November 2.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
“The courage of those conquered.”
“There was no “documentary recognition of the quality and courage of those who were conquered”.
[Judith Wright] was for a period around 1970, 'a full-time conservationist', speaking, organising, crusading, carrying the heavy administration of activism. To read through her voluminous papers in the National Library is to discover that she was prey to constant demands and solicitations, both political and poetic; she was often thoughtful and gracious in response, sometimes firm and dismissive, and when the issue appealed to her, passionate and active...
The adversarial context for [Judith Wright's] campaigning created a need for a different kind of writing, something that would go beyond metaphorical or poetic truth; she needed words that would be legally and historically defensible. I think this is a fascinating moment in the career of a great writer. Judith had to turn the powerful poem about 'Nigger's leap, New England' into a coolly researched and verifiable history of the frontier. [1] In the years that she was finishing The Cry for the Dead, the Aboriginal Treaty Committee was formed with Judith a foundation member. This committee, led by 'Nugget' Coombs, 'called for a Treaty, within Australia, between Australians'. In words that sound like Judith's, the Treaty Committee lamented that there was no 'documentary recognition of the quality and courage of those who were conquered'. [2] The Treaty would be concerned not only with land rights, but also with political rights. Judith, while working for that committee, was writing a book that gave a secure scholarly foundation to its political campaign. Her alternative title for The Cry for the Dead was 'A Right to the Soil?'
Judith's poem was one of the inspirations for Geoffrey Blomfield's detailed history of massacres in the region of the Hastings, Manning and Macleay Rivers, Baal Belbora: The End of the Dancing, Sydney: Alternative Publishing Cooperative, 1981. Blomfield, a local grazier, described his bias as 'offensively Aboriginal' and suffered discrimination in his community as a consequence of his research and writing. He describes some of the campaign against him in his A Dog's Hind Leg: Of Litigation, Lawyers, Louts and Liars, Armidale; Geoffrey Blomfield, 1990 (kindly drawn to my attention by Barbara Holloway). Judith Wright commented that 'Geoff's book has aroused the bitterest feelings in the New England district, even now – removing the Cover-up is like taking the scab off an unhealed wound.' (Judith Wright to Grace Bartram, 2 November 1982, Box 10, Folder 227). Grace Bartram wrote a novel inspired by the story of Darkie Point (or Head), entitled Darker Grows My Valley, Sydney: Macmillan, 1981.
Quoted in Tim Rowse, Obliged to Be Difficult: Nugget Coomb's Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, Melbourne: Cambridge university Press, 2000, p. 176. see Judith Wright, We Call For A Treaty, Sydney: Collins/Fontana, 1985.
Acknowledgment: Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel, pp. 101, 338-339, n.17, n.18.
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A conflict between a sharing culture and the armed defence of private ownership.
There was early trouble on the Hawkesbury. The Aborigines found that maize was good to eat and assembled to strip the crops. To them, food in the field was common property. No man might usurp it. It was incomprehensible to them and considerably frightening that sixty-two soldiers of the New South Wales Corps should ride out in 1795 to drive them off the river on which they depended for so much of their food.
Acknowledgment: Eric Rolls, A Million Wild Acres – 200 Years of Man and an Australian Forest, p.55.