August 25.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
“Isles of the Dead”
”Tombs of the living dead”
Another set of institutions were the infectious diseases hospitals, if these dehumanising places merited the designation of hospital. Many were simply escape-proof detention centres. The most infamous of these were the Western Australian 'Lock Hospitals', which for ten years were on Dorre and Bernier Islands. On these men's and women's islands, Aboriginal people suffering from venereal diseases and certain other contagious conditions were incarcerated, having been forcibly removed from their communities, usually by police. Life on these islands was a nightmare, especially for those who were the only representatives of their tribes, cramped together in makeshift dormitories or corrugated iron sheds.
In many parts of Australia there were similar high-security hospitals. Given the high incidence of infectious diseases among Aboriginal people, many spent time in these institutions. To Aboriginal people they were yet another oppressive imposition. Aborigines fled medical inspection and dreaded treatment. [1] The institutions were all oppressive, but the Lock Hospitals were the worst. Daisy Bates called them 'Isles of the Dead':
Dorre and Bernier Islands: there is not in all my sad sojourn amongst the last sad people of the primitive Australian race, a memory one-half so tragic or harrowing, or a name that conjures up such a deplorable picture of misery and horror unalleviated as these two grim and barren islands off the West Australian coast that for a period, mercifully brief, were the tombs of the living dead. [2]
In the Northern Territory, Aborigines suffering from contagious diseases were sent to Darwin where they were imprisoned in a lock-up in the Kahlin Aboriginal Compound. No Aborigines were permitted in the general hospital except for the half-caste maternity ward. [3] Xavier Herbert became manager of the Compound in 1927. In 1980, when giving evidence at the Finniss River land claim hearing, Herbert described the conditions in the Compound when he took over as 'hideous'. Worst of all was the plight of the women suffering from gonorrhoea. They were kept in an old building made of white-washed corrugated iron...
This was occupied by six to ten women all fairly advanced by age...who were chained to posts. They had iron beds and they were chained to posts in it by the leg and they had been there for years like that. There was no treatment for them... [4]
See Jebb, 1984.
Bates, 1936: 96.
McGrath, 1984: 278.
Xavier Herbert, transcript of proceedings before His Honour Mr Justice Toohey, Aboriginal Land Commissioner, re Finniss River Land Claim, 25 August 1980, p.542, cited in McGrath, 1984: 278.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 577-578, 606 n.88, n.89, n.90, n.91,
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“Self-defence” became a cliché
Self-defence appeared so often as a justification for acts of violence against Aboriginal people that it became a cliché which could stretch to just about any event. In 1843, after hutkeeper Gregory shot dead an Aboriginal woman who had ‘struck’ him while resisting his attempt to bring her in to the station for questioning about scattered sheep, he was tried for manslaughter and acquitted on grounds of self-defence. [1] The justification of self-defence could be extended to defence of property. When shepherd Joseph Rilka shot dead ‘one or two natives’ in an affray while recovering stolen sheep in 1847, no criminal charge was considered warranted. [2]
Examiner, 23 March 1843.
Government record Group 24/6/1847/24. State Records Office of South Australia. SRSA.
Acknowledgment: Robert Foster and Amanda Nettelbeck , Out of the Silence, pp. 65-66, 196, n.48, n.49.