January 18.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Treatment of Women
Some exploitative practices occurred over a great span of time. Notable among these was the sexual exploitation of indigenous women by white settlers in Australia.
Jeannie Gunn in her romantic We of the Never Never spoke of a 'world of men' where there was not 'another white women within a hundred mile radius' of Elsey Station. [1]
The 'lubras being detained' to which Constable Thorpe referred were what, for want of a better term, have been described as the station harems or brothels. The provision of black women was a side-benefit, an inducement for working on remote sheep and cattle stations. [2] 'They had to be there; without available women, men would refuse to work on remote stations'. Xavier Herbert, the renowned Australian writer, told Ann McGrath. [3]
So widespread and well-known was this practice that it prompted some linguistic engineering: there was a distinctive vocabulary to describe its features. The women were 'black velvet'; orgies were 'gin sprees'; men particularly obsessed with Aboriginal women were 'gin jockeys'; men who took the women by force were 'gin busters'; the more discreet were 'gin burglars'. The men who committed the unpardonable social crime of actually developing an affection for an Aboriginal woman were 'combos'; the station manager's black girl, forbidden to anyone else, was his 'stud'; managers who tried to protect Aboriginal women and girls from sexual abuse were 'gin shepherds' and were despised.
Gunn, 1980: 17
McGrath, 1984: 234
Ibid. p.256.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp.239, 251 n.191, n. 192, n. 193.
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Treatment of Gurindji women
The stature of the senior Gurindji men – who were still family leaders and keepers of ceremony in the rare moments when traditional culture held sway – would diminish as they assumed their roles as head 'boys' of the stock camps among the whites. Compounding their emasculation, the months they spent in the stock camps (or droving) allowed unscrupulous whites to form sexual liaisons – by force or bartering – with Gurindji women. In country virtually devoid of their European counterparts, Gurindji women were preyed upon by frustrated white travellers as well as station staff:
A lot of bagmen, drovers going through...they'd camp down on the river and have a swag full of dresses and goodies...That's how they'd lure women down to those places. [1]
If an aggrieved husband retaliated against his wife's kartiya [white] predator, the consequences were dire.
Sabu Sing quoted by Pearl Ogden, From Humpy to Homestead: The Biography of Sabu Sing, (Winelle, Northern Territory, 1992) p.63.
Acknowledgment: Charlie Ward, A Handful Of Sand – The Gurindji Struggle, after the Walk-Off, Monash University Publishing, Clayton, 2016, p. 3 n.3.