SOLONEC Shared Lives on Nigena Country

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 Australia 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, Western Australia. 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 Liveringa 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.

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