Grandfather, Uncle Will, Uncle Jack and me; with each trip we edged a little further east from Wirlup Haven. We made that early trip to the death place and, having traversed that, we went a little further each time. We moved along the coast, mostly, and further and further from the railway that first fenced off the corner of this continent.
Ah, the railway. Once it was shining and new, and so was the Chief Protector, Mr Neville when he first travelled it. By the time my own grandfather and the Travelling Inspector of Aborigines skimmed its parallel lines, some ten or fifteen years later, its shiny metal had dulled except where the wheels rolled.
The railway shunted a new generation of pioneers to the smoky frontier, and allowed the Chief Protector to make his inspection in much greater comfort than the first Travelling Inspector, who had only the assistance of camel, cart, and native boy.
I found the notes of all these various inspectors among Grandad’s research files. I fairly made them rustle about my ankles as I hovered in that room, kicking my legs amongst them to disrupt their neat order. Perhaps it was unfair, even petty of me.
When I write like this—of railways, and fences, and of extensive pages of notes—I give a nod to my grandfather; to his lines and his discipline, to his schemes and his rigour. And I further acknowledge, and nod to, the demands of Historical Fiction. And I nod with the resentment which those I will call my people felt, still feel. Nod nod nod.
I hope you are not falling asleep.
Sometimes, my grandfather’s chin used to drop to his chest even as I spoke to him. He snored, and I recited in the brief and relative silences of each inhalation. Such a strange rhythm it gave my prose.
My grandfather’s mentor (snore), the Chief Protector (snore), on accepting his new position (snore)—for it was about this time (snore) that he seriously took over an inefficient Aborigines Department and proceeded (snore), in his rigorous and zealous manner, to whip beat cut the whole thing into shape (snore)—took an inspection tour.
I hovered in the firelight and smoke of our campfire, sometimes even in the thin torchlight beside a gas barbeque, and recited to the old men of my family. I mimed the great blind beast of a train, even attempted to mime the cut and slash—and simultaneously, the detached observation and control—of rigorous, scientific activity. In short, I performed many graceless and blundering acts.
Making my contribution, I hoped. I hope.
Once upon a time Grandad rattled and snorted along the Great Southern Railway. How crucial this railway was in facilitating the development of the wheatbelt, this lucky land’s prosperity, and the alienation of so many of us.
Nod, nod.
And how strangely fortunate we very few were—only my grandfather would disagree—that the railway at Gebalup went only to the coast, and never connected with the rest of the lines reaching out from the capital city. Thus it remained as ineffectual as the rabbit-proof fences either side of us. We slipped away, made some sort of escape as the line from Gebalup to Wirlup Haven shrivelled and floated on the surface of the earth.
In other places, Chief Protector Neville would stand impatiently at the carriage door as the train slowed, and disembark before the train had stopped. He would run a few steps, then slow to a brisk walk and begin this specific inspection with scarcely a loss of momentum.
He asked the police—who were, after all, his employees—to take him to all native camps within the vicinity. Squawking, they flew to announce his arrival, and perched sullenly above us.
Chief Protector Neville made notes. He spoke to various authorities, to all those white men with knowledge and experience of The Native Problem.
He had ideas, this man. Ambition. He wanted to establish settlements for the natives. The result? Considerable savings in the cost of the maintenance of natives in the Great Southern and South West districts ... children that are growing up can be turned into useful workers instead of becoming a nuisance to the inhabitants of every town in which they are settled ... concentration of the natives at Carrolup will be a great relief to the residents of those towns near which they are presently camped, and will be to the ultimate advantage of the natives themselves.
In the various camps he visited there were numbers of half-caste children, some of whom, he wrote, are as white as any of our own children, and should be under proper care and supervision.
Of course, it was within the power of the Minister under the Act to place natives within a reserve, but Mr Neville—having taken on the position so recently—insisted that he would rather the natives went to his settlement of their own free will. It was very early in his career.
Regrettably, as he explained to various small meetings of concerned citizens, there are ... families that will have to be moved ... they are a burden on the department, and the children are not being properly looked after ... mostly in the case of women who have lost their husbands.
In one or two places the natives were particularly intractable, and would consider no other proposition than that of sending their children to the local school. Mr Neville did not want a repeat of difficulties associated with the so very recent troubles at Gebalup and a host of other schools.
Mr Neville did, in fact, use the Gebalup example to explain to the Minister that there was no chance of their children receiving an education in their local schools. It must be at a native settlement. The difficulty, our Chief Protector confided to his minister—adding that he was sure that the Honourable Minister would recall that this, to a lesser degree, was also the case at Gebalup— is that two or three of the natives with big families are in possession of town lots, whereon they have erected huts in which they are living, and they naturally do not wish to shift. These townsite lots overlook the town and are splendidly situated.
My grandfather was so taken with our Chief Protector, not only because of his vast reservoir of civilisation, his rigorous and scientific mind, his energy and organisational drive, but also because he was a man of letters.
About the time of this railway tour and about the time a few of my family were so kindly offered the sanction of a town’s designated reserve, our Chief Protector wrote to the superintendent at Carrolup and enquired whether it might be possible to take charge of any orphan half-caste children ... should the department desire to send one or two to the settlement?
Just the one or two.
Mr Tryer, the superintendent of the Carrolup Native Settlement, had no problem with this. In fact, as he wrote in his letters, it was a trivial matter against the worry and anxiety engendered by planning for quarters for his wife and himself. He enclosed several pages of drawings, and detailed specifications and quotes. He would have to engage a carpenter to assist him.
How valuable Mr Tryer would have found it to have had my grandfather there. If only my grandfather had arrived in this country at this time and offered his assistance to Messrs Neville and Tryer. He could have begun making his contribution so much earlier.
My very literate Neville continues to write. He enthusiastically scribbles to his minister in government—recommending the purchase of an oven, boilers, a sewing machine, a regulation pattern dress or suit for the inmates —and then communicates his high hopes in a letter to Mr Tryer.
But his recommendation is refused. He is asked to remember that the department has only five thousand pounds per year available to it. And this request is for such a small part of the state. It is settled. The natives are dying out.
Not quite twelve months later our Chief Protector records his satisfaction that Mr Tryer is so well pleased with his own quarters and, in a personal touch quite rare in his correspondence, he congratulates Mr Tryer and his wife on the birth of their child.
He encloses a small square of hessian stapled to one of the pages of his letter as a sample of what he recommends Mr Tryer use to wall the remainder of the buildings.
Mr Tryer writes that there are ninety inmates at the settlement. He eventually used a cheaper hessian for the girls’ and boys’ dormitories. The twelve-inch gap at the top of each wall does indeed assist ventilation, but in future he will extend the roof overhang further to prevent rain being swept in. He reminds Mr Neville that it was just as well they decided on tiers of hammock-like bedding because there would otherwise be even more of a problem with overcrowding.
Difficult children are confined to smaller shelters.
There have been a number of deaths.
He recounts an anecdote concerning one of the native boys who, sick and tormented as he lay in bed, swore that after he died he would ask God to come down and burn them all up. Fortunately, notes Mr Tryer, this did not occur, although we could certainly do with divine assistance. I hear Tryer’s humour, his chuckle among these rustling pages. A rueful chuckle because in actuality, Mr Tryer is quite concerned.
The cooking. The mending, ironing, washing. The supervising of the dormitories.
It is such places that my family has largely avoided. But into this place, briefly, came Kathleen and the others from the reserve at Mt Dempster.