller-airlines, (accessed 07/02/2015).

202 Modifications to their Rowan Street home were necessary to accommodate Katie’s wheelchair and renovations began immediately. On their return Frank was contracted by the SHC to install handrails in the shower and the toilet and in November 1986, Homeswest (the branch of the SHC responsible for tenants) placed a new electric oven in the kitchen at chest height so Katie could manage cooking more easily. In October 1984 she returned to Perth for an eye operation, probably to have cataracts removed, and to have her prosthesis adjusted. She had been having difficulties walking and the doctors sent her to the RPH Rehabilitation Hospital at Shenton Park where she again underwent intense physiotherapy as she became accustomed to using the refitted prosthesis. Frank accompanied her and they remained in Perth for one month.42

My father was working at Numbula Nunga in 1983 as a maintenance labourer and on the 7th of February 1986 he turned sixty-five becoming eligible for the aged pension. Frank did not slow down in retirement. He was always expending energy, finding something to do. He engaged with small contract work around the town, as a handyman effecting running repairs in people’s homes, at the school, in the Church and for the SHC and he took to fishing more often. He and Katie continued to visit Kununurra especially when Franky bought a hobby farm that he named Debesa II just south of the town, so Frank could help him with building projects. In 1986 Phillip bought Katie and Frank’s Derby town block and he had a home built there. Frank helped with plastering and painting the walls and he built shelving for the new house. That year they celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. Katie had decided that she might not make it to fifty years, so she planned a celebration. Demonstrating the continued strength and togetherness of the Fraser and extended families, we all returned to Derby and some of her siblings were able to make it along with nieces and nephews. Throughout 1986 and for the next two years, as often as practicable my parents would attend the Senior Citizens Club for a few hours on a Wednesday, which appears to have catered well for most of the town’s elderly. Full-descent people however are unlikely to have attended ‘western’ orientated social events that were outside of their sphere. An average of twelve people would make the most of the service and with no dedicated venue they would meet at different locations, usually at

42 Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection, 26/10/1984.

203 the Sportsmen’s Club where they would enjoy a meal after engaging in activities like carpet bowls, indoor cricket, Game of Proverbs, poker and special presentations.

As time went on Katie found it more and more difficult to walk up stairs in her prosthesis, though she could still manage walking on flat surfaces. In October 1988 Frank placed two narrow timber planks over the four steps from the front verandah to the lawn and he then wheeled Katie down to where she could sit and enjoy the afternoon outdoors. But when he attempted to wheel her back into the house, one wheel slipped off the plank and he could do nothing but use all of his strength to just hold her ample frame there. Their prayers for someone to come along were answered when a regular visitor Sister Camille Poidevon stopped by.43 After this incident Frank constructed a firmer, but no wider ramp from the back door and he managed, with difficulty, to wheel Katie in and out of the house. Frank requested assistance from the SHC for a sturdier ramp to be installed but it was refused.44 (Eventually a certified ramp was installed from the back door into the garden.) Attaching the artificial leg to her stump and walking became intolerable and Katie visited the doctor on November 11th. The doctor immediately made arrangements for her to return to Perth to have a new prosthesis fitted. Again, Frank accompanied her as an official escort and they spent six weeks boarding at the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) Autumn Centre in the suburb of Bayswater. Each day, they travelled by taxi to the RPH Rehabilitation Hospital in Shenton Park where she once again learned to walk on the new prosthesis.

Katie’s condition deteriorated over the years and it is probably only because of modern medicines for diabetes that her life span was even extended to seventy-three years. On the occasions that she had to be in Perth for ongoing medical attention, family and friends in the city made themselves available to my parents. Especially, Katie’s niece Phillipa Cook and friends Elizabeth and Bill Posthuma were tireless in their support of Katie and Frank and between them they ensured that all of their needs were met while in the city. As a diabetic Katie’s immune system had weakened leaving her more susceptible to other complications, and she suffered stomach

43 Rodriguez Snr, 14/10/1988. Sr Camille would visit Katie and Frank regularly. In Katie’s later years Camille visited them every Thursday morning, and they had become like ‘surrogate’ parents to her. 44 Rodriguez Snr, 27/10/1988.

204 problems and ulcers developed. On the 1st of June 1989 she was admitted to the Derby Hospital and immediately transferred to Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital in Perth to have a hernia removed. Frank followed after a few days, once his airfare could be arranged. After this operation Katie’s health was very slow to improve and Frank would visit her each day, sometimes taking her in the wheelchair for a visit outdoors. It was two months before any improvement and she was then transferred back to the Derby hospital.

Phillip worked as an orderly at the hospital and he sometimes helped Frank with her care. Being hospitalised in Derby meant that she had local visitors, her children and her siblings, and her extended family would travel to Derby just to be close to her. It also meant that Frank did not have to rely on other people for their hospitality as he did in Perth. There she remained until the end of August, occasionally returning home for a few hours at a time. When Katie was eventually discharged she was very weak and a community health nurse visited each day to treat and dress her stomach wound. Frank became even more involved in her treatment and he recorded her blood and sugar levels, took her for her checkups to the doctor, and he would collect her prescriptions from the Chemist. Looking after Katie became his daily routine and he would note aspects of her treatment in his diary: “This morning took Katie to see Dr. Basel just for a check up. Increased the insulin in the morning from 30 to 34 units and the dressing as from now on will just rub some Betadine on the hole of the boil”.45 Nursing duties done, Frank continued with his daily life, gardening, grafting mango trees, tinkering with his car, doing odd handyman jobs for people, writing letters and keeping in telephone contact with his children. Some years earlier he had become a “Eucharistic Minister” where he would assist the priest at Mass to distribute Holy Communion (small flat bread) to the congregation. Following the service he would take the communion to people who could no longer attend church each Sunday, and he would bring the Holy Communion to Katie.

My parents had accepted their destiny in life. Their strong belief system had helped them to do that, and together they lived contentedly in their Rowan Street home. In their final years together Frank’s domestic help ensured that Katie followed a diabetic

45 Rodriguez Snr, 16/02/1993.

205 diet, and they listened to the radio and watched TV, both becoming West Coast Eagles fans, while Katie still followed the cricket, and they liked to listen to country singers on their cassette player. Katie always remembered our birthdays, reminding Frank to buy a card and to include a ten or twenty dollar note with the grandchildren’s cards. This routine continued until her death in 1994. Each day, Frank made an entry in his diary, and just like earlier years he would comment on the weather. In the months before she died Katie was constantly in pain and her health deteriorated. She left us on the 7th of April 1994:

This morning about 4.30 Katie passed away at the regional hospital. Fr. Lorenz gave her last sacraments about an hour before she died. May her soul rest in the peace of Our Father & Blessed Lady most Sacred Heart have mercy on her soul!46

46 Rodriguez Snr, 07/04/1994.

206 Chapter 7 Conclusion

This is a history of a mixed-descent Aboriginal woman and a Spanish man of non- English-speaking background, and their lives together in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. While acknowledging the significance of key issues in Aboriginal and migration histories – for example frontier conflict, assimilation and the stolen generations, racism and discrimination, resistance and accommodation – this history also ventures beyond those frameworks in exploring how this couple and their family actually lived. It has closely explored details of the manifold relationships and places they cultivated and managed through the course of their lives. In doing so it provides an understanding of how Aboriginal cultures functioned alongside and interacted with the dominant society established by the colonisers, as well as with the other marginalised people, at an everyday level. This social history of mixed-race and migrant people’s experiences in the West Kimberley during the research period, provides an important addition to the existing historiographical focus on particular, prominent characters in the region.

Oral histories from my parents’ family and associates have played a significant part in this work. They were collected mostly from people mentioned in Frank’s diaries. In doing so, the interviewees in this thesis have contributed to the social history of the West Kimberley through their own words, about events and places that are central to the story. My father bequeathed his diaries to me, and they have been an invaluable source in creating the chronological framework for this thesis. But I reiterate that had my mother also left a written account of her day to day life, this social history would have had an enriched and broader perspective. Consequently, her voice is not as strong as Frank’s and that of other members of her family, from whom I did collect oral histories.

Katie and Frank Rodriguez lived all of their married life in the West Kimberley, on Nigena country, the homelands of Katie’s family. Nigena was invaded in the late nineteenth century by pastoralism and Christianity, which together not only structured the lives of Aboriginal peoples who lived there, but profoundly changed the world in which they lived. In Chapter 1, outlined is a history of both the pastoral industry and

207 Catholicism in the period leading up to Katie and Frank’s marriage and beyond as they moved to the sheep station, Liveringa, which was to play a significant part in their lives. Over the course of the twentieth century it also showed how Aboriginal people became subjects of government policies as they were moved around the Kimberley region at the whim of pastoralists, police and missionaries. Assimilation in its various guises was a key policy affecting Aboriginal and and indeed non-English speaking migrant people for much of the twentieth century. It was gradually being replaced by policies of integration, multiculturalism and then self-determination. All of Katie and Frank’s lives were lived in the context of these doctrines while Katie’s mixed-descent family background was a very direct product of the way policies of assimilation dealt with what governments then perceived as issues in Aboriginal governance. The changes in the 1970s were profound in a policy sense, but it is questionable whether they changed my parents’ lives much.

The chapters that followed zoomed in using microhistory methodology to investigate my parents’ lives and way of life in the West Kimberley in the middle to later years of the last century. They explored the couple’s origins both in the West Kimberley and in Spain, their families, relationships, culture and sense of place. I focus on how, without financial backing and with four children to support, they managed a comparatively small sheep property for a significant period in their marriage, then, after they left, how they lived in the town of Derby. The following chapters took up the challenge to more fully explore how Katie and Frank Rodriguez belonged to the West Kimberley.

Both Katie and Frank were brought up as Roman Catholics. Both had been novitiates, Katie as a nun and Frank as a monk, and both had chosen to leave their cloister, perhaps disenchanted with what the church promised them. Nonetheless, each remained committed to the church and this commitment remained with them for the rest of their lives, powerfully shaping their life together. Both then worked in the European economy on jobs that they had, in part, trained for in their respective institutions. Their work took them both to Liveringa Station where they met and married in 1946 in Derby. At Liveringa, supported by Fulgentius, Phillipena, Katie’s extended family and friends and their strong commitment to Catholicism, they began raising a family.

208

Katie and Frank subsequently lived at Camballin and at times in Derby until 1959, when they moved to their own pastoral lease, Debesa. Until he was in a position to move there, Frank continued to spend short periods at Debesa, and he enjoyed having his own property. He was eager to establish it as a viable enterprise and a ‘place’ that the family could call home.

Debesa is a key moment in the social history of this extended interracial family’s interactions on Nigena country, and narratives from that time reveal how the family learned much about their Aboriginal heritage there, from stories of survival and mythology. But it was also necessary for Katie and Frank to source an income while establishing Debesa during the 1950s. The investigation into the Rodriguez’s livelihood considers the involvement of Frank’s partner Horry Miller. A prominent Western Australian aviator, Miller sought to invest in Debesa while Frank lived at and managed the station, and Miller’s family company “Miller Investments”, controlled the finances.

Chapter 5 explored the final years of my parents’ sixteen year tenure of Debesa. The small property was our family home that my folks had worked so hard to make their own. But by the late 1960s they had conceded that the lease was not viable as a sheep station and they accepted their fate, reluctantly relinquishing it into the hands of the man who held one third share for ten years, Horry Miller. Miller begrudgingly bought Frank out for $3,000, and Frank and Katie moved back into a State Housing Commission home in Derby.

While living in the small township of Derby Katie and Frank remained staunch Catholics – a religion that had shaped their life together – and they embraced the town’s parish fraternity. Life beyond Debesa was clearly a change of pace for them; a much slower one now that they were not committed to developing and maintaining their own pastoral property. No longer were they managers in their own right, and their children had entered the workforce. Frank worked for a short period with the Main Roads Department and he returned to work on Liveringa Station which had been bought by an American concern, the Australian Land and Cattle Company (ALCCO).

209

Their move to town coincided with the Aboriginal pastoral workers’ shift off stations into Kimberley towns and onto designated reserves. In Derby, our full-descent relatives remained connected with our extended families. However, the town’s workforce interacted socially and embraced a community spirit that in many ways excluded full-descent people. Divisions between those of full-descent on the one hand, and mixed-descent and white on the other, were dictated to a large extent by their living arrangements. Full-descent Aboriginal people were directed to live on the reserve while the latter lived in houses in the town. From their tents and humpies on the town’s perimeters those living on the reserve eked out an existence, while the superior status of non-Aboriginal and mixed-descent people was evidenced not only by their better accommodation, but their access to employment. Privilege depended on the degree on Aboriginality. As mixed-descent Aboriginals we were better placed and it was from this position of relative privilege that Katie travelled with Frank to Spain, his first return visit in thirty-seven years. In retirement as my mother’s health declined Frank became her full-time and proficient carer until her passing in 1994.

I began this thesis because I wanted to write a critical account of mixed-descent people’s experiences in the West Kimberley. Scholarly accounts of the region’s social history from the middle of the twentieth century written by Aboriginal people are rare, so I embraced the idea of leaving a legacy on our behalf. In doing so, I hoped to make a new contribution to the historiography of the region, that looked beyond the lifestyles of the more dominant characters, and those well-known depictions of ‘Aboriginal and European’ encounters. As I argued in my Masters thesis ten years earlier, the population that coexisted in the region was made up of three distinct racial groups, full-descent, mixed-descent and Gudia (non-Aboriginal peoples).1 I had argued that despite many people in these different groups being related to each other, our lives followed different trajectories as a result of government policies, laws and perceptions about race which defined people by their degree of Aboriginality. These racial categories were reflected in the social and economic relations of coexistence, but their experience and interactions were not all well represented in the historiography.

1 Jacinta Solonec, Cast(e) in between: a mixed-descent family’s coexistence in the West Kimberley 1944-1969.

210

Now, I had also become curious to understand my parents’ and their generations’ commitment to Catholicism that was a major part of their very existence. Katie’s surviving siblings still maintain a strong commitment to the Catholic church from their homes in Derby and Darwin. Added to this, my father had kept a diary for almost seventy years while living in the West Kimberley that was, in my opinion, an untapped source that might offer an insight to the way marginalised peoples in his sphere conducted themselves during that period. Therefore, by writing a thesis under the guidance of supervisors, surely I would be able to achieve such a goal. With little academic background I relied on the expert direction of scholars, which in the end did come to fruition, in particular through the insight and fresh approach of a young academic, Shino Konishi. Also a mixed-descent woman from the Kimberley, Shino clearly recognised my work for what it is, a move away from traditional history accounts through engagement with biographical and microhistory methods. The resulting work seeks to add to the established scholarship that elucidates the impact of European settlement on Aboriginal peoples. This thesis zooms in on my family’s experiences to capture that broader history of the West Kimberley, and to identify a new approach to Aboriginal historiography to complement the ground-breaking work of historians in the field of Aboriginal history. Furthermore, my original work complements the contributions of other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers, who ensure that perspectives from our points of view are not dismissed.

211 Epilogue Frank visited his brothers Jose and Manuel in South America after Katie’s passing and two years later he left Derby for good. It would be the first time that he lived outside of the West Kimberley since his arrival in 1944 fifty-two years earlier. He moved to be closer to Franky in Kununurra:

Today finished my stay in Derby or West Kimberley. This afternoon I left for Fitzroy Crossing and Frank was at the Crossing so we met there and camped for the night. I went to H. Mass in the morning said goodbye to Srs’ of Saint John of God.1

Frank remained in the Kimberley, living in Kununurra and later in Broome. He made one more visit to Spain in 1997 where two of his siblings lived. His brother Jesus, frail and in a wheelchair, was being looked after in his home in Bilbao by his effervescent wife Manola. The two brothers were delighted to see each other. And Delores confined to her bed at Nocedas, near Mon Forte de Lemos, and unable to speak nodded in acknowledgment of her youngest brother. She died while Frank was in Galicia. He again visited the Benedictine Monastery at Samos where two monks with whom he had spent his adolescent years were delighted to have Frank unexpectedly visit them at what had become a tourist attraction. Today, five of Katie’s siblings survive and they have assisted in my research sharing their oral histories and their experiences. Frances Ward, like Frank, died in Broome during the course of this research while Gerty Ahmat and Jim Fraser live in Darwin and Aggie Puertollano, Edna Fraser and Leena Fraser remain in Derby.

1 Frank Rodriguez Snr, Diaries: Private Collection - Cindy Solonec, 1970-2012, 1996.

212 Bibliography

Unpublished Sources

Diaries

Rodriguez, Frank Snr., Diaries, Battye Library, Perth, 1944-1969.

———., Diaries, Private Collection - Cindy Solonec, 1970-2012.

Interviews: OH3908/12 – Rodriguez and Fraser Families

AhMat, Gertie, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Bergmann, Pat, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Fraser, Edna, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Fraser, James & Rodriguez Snr, Frank, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Fraser, Leena, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Gooch, June and Gooch, Henry, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Hunter, Dora, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

McCarthy, Kerry, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Ozies, Tony, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Pregelj, Pepita, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Puertollano, Aggie, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Puertollano, Cyril, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Rickerby, Shirley, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Rodriguez Frank Snr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Rodriguez, Frank Jnr, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Ward, Frances, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

213

Yambo, Patsy & Yambo, Dickie, interviewed by the author, 2003, Battye Library, Perth.

Interviews: Author’s possession

Begley, Pat, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Bullough, Audrey, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Kearney, Fr Joseph, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Megaw, Marie Rose, interviewed by the author, 2012, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Rodriguez, Frank Snr, interviewed by the author, 1990, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Rodriguez, Katie, interviewed by the author, 1991, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Solonec, Akim, interviewed by the author, 1998, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Solonec, Gertrud, interviewed by the author, 1998, notes in author’s possession, Perth.

Battye Library

Bauer, F H., ‘Durack family papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 1986.

Durack, Kim., ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, Kim Durack Business Correspondence 1937 – 1958’, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library.

Durack, Mary., ‘Durack family papers, 1886-1991’, Diary, [ACC819A], Perth, Battye Library, 1962.

Fletcher, Jack., ‘Australian Land and Cattle Company’, Diaries, [ACC7733A - restricted until the death of Jack Fletcher], Perth, Battye Library, 2014.

Gare, Cyril., ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2 1956 – 1971, Perth, Battye Library.

Kimberley Pastoral Company, Records, 1891-1963, [ACC1240A], Perth, Battye Library.

214

Miller, Andrew., ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971.

Miller, Horry., ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971.

Rodriguez, Frank., ‘Durack Family Papers, 1886-1991’, [ACC819A], HCM/BUS2, Perth, Battye Library, 1956 – 1971.

Rowell, Harold M, Reminiscences, Perth, Battye Library, 2000.

The Torres diaries, 1910-1914 : diaries of Dom Fulgentius (Anthony) Torres y Mayans, O.S.B., Abbot Nullius of New Norcia, Torres Mayans, Fulgencia, 1861-1914; Kalumburu War Diary / Eugene Perez, editors Rosemary Pratt & John Millington 1981.

Landgate

Landgate, Pastoral Lease: Kimberley Division, Minister for Lands, Perth, WA, Landgate, 1953.

Minister of Lands, Pastoral Lease: The Transfer of Land Act, 1893, Landgate, Perth WA, 1949.

Minister of Lands, Transfer: The Transfer of Land Act 1893 - 1950, Landgate, Perth, WA, 1958.

New Norcia files

Rodriguez, Frances - Hno Beda, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1937- 1941.

Santos Ejercicios, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1937.

Benedictine Community of New Norcia, Drysdale River Mission / Kalumburu Journal, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1923, 65014P.

Brother Martinez, Photographs, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives.

Fraser, Fulgentius, Personal Letter, New Norcia, WA, PAX Benedictine Archives, 1919.

Pallottine files

Nailon, Brigidia., ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’, Derby Chronicle, SAC Pallotine Archives Rossmoyne (draft manuscript), WA, 1939 – 1967.

Dept of Aboriginal Affairs

215

Dept of Native Affairs., Fulgentius Fraser (Wife Phillipina Fraser nee Melycan), ‘Personal file’, item 945/40, DAA, 1940. ———., Katherine Fraser, ‘Personal file’, item 879/43, DAA, 1943.

SROWA

District Police Office (Fitzroy)., J. T. Campbell, ‘Journal’, item 430/4739, SROWA, 1909.

Dept of Native Affairs., Liveringa Station, ‘Employment. Living and General Conditions’, item 733/47, SROWA. ———., Liveringa Station, ‘Native Matters’, item 775/38, SROWA. ———., Ellendale Station, ‘Native Matters’, item 1930/0304, SROWA, 1959.

Dept of Native Welfare., Commissioner of Native Welfare, ‘Letters’, item DNW71, SROWA, 1971. ———., Aboriginal Consultative Committee, ‘Letter - F Gare’, 1968, item 1729 WYG25.1, SROWA, 1968. ———, Aboriginal Consultative Committee, Northern Division, ‘Meeting’, SROWA, item 1729, 1968.

Lands Dept, Pastoral Lease Committee – a further interview with Mr Kim Rose, Liveringa Station and Mr Bill Henwood, Calwynyardah Station, ‘Transcripts of Evidence’, con 4983, SROWA, 1962.

Smythe, P S., Native Hostels – Derby file, ‘Letter’, Lands and Surveys, item 481/51, SROWA, 1958.

State Records Office, 1919/107, ‘Walter Fraser’, SROWA, con 3458.

Other unpublished sources

Agricultural Department, Certificate of Registration of Stock Brands, Brands Act, 1904-1956, Registrar of Brands, Perth, WA, Agricultural Department, 1954, 1960.

Broome Catholic Diocese, Mary Catherine Fraser, Baptism Certificate, 1974 [issued]. E. J. Dwyer, Broome, WA.

Catalan, I. A. OSB, Personal Letter, Cindy Solonec, private collection, 15/07/1941.

Rodriguez, Katie, Personal Letter, to Jackie and Frank Rodriguez Jnr, Cindy Solonec, private collection, 11/04/1989.

Rose, Kevan, ‘Liveringa Station, Derby (Jan 1949 to Dec 1951)’, in This Is My Life, Perth, WA, Private Collection, unpublished, 2005.

216 Tranter, Guy: Television arrives in the NW of Australia, Perth, WA, ABC Document Archives, Sydney, email, 2014.

Veale, Tony, Aboriginal Communities - Kimberley, Dept of Indigenous Affairs, Perth, email, 2013.

Visions of Mowanjum: Aboriginal writings from the Kimberley, Battye Library, Adelaide, SA, Rigby, 1980.

Published Sources

Legislation

Aborigines Act 1905 (WA).

Immigration Restriction Act 1901, (Cwlth).

Native Administration Act 1936, (WA).

Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act 1944, (WA).

Government Documents

Cameron, R. J., 1981 - Census of Population and Housing, 30 June 1981: Persons and Dwellings in Local Government areas and Urban Centres, Western Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1982.

Commonwealth of Australia, Certificate of Naturalization, Minister of State for Immigration, Canberra, Commonwealth Government Printer, 1948. ———, Quarantine Service, Department of Health, Perth, WA, Battye Library WA, 1937.

Moseley, Royal Commissioner, Report: Investigate, Report, and Advise Upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines, Fred W M Simpson, Perth, WA, Government Printer, 1935.

O'Neill, J P, 1968 - Population and Dwellings in local government areas: Part 5. Western Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra, ACT, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, 1968, Vol. 4. ———, 1971 - Characteristics of the Population and Dwellings Local Government Areas: Part 5. Western Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra, ACT, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, 1973.

Newspaper Articles

217 'Native Affairs: New Commissioner Mr F. I. Bray's appointment', West Australian, 12/10/1940.

Baker, Bob, 'Boab Festival', Derby Boab News, 22/07/1978.

Collins, Ben, 'Native title on the Kimberley's Fitzroy River - in pictures', 30/05/2014.

Costelloe, Archbishop Timothy SDB, 'The Record heads in new direction', The Record, 16/07/2014.

Editor, 'Derby TV!', Derby Boab News, 03/03/1978. ———, 'Editorial', Derby Boab News, 22/07/1978.

Foster, Ray, 'New Houses for Mowanjum', Derby Boab News 1978.

Laurie, Victoria, 'The battle for Fitzroy Crossing: June Oscar is at the helm again', The Weekend Australian Magazine, 08/11/2014.

Leys, Nick, 'No broad church: Catholics 'veto' Chapman', The Australian: National Affairs 10/06/2013.

Power, Julie, 'Fitzroy Crossing women tackle alcohol scourge', Sydney Morning Herald 07/09/2014.

Scourfield, Stephen, 'Story of a dream as it comes true', The West Australian: Travel, 20/08/2011.

Worth, Bill, 'Church of The Kimberley – Heroes in Faith: Father Duncan McNab', Kimberley Profile, Issue 2, May 2013.

Secondary Sources

Abu-Saad, I., 'Where Inquiry Ends: The Peer Review Process and Indigenous Standpoints', American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 51, no. 12, 2008, pp.1902-1918.

Albrecht, Paul., ‘Tjalkabotta, Moses (1869-1954)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography,tjalkbotta-moses-13219/text23937, published in hardcopy 2005, (accessed 16/06/2015).

Allen, B., & West, P., 'Influence of dingoes on sheep distribution in Australia', Australian Veterinary Journal, vol. 71, no. 7, 2013, pp.261-267.

218 Anderson, Jim., 'Camballin: A West Kimberley Development Conundrum [online]', Early Days: Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 4, 2004, pp. 385-400. ———., 'Liveringa Homestead Group', in Suba, Tanya., & Taylor, John. (eds.), Register of Heritage Places, Group 10 11/12/1998 vols, Perth, WA, Register of Heritage Places, 1997, Vol. Register of Heritage Places - Assessment Doc’ Liveringa Homestead.

Andrews, Munya., The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades: Stories from Around the World, North Melbourne, VIC, Spinifex Press P/L, 2005.

Aronson, A., Studies in twentieth-century diaries: the concealed self. Lewiston, N. Y: E. Mellen Press., Lewiston, NY, E. Mellen Press, c1991.

Attwood, Bain., Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2005.

Austen, Tom., A Cry in the Wind: Conflict in Western Australia 1829-1929, Beaconsfield, WA, Darlington Publishing Group, 1998.

Babie, Paul., 'Australia's Ukrainian Catholics, Canon Law, and the Eparchial Statutes', The Australasian Catholic Record, vol. 81, no. 1, 2004, pp.32-48.

Barnard, Alan. (ed.), The Simple Fleece: Studies in the Australian Wool Industry, Melbourne, VIC, Melbourne University Press, 1962.

Bauer, F H., 'Sheep raising in Northern Australia: an historical review', Australian Geographer, vol. 7, no. 5, 1959, pp.169-179.

Behrendt, Larissa., ‘Consent in a (neo) colonial society: Aboriginal women as sexual and legal ‘other’ ’, Australian Feminist Studies, 2000, vol.15,(33), pp.51-77.

Benedictine Community of New Norcia., Drysdale River Mission, in St Ildephonsus College magazine, New Norcia, WA, Benedictine Community, 1930.

Bennett, Scott., Aborigines and political power, Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1992.

Bessarab, Dawn., & Ng’andu, Bridget., 'Yarning About Yarning as a Legitimate Method in Indigenous Research', International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2010, pp.37-50.

Beyrer, J B., 'Family Allowances in Australia', in Roe, Jill. (ed.), Social policy in Australia: some perspectives 1901-1975, Stanmore, NSW, Cassell Australia, 1976, pp.265-275.

Bhopal, Kalwant., 'Gender, identity and experience: researching marginalised groups', Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 33, no. 3, 2010, pp.188-195.

Birch, Reginald., Wyndham Yella Fella: Reginald Birch, Broome, WA, Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2003.

219

Birch, Tony., 'The invisible fire: Indigenous sovereignty, history and responsibility', in Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. (ed.), Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2007.

Biskup, Peter., not slaves, not citizens: The Aboriginal Problem in Western Australia 1898-1954, Angus and Robertson, London, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1973.

Bleakley, J W., The Aborigines of Australia: their history, their habits, their assimilation, Brisbane, QLD, Jacaranda Press, 1961.

Blundell, Valda., & Woolagoodja, Donny., Keeping the Wanjinas fresh: Sam Woolagoodja and the enduring power of Lalai - Mowanjum Aboriginal Community, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005.

Blythe, Lindsay Gordon., Reminiscences of L.G. Blythe: comprising of early life on Kimberley stations, airbeef and building of roads, Perth, WA, Battye Library, 1977.

Boje, David., Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research, London, SAGE Ltd, 2001.

Bolton, G C., Durack, Kimberley Michael (Kim) (1917–1968), in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra, ACT, ANU Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1996, Vol. 14, (MUP). ———., 'Explorer and Surveyor', Alexander Forrest: His Life and Times, The Griffin Press, Adelaide, SA, Melbourne University Press in conjunction with the University of Western Australia Press, 1958. ———., The Kimberley pastoral industry, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1954. ———., Alexander Forrest: his life and times, Melbourne, VIC, Melbourne University Press in association with the University of Western Australia Press, 1958. ———., 'The Emanuels of Noonkanbah and GoGo', Early days vol. 8, no. Part 4, 1980, pp.5-21.

Bouema, Gary D., Mosques and Muslim Settlement in Australia, Canberra, ACT, Brown Prior Anderson P/L, 1994.

Boughton, Bob., 'Assimilation and Anti-Communism: A Reflection on Gerald Peel's Isles of the Torres Strait', in Rowse, Tim. (ed.), Contesting Assimilation, Perth, WA, API Network, Curtin University, 2005.

Boyd, Monica., ‘Family and personal networks in International migration: recent developments and agendas’, International Migration Review, vol. 23, no.3, Autumn 1989, pp.638-670.

Boyd, Robin., Australia's Home, Melbourne, Vic, Melbourne University Press, 1987.

Brewer, John., 'Microhistory and the histories of everyday life', Cultural and Social History, vol. 7, no. 1, 2010, pp.97-109.

220 Broad, Nan., 'The Eighty Mile Beach: False Promise and Harsh Reality', Early Days: Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 6, 2006, pp.602-615.

Brock, Peggy., 'Aboriginal families and the law in the era of assimilation and segregation, 1890s-1950s', in Kirkby, Diane. (ed.), Sex, power and justice: historical perspectives of law in Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Oxford University Press, 1995. ———., Setting the Record Straight: New Christians and Mission Christianity, in Brock, Peggy. (ed.), Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, Leiden, The Netherlands, Brill Academic Publishers, 2005, Vol. 31.

Broken Hill Proprietary Company, 'The Decade 1945-1955', Seventy-five years of B.H.P. development in industry, 1885-1960 / BHP (firm) Melbourne, VIC, Broken Hill P/L, 1960.

Broome, Richard., Aboriginal Australians: The Australian Experience, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1982.

Burgmann, Verity., 'The Aboriginal Movement', Power, profit and protest: Australian social movements and globalisation, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2003.

Buxton, Nicholas., Tantalus and the Pelican: Exploring Monastic Spirituality Today, London / New York, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009.

Byrne, Denis., & Nugent, Maria., Mapping Attachment: A spatial approach to Aboriginal post-contact heritage, Hurstville, NSW, Department of environment and Conversation NSW, 2004.

Caine, Barbara., Biography and history, Basingstoke, England, Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.

Campbell, Liam., Darby: one hundred years of life in a changing culture, Sydney, NSW, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2006.

Capell, A., 'Australia Social Anthropology: Notes of the Njigina and Warwa Tribes, N. W. Australia', Mankind, vol. 4, no. 11, 1953, pp.450-469.

Cardwell, Richard A., 'Poetry and Culture, 1868-1936', in Gies, David T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion To: Modern Spanish Culture, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Castles, S., Mistaken Identity: Multiculuralism and the demise of Nationalism in Australia, Sydney, NSW, Pluto Press, 1992.

Chalarimeri, Ambrose., & Tan, Traudl., The Man from the Sunrise Side, Broome, WA, Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2001.

Chesterman, John., & Galligan, Brian., Citizens without rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship, Melbourne, VIC, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

221

Choo, Christine., Mission Girls: Aboriginal Women on Catholic Missions in the Kimberley, Western Australia, 1900-1950, Perth, UWA Press, 2001. ———., Mission Girls: Aboriginal Women on Catholic Missions in the Kimberley, Western Australia, 1900-1950, Perth, University of Western Australia Press, 2001. ———., 'The role of the Catholic missionaries at Beagle Bay in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families in the Kimberley region from the 1890s', Aboriginal History, vol. 21, 1997, pp.14-29.

Clarke, Philip., Where the Ancestors Walked: Australia as an Aboriginal Landscape, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2003.

Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation., Regional Report of Inquiry into Underlying Issues in Western Australia - 14.4 Aboriginal Health Workers and Employment, in Reconciliation and Social Justice Library, http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/rsjproject/about.html, 1991.

Conor, Liz., ‘Black velvet and purple indignation: print responses to Japanese poaching of Aboriginal women’, Aboriginal History, vol 37, 2013, pp.51-77.

Cowlishaw, Gillian., Black, White and Brindle: race in rural Australia, Sydney, NSW, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Crawford, Ian W., We Won the Victory: Aborigines and Outsiders on the North-West Coast of the Kimberley, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2001.

Cresswell, Tim., Place: a short introduction, Carlton, VIC, Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

Curthoys, Ann., 'An uneasy conversation: the multicultural and the indigenous', in John Docker & Gerhard Fischer (eds.), Race Colour & Identity: in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, NSW, University of NSW Press Ltd, 2000. ———., ‘Indigenous possession and pastoral employment in Western Australia in the 1880s: Implications for understanding colonial forms of genocide’, in Adhikari, M (ed.), Colonial Conflict Examined in Genocide on Settler Frontiers, UCT Press.

Cyclopedia Co., "Liveringa": the property of the Kimberley Pastoral Company, Limited, Perth, WA, Cyclopedia Co, 1912.

Daly, Alphonsus M., Healing hands: memories and milestones of the Derby Leprosarium, where Sisters of St. John of God provided nursing care Perth, WA, Health Department of Western Australia, 1986?

David, Bruno., Landscapes, Rock-Art and : an Archaeology of Preunderstanding, New York, Leicester University Press, 2002.

Davidson, W. S., Havens of refuge: a history of leprosy in Western Australia, Letchworth, University of Western Australia Press for the Public Health Department [distributed by] International Scholarly Book Services, 1978.

222 de Waal, Esther., A Life - Giving Way: a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, New York, Continuum Books, 1995.

Deloria Jnr, Vine., 'Thinking in Time and Space', God is Red: A Native View of Religion, Golden, Colorado, Fulcrum Publishing, 1992.

Dept of Indigenous Affairs., Reconciling The Past: Government control of Aboriginal monies in Western Australia, 1905-1972 in Report of the Stolen Wages Taskforce, Perth, WA, DIA, 2008.

Donaldson, Ian., Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography, in Australian Book Review, La Tobe University, ANU, 2006,

Dudgeon, Patricia., & Fielder, John., ‘Third Spaces within Tertiary Places: Indigenous Australian Studies’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, no. 16, 2006, pp.396–409.

Duncan Owen, June., Mixed Matches: interracial marriage in Australia, Sydney, NSW, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2002.

Durack, Mary., The Rock and the Sand, 1st edn., London, The Anchor Press Ltd, 1969.

Edmonds, Leigh., The Vital Link, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1997.

Edwards, Coral., & Read, Peter (eds.), The lost children: thirteen Australians taken from their Aboriginal families tell of the struggle to find their natural parents, Sydney, N.S.W, Doubleday, c1989

Ellinghaus, Katherine., Taking assimilation to heart: marriages of white women and indigenous men in the United States and America, 1887-1937, University of Nebraska Press, 2006 ———., 'Absorbing the 'Aboriginal problem': controlling interracial marriage in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries', Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, 183-207. ———., 'Biological Absorption and Genocide: A Comparison of Indigenous Assimilation Policies in the United States and Australia', Genocide Studies and Prevention, vol. 4, no. 1, 2009, 59-79. ———, 'Margins of Acceptability: Class, Education, and Interracial Marriage in Australia and North America', Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 2002, 55-75.

Etherington, Norman., 'Introduction', Missions and Empire, New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Fletcher, Jack., To Dam or be Damned: The Mighty Fitzroy River, Perth, WA, Self Published, 2008.

Flood, Josephine., Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The story of prehistoric Australia and its people, Sydney, NSW, Collins Publishers Australia, 1989.

223

Fraser, P., ‘Phillipena Fraser’ in Nailon, Brigida., & Huegel, Fr Francis. (eds.), This is your place: Beagle Bay Mission, 1890-1990: birthplace and cradle of Catholic presence in the Kimberley, 1st edn, Broome, WA, Beagle Bay Community with assistance from Magabala Books, 1990.

Galligan, Brian., & Roberts, Winsome., Australian Citizenship: see you in Australia, Carlton, Vic, Melbourne University Press, 2004.

Gammage, B., The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2011.

Ganter, Regina., Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 2006.

Godbehere, Harold S., Kimberley was God's, Carlisle, WA, Hesperian Press, 2011.

Goodall, Heather., Ghosh, Devleena., & Todd, Lindi Renier., ‘Jumping Ship – Skirting Empire: Indians, Aborigines and Australians across the Indian Ocean’, Transforming Cultures eJournal, vol. 3. No. 1, pp.44-74, http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/TfC, 2008.

Gregory, Brad S., 'Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the history of everyday life', History and Theory: Studies in the philosophy of history, vol. 38, no. 1, 1999, pp.100- 110.

Grieves, Victoria., & Whitton, Paulette., 'All my relos: Aunty June Barker speaks of her family history', Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia (JEASA), vol. 4, no. 1, 2013, pp.117-129.

Griffiths, Tom, History and the Creative Imagination, [in the] Inaugural Greg Dening Annual Lecture, ‘History in Practice’, University of Melbourne, 2008.

Grossman, Michele., Entangled Subjects: Indigenous / Australian Cross-Cultures of Talk, Text, and Modernity, New York, Rodopi, 2013. ———., 'Xen(ography) and the art of representing otherwise: Australian Indigenous life-writing and the vernacular text', Postcolonial Studies, vol. 8, no. 33, 2005.

Gugeri, Michael., God before Gugeri: Luggers, Trucks & Water bores & other Kimberley stories, Victoria Park, WA, Hesperian Press, 2014.

Haebich, Anna., Broken circles: fragmenting Indigenous families, 1800-2000, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2000. ———., For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia 1900-1940, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1988. ———., Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Press, 2008.

Hamilton, Nigel., How to do Biography: A Primer, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2008.

224

Harding, Sandra. (ed.), The feminist standpoint theory reader: intellectual and political controversies, New York, Routledge, 2004.

Hawke, Stephen., & Gallagher, Michael., Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989.

Hawke, Steve., A Town is Born: The Story of Fitzroy Crossing, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2013.

Petri, Helmut., & Petri-Odermann, Gisela., ‘A Nativistic and Millenarian Movement in North West Australia', Australian Association for the Study of Religions. Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, Adelaide, SA, Flinders University of South Australia, 1988.

Hess, Michael., 'Black and Red: The Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike, 1946', Aboriginal History vol. 18, no. 1, 1994, pp.65-83.

Ho, Robert., 'Multiculturalism in Australia: A Survey of Attitudes', Human Relations, vol. 43, no. 3, 1990, pp.259-273.

Hokari, Minoru., The Gurindji Walk-Off, Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback, Sydney, NSW, University of NSW Press, 2011.

Hoorn, Jeanette., Australian Pastoral: The Making of White Landscape, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Press, 2007.

Horne, Donald., Ideas for a Nation, Sydney, NSW, Pan Books, 1989. ———., The Lucky Country: Australia in the sixties, Adelaide, SA, Penguin Books, 1964.

Hough, David., Boans for service: the story of a department store 1895 - 1986 Circa Vintage, Claremont, WA, The Estate of FT Boan, 2009.

Huggins, Jackie., ‘The Theory, the practice and the Frustration’, in Women Writing: Views & Prospects 1975-1995, National Library of Australia. (ed.), www.nla.gov.au/events/huggins.html. ———., Unwritten Histories, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1998.

Hughes, Karen., 'Becoming Rosalind’s daughter: Reflections on intercultural kinship and embodied histories', Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia (JEASA), vol. 4, no. 1, 2013, pp.76-91.

Jacobs, Patricia., 'Science and veiled assumptions: Miscegenation in Western Australia, 1930-1937', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2, 1986, pp.15-23.

Jebb, Mary Ann., Emerarra: A Man of Merarra / Morndi Munro Talks with Daisy Angajit [et al.], Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1996. ———., Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 2002.

225 ———., Mowanjum: 50 years community history, Derby, Western Australia, Mowanjum Aboriginal Community and Mowanjum Artists Spirit of the Wandjina Aboriginal Corporation, 2009.

Jordan, Ann., 'From Bartering to Bills: The History of Money', Appleseeds, vol. 7, no. 7, 2005, 1 of 1.

Jordanova, Ludmilla., History in Practice, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Jorgensen, Marianne Winther., 'The Terms of Debate: The Negotiation of the Legitimacy of a Marginalised Perspective', Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, vol. 24, no. 4, 2010, pp.313-330.

Aceves, Joseph., & Douglass, Williams., The Changing Faces of Rural Spain, New York, Halsted Press, 1976.

Kabir, , pp.550-565., 'Muslims in Western Australia 1870 – 1970 ', Early Days: Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, vol. 12, no. 5, 2005.

Keene, Judith., 'The word makes the man': A Catalan Anarchist Autodidact in the Australian Bush', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 47, no. 3, 2001, pp.311-329.

Kerr, N.F., Preliminary report on Nyigina, Perth, WA, Battye Library, 1969.

Kinnane, Stephen., Shadow Lines, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003.

Kneipp, Mary., 'Australian Catholics and the Spanish Civil War', Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, vol. 19, 1998, pp.47-64.

Kolig, E., 'Captain Cook in the Western Kimberley', in Ronald & Catherine Berndt (ed.), Aborigines of the West: Their Past and Their Present, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 1980 ———., 'Government Policies and Religious Strategies: Fighting with Myth at Noonkanbah [online].', in Howard, Michael Carlton & Tonkinson, Robert (eds.), Going It Alone?: Prospects for Aboriginal Autonomy, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1990. ———., The Noonkanbah Story, Dunedin, NZ, University of Otago Press, 1987.

Lafitte, F., The Internment of Aliens, New York, USA, Penguin Books, 1940.

Lamidey, Noel., W, Aliens Control in Australia, Sydney, NSW, N. Lamidey 1974.

Langford, Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town, Ringwood, VIC, Penguin, c1988.

Leader-Elliott, Lyn., 'Cultural Landscape and Sense of Place: Community and Tourism Representations of the Barossa', in Covery, Ian., Corsane, Gerard., & Davis, Peter. (eds.), Making Sense of Place: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Woodbridge, UK, The Boydell Press, 2012.

226

Lockyer, Betty., Last Truck Out, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2009.

Lopez, Rafaela., ‘Hispanics in Australia: an imagined community of communities’, JILAS Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Vol.11, no.1, July 2005, pp.103-112.

Lydon, Jane. (ed.), Fantastic Dreaming: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission, Plymouth, UK, AltaMira Press, 2009.

Lynch, Tom., 'Nothing but Land: Women's Narratives, Gardens, and the Settler- Colonial Imaginary in the U.S. West and Australian Outback', Western American Literature, vol. 48, no. 4, 2014, pp.374-399.

Mackinolty, C., & Wainburranga, P., 'Too Many Captain Cooks', in Swain, Tony., & Bird Rose, Deborah. (eds.), Aboriginal Australians and Christian missions: ethnographic and historical studies, Adelaide, SA, Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1988.

Madden, Raymond., 'Home-town Anthropolgy', The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 10, no. 3, 1999, pp.259-270.

Hattersley, Colleen. (ed.), Nyikina Birr Nganka: The source of Nyikina Language with reference to Lower Nyikina, Madjulla Inc, Brisbane, QLD, Harry's Collar, 2014.

Manne, Robert., 'The Stolen Generations: a documentary collection', Essay, The Monthly, 2006, https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2006/september/1244160772/robert- manne/stolen-generations (accessed 29/07/2015).

Marshall, Lucy., Reflections of a Kimberley woman, Broome, WA, Madjulla Inc, 2004.

Marshall, Paul. (ed.), Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right, Now We Go 'Side the River, Along That Sundown Way: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1988.

Mason, Robert., 'Anarchism, Communism and Hispanidad: Australian Spanish Migrants and the Civil War', Immigrants & Minorities, vol. 27, no. 1, 2009, pp.29-49. ———., '‘No Arms Other than Paper’: Salvador Torrents and the Formation of Hispanic Migrant Identity in Northern Australia, 1916–50', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2010, pp.166-180.

Maynard, John., Fight for liberty and freedom: the origins of Australian Aboriginal activism, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007.

May, Dawn., Aboriginal labour and the cattle industry: Queensland from white settlement to the present, Melbourne, VIC, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

227 McCallum, Kerry., Woman from nowhere: Hazel McKellar's story, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 2000.

McKay, E., ‘The Diary Network in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England’, Eras Journal, http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/publications/eras/edition-2/mckay.php (accessed 27/04/2016).

McGrath, Ann., Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in cattle country, North Sydney, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1987. ———., Shamrock Aborigines: The Irish, the Aboriginal Australians and Their Children [online]. Aboriginal History, vol. 34, 2010, pp.55-84.

McGregor, Russell., 'Breed out the colour: or the importance of being white', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 33, no. 120, 2002, pp.286-302. ———., Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal People and the Australian Nation, Canberra, ACT, Australian Studies Press, 2011.

McGregor, William B., 'Language shift among the Nyulnyul of Dampier land: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia', International Journal of Linguistics, vol. 35, no. 1, 2003, pp.115-159.

McHugh, Nancy Arden., Feminist Philosophies A-Z, Edinburgh, UK, Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

McKenna, Mark., Looking for Blackfella's Point: An Australian History of Place, Sydney, NSW, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2002.

McKenzie, Maisie., The Road to Mowanjum, Melbourne, VIC, Angus & Robertson, 1969.

McLeod, D W., How the West was lost: the native question in the development of Western Australia, Port Hedland, WA, The Author, 1984.

McNiven, Ian J., 'The Bradshaw Debate: Lessons Learned from Critiquing Colonialist Interpretations of Gwion Gwion Rock Paintings of the Kimberley, Western Australia', Australian Archaeology, vol. 72, June, 2011, pp.35-44 .

Melnyczuk, Lesa., Silent memories: traumatic lives: Ukrainian migrant refugees in Western Australia Welshpool, WA, Western Australian Museum, 2012.

Pearson, Michael., & Lennon, Jane., Pastoral Australia: fortunes, failures and hard yakka: a historical overview 1788-1967, Collingwood, Vic, CSIRO Publishing; Australian Heritage Council; Australia. Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, 2010.

Milgin, Annie Nayina., Watson, John Dadakar., and Thompson, Liz., Living with the land: Bush Tucker and Medicine of the Nyikina, Sydney, NSW, Pearson Library, 2009.

228 Minyjun, Monty Hale., 'Chp. 2 Strike Time, 1946-50', in Scrimgeour, Anne. (ed.), Kurlumariny: We come from the desert, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012.

Mjoberg, Eric., ‘Among Wild Animals and People in Australia’, in Bridge, Peter., & Epton, Kim. (ed.), The Western Australian Explorers' Diaries Project, Perth, WA, Hesperian Press, 1914.

Mohanram, Radhika., Black Body: women, colonialism and space, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1999.

Moran, Anthony., 'Multiculturalism as nation-building in Australia: Inclusive national identity and the embrace of diversity ', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 34, no. 12, 2011, pp.2153-2172. ———., 'The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism: Assimilating or Reconciling With the Aborigines?', Political Psychology, vol. 23, no. 4, 2002, pp.677- 681.

Moreton-Robinson, Aileen., 'Towards an Australian Indigenous Women's Standpoint Theory', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 28, no. 78, 2014, pp.331-347. ———., 'Whiteness, epistemology and Indigenous representation', in Aileen Moreton-Robinson (ed.), Whitening Race: essays in social and cultural criticism, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005.

Morgan, David L., 'Fish fauna of the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia: including Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Ngarinyin, Nyikina and Walmajarri Aboriginal names', Records of the Western Australian Museum, vol. 22, no. 22, 2004, pp.141-167.

Morgan, Sally., My Place, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1987. ———., Remembered by Heart, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Press, 2014.

Morley, Rachel., 'Fighting Feeling: Re-thinking Biographical Praxis', Life Writing, vol. 9, no. 1, 2012, pp.77-75.

Mowaljarlai, David., & Mainic, Jutta., Yorro Yorro: everything standing up alive, Broome, WA, Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 1993.

Mowljarlai, David., & Peck, Cyril., 'Ngarinyin cultural continuity: a project to teach the young people the culture, including the re-painting of Wandjina rock artists', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2, 1987, pp.71-78.

Moyzafi-Haller, Pnina., 'Writing Birthright: On Anthropologists and the Politics of Representation', in Deborah Reed-Danahay (ed.), Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Berg, Oxford, 1997.

Nailon, Brigida., Encounter: the past and future of remote Kimberley, Echuca, VIC, Brigidine Sisters, 2009? ———., The writing on the wall: Father Duncan McNab 1820-1896, Echuca, VIC, Brigidine Sisters, 2004.

229

Nailon, Brigida., & Huegel, Fr Francis., This is your place: Beagle Bay Mission 1890-1990, Beagle Bay Community, 1990.

Nakata, Martin., Disciplining the savages: savaging the disciplines, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007.

Neumann, Klaus., In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia during World War 2, Canberra, ACT, National Archives of Australia, 2006. ———., 'The stench of the past: Revisionism in Pacific Islands and Australian history', Contemporary Pacific, vol. Spring, no. 10, 1, 1998, pp.31-64.

Neville, Auber Octavius., Australia's coloured minority: its place in the community, Sydney, Currawong Publishing Co., 1948?

Niall, Brenda., True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack, Melbourne, VIC, The Text Publishing Company, 2012.

Nixon, Marion., The Rivers of Home, Perth, WA, Vanguard Service Print, 1978.

Nugent, Maria., ‘Every Right to be There: Cinema Spaces and Racial Politics in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia’, in Rooney, Monique & Smith, Russell (eds.), Australian Humanities Review, Australian National University, 2011.

O'Brien, Anne., God's Willing Workers: Women and Religion in Australia, Sydney, NSW, University of NSW Press Ltd, 2005.

O'Connor, Sue., Barham, Anthony., & Woolagoodja, Donny., 'Painting and repainting in the West Kimberley', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 1, 2008, pp.22-38.

Official Opening: Camballin Irrigation Area, 4th December, Perth, Battye Library, 1961.

Olive, Noel., Karijini Mirlimirli: Aboriginal histories from the Pilbara, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997.

Owen, Chris., 'The police appear to be a useless lot up there: law and order in the East Kimberley 1884–1905', Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, pp.105-130.

Pan-Montojo, Juan., 'Spanish Agriculture, 1931-1955: Crisis, Wars, and New Policies in the Reshaping of Rural Society', in Segers, Yves., Brassley, Paul., & Van Molle, Leen. (eds.), War, Agriculture, and Food: Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s, Hoboken, Taylor & Francis, 2012.

Parker, Adrian., Bradshaw, John., & Done, Chris., A Kimberley adventure: rediscovering the Bradshaw figures, Marleston, SA, Gecko Books, c2007.

Parry, Suzanne., 'Identifying the process: the removal of “half-caste children from Aboriginal mothers', Aboriginal History, vol. 192, 1995, pp.141-153.

230 Pedersen, Howard., & Woorunmurra, Banjo., Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1995.

Perez, Eugene., Kalumburu: The Benedictine Mission and the Aborigines, 1908-1975 Perth, WA, Kalumburu Benedictine Mission, 1977.

R J Petheram., ‘The Kimberley Scene,’ in R.J. Petheram, and B. Kok. (eds). Plants of the Kimberley Region of Western Australia, Perth, UWA Press, 1983.

Petri, Helmut. (translated by Ian Campbell)., Sterbende welt in Nordwest-Australien. (English: The dying world in Northwest Australia), Carlisle, WA, Hesperian Press, c2011.

Pohlhaus, Gaile., 'Knowing communities: an investigation of Harding's standpoint epistemology', Social Epistemology, vol. 16, no. 3, 2002, pp.283-293.

Probyn-Rapsey, Fiona., 'Black Sheep Nation', Australian Cultural History, vol. 26, 2007, pp.173-193. ———., Made to matter: White Fathers, Stolen Generations, Sydney, NSW, Sydney University Press, 2013.

Purcell, Brad., Dingo, Collingwood, Vic, CSIRO, Publishing, 2010.

Raikowski, Pamela., In the tracks of the camelmen: Outback Australia's most exotic pioneers, North Ryde, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1987. ———., Linden Girl: the story of outlawed lives, Perth, WA, University of Western Australia Press, 1995.

Ranger, Terence., 'Christianity and the First Peoples: Some Second Thoughts', in Brock, Peggy. (ed.), Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, Leiden, The Netherlands, Brill Academic Publishers, 2005.

Read, Peter., Peters-Little, Frances., & Haebich, Anna. (eds.), Indigenous biography and autobiography, Canberra, ACT, Australian National Press EPress, 2008. ———., A rape of the soul so profound: the return of the Stolen Generations, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1999. ———., Tripping over feathers: scenes in the life of Joy Janaka Wiradjuri Williams: a narrative of the Stolen Generations, Crawley, WA, UWA Publishing, 2009.

Reece, Bob., '‘Killing with kindness’: Daisy Bates and New Norcia', Aboriginal History, vol. 32, 2008, pp.128-145.

Reynolds, Henry., This whispering in our hearts, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1998. ———., Why weren’t we told? A personal search for the truth about our History, Penguin, Sydney, 2000. ———., North Of Capricorn the Untold Story Of Australia’s North, Crows Nest, NSW, 2003, p. xv-xvi. ———., The other side of the Frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Vic, Penguin Books, 1990.

231 ———., Frontier: Aborigines, settlers and land, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987.

Rigney, L., I 'Internationalisation of an Indigenous Anticolonial Cultural Critique of Research Methodologies: A guide to Indiginist Research Methodology and its Principles', Wicazo Sa Review. Emergent Ideas in Native American Studies vol. 14, no. 2 Autumn, 1999, pp.109-121.

Robinson, Scott., 'The Aboriginal Embassy: an account of the protests of 1972', in Chapman, Valerie., & Read, Peter. (eds.), Terrible Hard Biscuits: A reader in Aboriginal history, St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin,1996.

Ross, Christopher J., Spain since 1812, 3rd edn, London, Hodder Education, 2009.

Rowse, Tim. (ed.), Contesting Assimilation, Perth, WA, API Network, Curtin University, c2005. ———., White flour, white power: from rations to citizenship in central Australia Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Ryan, Lyndall., & Dwyer, Philip G. (eds.)., Theatres of violence: massacre, mass killing, and atrocity throughout history, New York, Berghahn Books, 2012.

Rumley, Hilary., & Toussaint, Sandy., 'For their own benefit?: A critical overview of Aboriginal policy and practice at Moola Bulla, East Kimberley, 1910-1955', Aboriginal History, vol. 14, no. 1, 1990, pp.80-103.

Ryan, Simon., The cartographic eye: how explorers saw Australia, Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Salvidge, Guy., Book Review: Shadow Lines, 2009, http://guysalvidge.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/book-review-shadow-lines-by-stephen- kinnane/.

Sampson, Helen., 'Globalisation, Labour Market Transformation and Migrant Marginalisation: the Example of Transmigrant Seafarers in Germany', Journal of International Migration and Integration, vol. 14, no. 4, 2013, pp.751-765.

Sandiford, Peter John., & Divers, Peter., 'The public house and its role in society's margins', International Journal of Critical Hospitality Management, vol. 30, 2011, pp.765-773.

Sanz de Galdeano, Seraphim., Metamorphosis of a Race: Kuini and Kulari Tribes of Kalumburu Mission, Perth, WA, Hesperian Press, 2006.

Sarantakos, Sotirios., 'Quality of Family Life on the Farm', Journal of Family Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2000, pp.182-198.

Schubert, L A., Kimberley dreams & realities: an objective study of the effects on part Aboriginals forcibly educated in the twentieth century & the tragedy of the uneducated indigenous, Mandurah, WA, Blue Bay Publishers, 1997.

232 Scott, Kim., Kayang & me: Kim Scott, Hazel Brown, Fremantle Press, Fremantle, WA, 2013.

Scrimgeour, Anne,. 'Battlin’ for their rights: Aboriginal activism and the Leper Line', Aboriginal History, vol. 36, 2012, pp.43-65. ———., 'We only want our rights and freedom: The Pilbara pastoral workers strike, 1946–1949', History Australia, vol. 11, no. 2, 2014, pp.101-124.

Semeniuk1, V., & Brocx2, M., 'King Sound and the tide-dominated delta of the Fitzroy River: their geoheritage values', Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, vol. 94, no. 2, 2011, June, pp.151-160, http://www.rswa.org.au/publications/Journal/94(2)/SemeniukBrocx%20pp.151- 160.pdf (accessed 26/07/2015).

Shaw, Bruce. (ed.), When the dust come in between: Aboriginal viewpoints in the East Kimberley prior to 1982, Canberra, ACT, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1992.

Shaw, Bruce., & McDonald, Sandy., 'They did it themselves: Reminiscences of seventy years', Aboriginal History, vol. 2, no. 2, 1978, pp.122-139.

Sherrington, Geoffrey., Australia's Immigrants: the Australian experience, Sydney, NSW, George Allen & Unwin, 1989.

Shilling, D., 'The birds of Upper Liveringa Station, Western Australia', Emu, vol. 48, no. 1, 1948, pp.64-72.

Short, D., 'When sorry isn't good enough: Official remembrance and reconciliation in Australia', Memory Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 2012, pp.293-304.

Simpson, Audra., & Smith, Andrea. (eds.), Theorizing Native Studies, London, UK, Duke University Press, 2014.

Slipstream (Perth W.A.)., 'Slipstream: official publication of MacRobertson Miller Airlines Ltd.', The Airlines, vol. 4, no. 10, 1960.

Smith, Tony., 'Aboriginal Labour and the Pastoral Industry in the Kimberley Division of Western Australia: 1960-1975', Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 3, no. 4, 2003, pp.552-570.

Smith Tuhiwai, Linda., Decolonizing Methodologies: research and Indigenous peoples, Dunedin, NZ, University of Otago Press, 2001.

Spalding, P., Self-harvest: a study of diaries and the diarist, London, Independent Press, 1949.

Stephenson, Peta., Islam Dreaming: Indigenous Muslims in Australia, Sydney, UNSW Press, 2010. Stevens, Christine., Tin Mosques & Ghantowns: a history of Afghan Camel Drivers in Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Oxford University Press, 1989.

233 Stokes B., Johnston G., & Marshall L., First Nyikina Dictionary - Draft, Fitzory Crossing, WA, Kimberley Language Resource Centre, 2000, Vol. Draft.

Stokes, Julie. [ed], Addressing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Australia, 2012, http://www.nidac.org.au/images/PDFs/NIDACpublications/FASD.pdf, Australian National Council on Drugs, 2012.

Stone, Sharman., Aborigines in White Australia: A documentary history of the attitudes affecting official policy and the Australian Aborigine, 1697-1973, Adelaide, SA, The Griffin Press, 1974.

Symonds, Richard., 'The Muslims in India & The Muslim Renaissance ', Making of Pakistan: National Committee for Birth Centenary Celebrations of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Karachi, Pakistan, National Book Foundation, 1976.

Szijártó, István., 'Four Arguments for Microhistory', Rethinking History, vol. 6, no. 2, 2002, pp.209-215.

Tavan, Gwenda., ‘Good Neighbours: community organisations, migrant assimilation and Australian society and culture, 1950-61’, Australian Historical Studies, vol.27, no. 109, 1997, pp.77-89.

The story of the air beef project in north west Australia, Sydney, NSW, F.H. Johnston for Air Beef, 1951.

Thomas, Nicholas., 'The cultural dynamics of peripheral exchange', in Caroline Humphrey & Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds.), Barter, exchange and value: an anthropological approach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Tonkinson, Bob., Environmental and Historical Setting, in Kiste, Robert C and Ogan, Eugene. (eds.), Menlo Park, California, Cummings Publishing Co Inc, 1974.

Tonkinson, Robert., 'Aboriginal ‘Difference’ and ‘Autonomy’ Then and Now: Four Decades of Change in a Western Desert Society', Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp.41-60.

Trengove, Alan., 'Essington Lewis', What's good for Australia...!: the story of BHP Stanmore, NSW, Cassell Australia, 1975.

Tuan, Yi-Fu., Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis, USA, University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Turnbull, P L., A lifetime of caring: the history of the Leprosy Mission in Australia, 1913-1988, Box Hill, VIC, Leprosy Mission, 1990.

Uren, Malcolm., & Parrick, F., Servant of the State: The History of the Main Roads Department 1926 - 1976, Perth, WA, Commissioner of Main Roads, Western Australia, 1976, Vol. Abridged Edition.

234 Van den Berg, Rosemary., No options, no choice!: the Moore River experience: my father, Thomas Corbett, an Aboriginal half-caste, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, c1994.

Ward, Glenyse., Wandering girl, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1987.

Watson, Irene., 'Settled and unsettled spaces: Are we free to roam?', in Moreton- Robinson, Aileen (ed.), Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2007.

Richard, White., ‘The Australian way of life’, Australian Historical Studies, vol.18, no.73, 1979, pp.528-545.

Williams, Magdalene., Ngay janijirr ngank = This is my word, Broome, WA, Magabala Books, 1999.

Wilson, Ronald., Bringing them home: report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Australia), Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney, NSW, 1997.

Wright, Edie., Full Circle: from mission to community a family story, Fremantle, WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001.

Wybourne, Catherine., Work & Prayer: The Rule of St Benedict for Lay People, London, Continuum Books, 1992.

Zucker, Margaret., From Patrons to Partners: A History of the Catholic Church in the Kimberley, Fremantle, WA, Uni of Notre Dame Australia Press, 1994. ———, 'Open Hearts: The Catholic Church and the Stolen Generation in the Kimberley', Australian Catholic Historical Society, vol. 29, 2008, pp.23-38.

Audio / Film

Blue Streak rocket program heritage listed, dir. Mills, Vanessa, http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/11/09/3061650.htm, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Kimberley, 2013.

Brann, Matt, 'ABC Rural', The Kimberley Flock, 10/11/2010.

Exile and the Kingdom [videorecording], dir. Roger Solomon Noelene Harrison & Frank Rijavec, Lindfield, NSW, Film Australia, 2005.

I grew up as a Jillaroo, dir. Fraser, Leena, https://soundcloud.com/abcwa/i-grew-up- as-a-jillaroo-meet-lena-buckle-fraser Australian Broadcasting Commission, 2014.

Last Truck Out/Nurreegoo: one man's art/The Hill live at The Dreaming, dir. Lockyer, Betty, ABC Radio National http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/last-truck-outnurreegoo-one-

235 mans-artthe-hill-live/3670114 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/awaye/stories/2009/2686439.htm.

Other Law, First Australians, dir. Perkins, Rachel., Blackfella Films in association with SBS, Screen Australia, New South Wales Film and Television Office, South Australian Film Corporation, ScreenWest and Lotterywest, 2008 [videorecording].

The Joybeats live on in the Kimberley, dir. Smale, Hilary, http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/09/26/3598312.htm, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Kimberley, 2012, (accessed 07/05/2014).

Whispering in our hearts [videorecording]: the Mowla Bluff Massacre, dir. Torres, Mitch, Australian Films Finance Corporation, Canberra, ACT in association with SBS Independent, Ronin Films, c2001.

Yajilarra to dream: Aboriginal women leading change in remote Australia, 2009, Hogan M, Director; Latimer J, Producer; Constantine C, Cinematography; Oscar J (Narration). Yajilarrra (To Dream) 2009 © Marninwarntikura Women's Resource Centre, Fitzroy Valley.

Thesis

Bolton, G C, A survey of the Kimberley pastoral industry from 1885 to the present, Masters Thesis, UWA, 1953.

Choo, Christine, Aboriginal women on Catholic missions in the Western Kimberley, PhD Thesis University of Western Australia, 1995.

Crawford, Frances, The Story of Looma, PhD Thesis, University of Western Australia, 1976.

Dudgeon, Patricia, Mothers of Sin: Aboriginal women's perceptions of their identity and sexuality, PhD Thesis, Murdoch, 2007.

O'Grady, Colleen Margaid, An Historical Geography of the Pastoral Occupation of Six Major River Basins in the North West of Western Australia, PhD Thesis, Curtin University of Technology, 2004.

Owen, Chris, 'Weather hot, flies troublesome...': police in the Kimberley District of Western Australia 1882-1901, University of Western Australia Thesis, 2013.

Peckham, Peter A, The development of MacRobertson Miller Airlines Ltd. in Western Australia: an historical outline of the integral part played by commercial aviation in Western Australia, Thesis (Teachers' Higher Certificate), 196-?

Poelina, Anne, Action Research to Build the Capacity of Nyikina Indigenous Australians, PhD Thesis, University of New England, 2009.

236 Solonec, Jacinta, Cast(e) in between: a mixed-descent family’s coexistence in the West Kimberley 1944-1969, Masters Thesis, Edith Cowan University, 2004.

Stokes, B, A description of Nyigina: a language of the West Kimberley, Western Australia, PhD Thesis, Australian National University, 1982.

Websites

Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Statistics of the Indigenous peoples of Australia’, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/8dc4 5512042c8c00ca2569de002139be!OpenDocument, (accessed 01/07/2015). ———, ‘2011 Census Quickstats: Kimberley’, http://www.censusdata.abs.gov/census_services/getproduct.census/2011/quickstat/508 04?opendocument&navpos=220, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Australian Museum ‘Freshwater Crocodile’, Nature Culture Discover, Sydney, 2014, http://australianmuseum.net.au/freshwater-crocodile (25/03/2014). ———, ‘Introduction to Indigenous Australia’, 2014, http://australianmuseum.net.au/indigenous-australia-introduction, (accessed 18/02/2015).

Aviation Heritage Museum, ‘MacRobertson Miller Airlines’, The Bull Creek Collection, 2013, http://www.raafawa.org.au/museum/wa-aviation- history/macrobertson-miller-airlines, (accessed 07/02/2015).

Birrell, Frank., 'The History of Beagle Bay: a History of the Sacred Heart Church', Beagle Bay History, u/d, http://wkfl.asn.au/religioused/beagle_bay_church_history.htm, (accessed 21/09/2011).

Brother Ernest, C S C., 'The Fatima Message: From Heaven, a Light for Our Times', A Story of Our Lady of Fatima, u/d, http://fatima.ageofmary.com/overview/, (accessed 24/08/2013).

Bureau of Meteorology, ‘Indigenous Weather Knowledge’, 2014, http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/?ref=ftr, (accessed 31/12/2014).

Canon Law Society of America., Code of Canon Law, in 20064 Codex Iuris Canonici, Washington, DC America Canon Law Society of America, 1983, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_INDEX.HTM, (accessed 07/07/2015).

Catholic Archdiocese of Perth, ‘Catholic Life’, http://www.perthcatholic.org.au/, 2008, (accessed 10/08/2013).

Craig Mostyn Group, 'A flair for trade: Go west young man’, 2014 http://www.craigmostyn.com.au/about/history/, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Dept of Aboriginal Affairs, Remote Communities Facts, http://www.daa.wa.gov.au/en/Remote-Communities-Reform/Questions-and-Answers/ accessed 15/05/2015.

237

Derby Boab Festival, ‘Celebrating the West Kimberley Life: July 4 - July 20 2014’, http://derbyboabfestival.org.au/archieves/2014/, (accessed 13/05/2014).

Dousset, Laurent., 'AusAnthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal database: research, resources and documentation', Njikena, u/d, http://www.ausanthrop.net/resources/ausanthrop_db/aiatsis.php?search_id=K.03, (accessed 21/12/2014).

Dunn, Peter., ‘Noonkanbah Airfield near Fitzroy Crossing, WA During WW2’, Australia @ War, 2003, http://www.ozatwar.com/airfields/nookanbah.htm, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Ethington, Sue., & Smith, Laura., ‘The Design and Construction of Indigenous Housing: The Challenge Ahead’, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, ACT, 2004, http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected]/0/c73ff65afc91fbf8ca256dea00053954?Op enDocument, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Government of Western Australia, Aborigines Act, 1905, Canberra, ACT, AIATSIS, 1905, http://asset0.aiatsis.gov.au/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1320205245411 ~715.

Hamacher, Duane., ‘Stories from the sky: astronomy in Indigenous knowledge’, The Conversation, 01/12/2014, https://theconversation.com/stories-from-the-sky- astronomy-in-indigenous-knowledge-33140, (accessed 06/03/2015).

Heritage Council, ‘Liveringa Homestead Group’, State Heritage Office, http://inherit.stateheritage.wa.gov.au/Public/Inventory/Details/6feb342b-2164-44d9- 874c-56abf9103092, 2012 (accessed 10/07/2015).

Horton, David R., ‘Indigenous Language Map’, ABC Indigenous, http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/map/ , (accessed 10/07/2015).

Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre., KALACC, 2014, http://www.kalacc.org.au/, (accessed 31/12/2014).

Kimberley Foundation Australia, ‘Researching, preserving and promoting Kimberley rock art’, 2012, http://www.kimberleyfoundation.org.au/wandjina/, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Landgate, ‘Derby,’ Place name history, 2014, http://www0.landgate.wa.gov.au/maps- and-imagery/wa-geographic-names/name-history, (accessed 03/01/2015).

Monroe, M H., ‘Fire-Stick Farmers, in Australia: The Land Where Time Began’, A biography of the Australian continent, 2014, http://austhrutime.com/fire- stick_farmers.htm, (accessed 06/07/2015).

238 National Archives of Australia, ‘More People Imperative: Immigration to Australia, 1901-39’, Your story, our history, Canberra, 2014, http://guides.naa.gov.au/more- people-impreative/chapter4/index.aspx, (accessed 06/07/2015).

National Film and Sound Archive, ‘Blue Hills 1930-1970s’, Radio Series Collection Guide 34:143521, 1998, http://www.nfsa.gov.au/site_media/uploads/file/2011/12/05/NFSA_Radio_series_coll ection_amended.pdf, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Pether, Richard., ‘The Acts of the Parliament of Western Australia. 1829/1956’, 1976, National Library of Australia, http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview?pi=nla.aus- vn672744-2x-s1-v, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Pettigrew, Jack., ‘Origins of the Australian Boab (Adansonia gregorii)’, UQ Australian Institute of Biotechnology and Nanotechnology (AIBN), u/d, http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/BoabOrigins.html, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Poelina, Anne., ‘Fitzroy River valley: Lifeblood of the Lower Fitzroy Valley’, Welcome to Mardoowarra, 2014, http://www.mardoowarra.com.au, (accessed 30/12/2014).

Richert, Scott P., ‘Catholicism Guide’, http://catholicism.about.com/, About Religion, 2007, (accessed 11/08/2013).

Ryan, Kathryn., ‘Common plants in the Kimberley’, Dept of Agriculture and Food, 22/04/2014, of Agriculture and Food, Perth WA, 2014 https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/rangelands/common-plants-kimberley, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Ships Nostalgia, ‘MV Charon 1936’, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd, http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/showthread.php?t=3912, 2000, Vol. 3.6.8, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Shire of Derby, ‘Our Community’, West Kimberley, 2011, http://www.sdwk.wa.gov.au/community/aboutourcommunity.html, (06/07/2015).

St John of God Heritage Centre, ‘Welcome to the SSJG Heritage Centre’, 2014, http://heritage.ssjg.org.au/Home-Page.aspx, (accessed 11/03/2014). ———, 'When The Queen Came . . . 1963 Jubilee Exhibition’, 2013, http://heritage.ssjg.org.au/Home-Page.aspx, (accessed 28/07/2014).

Ten Pound Pom, ‘Nissen Huts’, Museum/hostels, 2011 http://tenpoundpom.com/index.php, (accessed 12/07/2015).

The National Museum of Australia, ‘Aboriginal Cooperative Begins’, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights, Canberra, 2014, http://indigenousrights.net.au/ (accessed 15/11/2014). ———, ‘Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act, 1944-1951, Western Australia: An Act to provide for the acquisition of full rights of citizenship by aborigine natives’, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights, Canberra, 2014,

239 http://indigenousrights.net.au/resources/documents/western_australia_natives_citizens hip_rights_act_1944, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Thomas, Abbie., ‘King of all Tides’, Indepth, ABC Science, 2002, http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/05/01/2683462.htm, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Transceltic, ‘Celtic Identity, Language and the Question of Galicia’, Culture and heritage, 2013, http://www.transceltic.com/pan-celtic/celtic-identity-language-and-question-of- galicia, (accessed 06/07/2015).

Water Notes, Government of Western Australia, ‘Rivers of the Kimberley: About the Kimberley rivers’, 2009, http://www.water.wa.gov.au/search- results?query=rivers+of+the+kimberley&collection=wadow (accessed 10/07/2015).

Winun Ngari Aboriginal Corporation., ‘Looma Community’, n/d, http://winunngari.org.au/community/looma/, (accessed 20/01/2015).

240