January 22.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
“...should be held to great account”
A bullock killed, then great retaliation.
That same year (1921) another notorious massacre occurred at Bedford Downs Station. Aboriginal oral history remembers the violence. Kija Elder Dottie Watby describes how, in response to the killing of a valuable bullock, Kija and Worla people were forced to cut wood. They were then given damper (bread) that was poisoned. After they were poisoned (as Dottie stated, they ‘drop down’,) managers and stockmen from adjacent stations, including Jack Carey, started shooting everyone. [1] She remembered that they ‘Killem all dem blackfellas, family for us mob.’ Then:
Right, dem bin gettem dat wagon, gettem dat donkey and pullem la fire. They loadem in big pile like dat and chickem allawood, chuckem, chuckem, chuckem, kerosene, chuckem kerosene. Dey bin light dat fire – terrible.[2]
1. For Bedford Downs see C. Clement, Historical Notes Relevant to Impact Stories of the east Kimberley, East Kimberley Impact Assessment Project, Canberra, 1989; V. Ryan (ed.), From Digging Sticks to Writing Sticks: Stories of Kija women, Catholic education Office, Perth, 2001, pp. 63, 65-8; Kimberley Language Resource Centre, Moola Bulla: in the shadow of the mountain, Magdala Books, Broome, 1996, pp. 101-9, For Carey reference see Clement, ‘National Museum of Australia Review of Exhibitions and Public Programs Submission’, <http://www.nma.gov.au/_data/assets/pdf_file/0015/2409/Dr_Clement.pdf>, p.8.
2. Ryan (ed.), From Digging Sticks to Writing Sticks, p.67.
Acknowledgment: Chris Owen, ‘Every Mother’s Son is Guilty’ – Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905, UWA Publishing, Perth, 2016, pp. 440-441, 594 n.76, 595 n.77.
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“...the first people of this land who have suffered for your greatness did nothing to deserve it.”
The story of Australia is an infernal paradox: a story of simultaneous invasion and settlement. The whole world has been stolen from dead people by dead people. What is to be done about that?
[Stan] Grant answers: “Being good and great does not absolve you from a terrible sin and a pain inflicted on a people who did nothing to deserve it. Remember that: the first people of this land who have suffered for your greatness did nothing to deserve it. A truly great country – if we truly believe that – should be held to great account”.
Acknowledgment: Anson Cameron, Review of Stan Grant's, Talking to My Country [HarperCollins, 2016] in Spectrum – The Sydney Morning Herald, April 9-10. 2016, p. 25.
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The land was bare,
they were never there,
shadows of the
small clouds only.
Stretched beneath
the midday sun
the country was a
kind of parchment
waiting for the quill.
~ Geoff Page
from 'Jusice Blackburn sails with Cook' in The Great Forgetting.
Acknowledgment: Geoff Page and Pooaraar, The Great Forgetting, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1996, p. 3.