Re-thinking Aboriginal history

Rations were strictly for the sick, aged and infirm, mothers with young children, and orphans. Able-bodied people were expected to hunt or fish or gather, or work for farms and stations. Families which had been deserted or widowed were also provided with rations.

By the way, rations included, flour, tea, sugar, axes, rice, sago, tobacco, soap, fishing lines, fish-hooks, netting twine, needles and thread, clothes, clothing material, blankets, blue serge and blue serge shirts, cotton shirts, spoons, quart-pots, pannicans, billy-cans, tomahawks, bags and tarpaulins for wurlies, occasionally tents, and free medical care and travel passes to and from hospital.

Rations were provided to isolated individuals. For example, on many occasions, an old man or woman on a station might need to be looked after - the Protector asks the lessee to ask the person if they want to go to a mission to be better cared for there, but they say no, they want to stay on their land, so he arranges for the station-lessee to provide him/her with rations, often for years. One Aboriginal woman on Kangaroo Island, originally from Tasmania, is supplied with rations in this way for at least twenty years.

A deserted wife and her family in Adelaide are provided with rations for many years, at least until the record ends.

Missions regularly expelled people who had behaved badly, or immorally. In other words, they were fairly particular about who could and couldn't stay on a Mission. I suspect that one Mission had to wind down in the 1890s simply because it couldn't get enough working men to come and stay there: it seemed to have a chronic shortage of labour from the late 1870s as capable men found work in the district which paid better.

In sum, there does not seem to be any evidence of 'herding', or even any obvious intention to ever do so.

Aboriginal people were driven from their lands

There is only one instance in the Protector's letters of a pastoral lessee trying to drive people from his lease (in 1876), and as soon as the Protector is informed, he writes to remind the lessee that he would be in breach of his lease, which stipulates that Aboriginal people have all the traditional rights to use the land as they always had done, 'as if this lease had not been made', as the wording went. It was assumed that traditional land-use and pastoral land-use could co-exist, as, of course, they could and still can. I'm informed that that condition still applies in current legislation.

By the way, six months later, that pastoralist is applying for rations. The depot there was still issuing rations at least thirty years later.

The Protector provided dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, 15-ft boats, and fishing gear (fishing-lines, fish-hooks, netting twine), to people on all waterways, even the Cooper's Creek, so that they can fish and 'stay in their own districts'. He provided guns to enable people to hunt more effectively. Boats and guns are provided free – as well as their repair – to people unable to earn a living, and able-bodied people are expected to pay half their cost.

The Game Act has always expressly exempted Aboriginal people from restrictions on hunting and fishing in 'Close Season', even now.

He advises a woman who has been living on a Mission, but whose husband has been knocking her around, that he can provide her with rations at a town near her own country.

Over the years, whenever particular individuals or groups were 'loafing about the City' or drunk and disorderly, or begging (what we call 'humbugging' these days) about the streets, he provides them with rail or steamer passes to 'go back to their home districts'.