SETTLEMENT
SETTLEMENT A History of Australian Indigenous Housing
edited by
PETER READ Urban and Environmental Progr...
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SETTLEMENT
SETTLEMENT A History of Australian Indigenous Housing
edited by
PETER READ Urban and Environmental Program The Australian National University
Aboriginal Studies Press Canberra 2000
First published in 2000 by Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies GPO Box 553, Canberra ACT 2601 © Peter Read, 2000 Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing–in–Publication Data: Settlement; a history of Australian indigenous housing. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 85575 363 3 1. Aborigines, Australian – Housing. I. Read, Peter, 1945–. 363.5999915 Front cover photographs (clockwise from top right): Cold-weather camp with windbreaks (see Figure 2.4); cross-section of Goodooga house plan (see Figure 14.4); Suzi Wigness and son in the home her family designed and built (see Figure 17.5); Clem and Isabel Orcher’s laundry and bough shade (see Figure 14.7); and Hobson Levi and chairman of Boigu Island laying mud bricks (see Figure 17.4). Design and layout by Aboriginal Studies Press Printed in Australia by Union Offset Printers 1000/6/2000
Foreword In the two hundred years since invasion, colonial, state and Commonwealth governments have taken a series of initiatives to impose on Indigenous people social behaviour and cultural expression which have been alien to them. Attempts have been made to impose a sedentary lifestyle, which bore no relation to their own social organisation or aspiration. Indigenous people have been excluded from lands of which they were once custodians or through which they could freely pass. Notions of private property have been forced on people who traditionally took a communal view of space and place. Attempts were made to get Indigenous people to occupy forms of shelter which were the physical manifestations of the dominant culture’s notions of the nuclear ‘family’ but were unsuited to the web of social relations and obligations Indigenous kinship groups possess. The housing necessitated a settled way of life. It was predicated on the availability of urban services, which were frequently not available. The ‘enclosed’ nature of much of the space in the housing separated people from the environment and paid no recognition to the needs of Indigenous people to relate to their environment. The forms of shelter were also often unsuited to the regions in which they were built. In many cases, the initiatives, philanthropic as well as government, had their origins in a well-intentioned paternalism to try to ‘improve’ the housing of people who were living in obvious squalor. In other cases, housing was used as a form of cultural domination to force assimilation of Indigenous people. One of the major weaknesses we have experienced in the discussion of policies for the housing of Indigenous people in Australia is that there has been no systematic analysis of the way Indigenous people have been treated. We have had accounts of separate initiatives to provide housing in different parts of the country. In many cases, the accounts obfuscate rather than clarify the purposes or the efficacy of the initiative. The Urban and Environmental Program has set out to raise the standard of the debate over housing issues generally in Australia. It has done so in the belief that without a history of those issues we would be condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. It also recognised that the central issues for Indigenous people are different from those for non-Indigenous people. It has accordingly mounted one project in two separate but related parts. The two parts were developed by groups of scholars working in collaboration. This present volume is the first product of that initiative. Peter Read led a collaborative exercise to produce a history of Indigenous housing in Australia. The second will produce a book tracing a history of non-Indigenous, or ‘European’, housing in Australia.
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FOREWORD
The two volumes will be welcome additions to our knowledge of the housing of the Australian people but none can be more important than our attempt to understand how the demands of Indigenous people for shelter have been met, how the provision of housing has been employed for a variety of political ends and how housing has been used to ‘settle’ and control people who have freely lived and moved in this country for millennia.
Patrick Troy Urban and Environmental Program The Australian National University
Contents Foreword Preface Acknowledgments The Contributors Abbreviations
v ix xiii xiv xvi
PART I Settlement: Present and Past 1
Lifescape and Lived Experience Helen Ross
3
2
The Way It Was: Customary Camps and Houses in the Southern Gulf of Carpentaria Paul Memmott
15
PART II Settlements of Enclosure 3
Space and Time at Ramahyuck, Victoria, 1863–85 Bain Attwood
4
Freedom and Control on the Southern Institutions, New South Wales, 1879–1909 Peter Read
55
Labour, Control and Protection: The Kahlin Aboriginal Compound, Darwin, 1911–38 Samantha Wells
64
Aboriginal Shelters and the National Hookworm Campaign, Queensland, 1909–24 Gordon Briscoe
75
5
6
7
Housing and Colonial Patronage, Alice Springs, 1920–65 Tim Rowse
41
85
PART III Settlement and Government 8
The Commonwealth Government and Aboriginal Housing, 1968–81 Jeremy Long
vii
103
FOREWORD
viii
9
The House and the Yupukarra, Yuendumu, 1946–96 Cathy Keys
118
10 Savagery and Urbanity: Struggles over Aboriginal Housing, Redfern, 1970–73 Kay Anderson
130
11 Towards Aboriginal Management of Aboriginal Rental Housing, Melbourne, 1960–89 Penny Tripcony
144
12 A View of Tasmanian Aboriginal Housing, Launceston and Hobart, 1970–79 Kaye Price
157
13 Two Generations of Housing in the South and Mid-west, Western Australia, 1960–95 Rod Little
167
Part IV Unsettlement 14 The Tin Camps: Self-constructed Housing on the Goodooga Reserve, New South Wales, 1970–96 Stephanie Smith
179
15 Housing for Health: Principles and Projects, South Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland, 1985–97 Paul Pholeros, Paul Torzillo and Stephan Rainow
199
16 Lock Hospitals, Prisons and Indigenous People, Queensland and Western Australia, 1906–98 Karl Eckermann
209
17 A Self-help Approach to Remote Area Housing, St Paul’s Village, Moa Island, Torres Strait, 1986–92 Paul Haar
221
Part V Future Settlement 18 Understanding the Past, Looking to the Future: The Unfinished History of Australian Indigenous Housing Will Sanders
237
Notes Bibliography of Works Cited Index
249 265 278
Preface The underlying principle for Aboriginal management of Aboriginal rental housing is the maintenance of Aboriginal lifestyles and values. Victorian Aboriginal communities have never lost sight of that aim. (Tripcony, this volume) The meanings of ‘settlement’ are diverse and elusive. One, ‘living area’, is a neutral definition—an abstract noun referring to human habitation patterns and lifeways. Part I of the book introduces this meaning and analyses how traditional and post-traditional forms of settlement conjoined the spatial and the social. The second usage of ‘settlement’ is the name often given by white Australians to their local Aboriginal institution, compound or mission. Here, Aboriginals were supposed to have been ‘settled’; that is, made quiescent, Europeanised, sedentary, Christian, punctual, obedient or civilised! It is that meaning of the common noun which applies most appropriately to Part II, which examines the forced and often unhappy government and church institutions, and the town camps. Part III returns to the first sense of living patterns, and considers the period after the Second World War. Gunyahs and humpies were becoming households, camps becoming streets and suburbs, while institutions were becoming memories. ‘Unsettling’ describes a disturbing but constructive challenge to those settled mentally as well as physically. This term is appropriate to Part IV which confronts received wisdom and complacency in respect of Indigenous-specific architecture, from large prisons to household plumbing. Lastly, settlement means justice, acquittal or release. Our final chapter considers and confronts this most difficult meaning of the noun. Perhaps more than any of the physical artefacts of colonialism, it is the ‘settlement’ which determines the social and behavioural forms of those who associate with it. From the earliest post-invasion time, Aboriginal housing was not an end in itself, but secondary to the aims of resocialisation and acculturation. A cottage inhabited by an Aboriginal family was less a shelter than an instrument of management, education and control. It is not until, broadly, the entry of the Commonwealth government after the 1967 referendum that Aboriginal housing assumes its more recognisable form of providing shelter, a hearth, a refuge of affection and an armour of security. Many of the subsequent battles were fought over who, in the end, was to control Aboriginal accommodation and shelter. While this book is a companion volume to A History of European Housing in Australia (Troy, forthcoming), it differs from it in theme and focus. We cannot yet produce a strictly parallel volume detailing changes in usage, styles and purposes. Partly
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PREFACE
this is because we have insufficient knowledge. More importantly, the discourses differ profoundly. That was my understanding, as initiating editor, of the history of Indigenous settlement. I asked sixteen writers expert in their field to contribute.1 I encouraged responses in different forms, not least to demonstrate the diversity of approach those involved in the subject now apply. While the companion volume investigates the variety of ways non-Aboriginal Australians have conceived, built, used and thought about their homes, this book flows with another prevailing discourse: that ‘Indigenous settlement’ concerns sociality, acculturation, identity, oppositions, and control—in short, the social and spatial forms expressing contested conceptions of how Aboriginal people were and are supposed to live in Australia. This volume explores various tensions and oppositions: between Commonwealth and state governments, architect and resident, centre and periphery, White and Aboriginal. Its theme is the contested colonial relationships expressed in the living spaces of Aboriginal Australians. Our study emerges from the present moment—the late 1990s. The questions we consider here are not the same as those troubling scholars of Aboriginal Australia in the 1970s, nor will they be at the forefront in 2020. Reassessing the era of the managed institution (broadly, to 1945), currently we research not so much the design and deployment of dwelling and institution per se, but the resocialising of the inhabitants which the design of the buildings was intended to sponsor, the power structure configured in the relationship between the manager’s house, the ration shed, the church and the domestic dwellings of the Aboriginals themselves. The issues of the post–Second World War era are analogous: in looking at Aboriginal dwellings, we ask what forms of human sociality are expected to be encouraged by the design, location, materials and their relation to each other? What forms of human sociality are expected to be discouraged? Of contemporary housing programs we ask contemporary questions: were Aboriginal people fully consulted? Do they administer the funds, choose the designs, allot the priorities and manage the rental properties? Of the cities we must first ask how many Aboriginal people are homeless, followed by questions like: does the disposition and design of Aboriginal homes foster or erode Aboriginal extended kin structure? Settlement begins with an overview of the themes of the history of Indigenous housing. Helen Ross considers the interaction between architecture, ‘lifescape’ and lived experience. Next, we offer an account of a northern Australian Aboriginal group living in traditional accommodation and domiciliary lifeways. It is as near a picture of preinvasion Aboriginal sociality as now can be drawn. Paul Memmott, using personal observation over many years and church records dating to the second decade of this century, makes this reconstruction mainly from the perspective of the Lardil people of Mornington Island. Memmott concludes that culturally significant living areas of traditional Aboriginal Australia were not so much the structures and shelters but the living spaces on which they stood. Properties we associate with the Western home, like the way in which they attract memories, day-dreams and lengthy personal histories were
PREFACE
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connected by Aboriginal people not to the dwellings but to the sites on which they stood. Shelters lasted a season, but sites were occupied again and again. Clearly in much post-invasion history this has also been the case, a fact at once recognised by missionaries intent on resocialising their Aboriginal charges. Using Memmott’s analysis of the Lardil as a zero point, we can measure, at Ramahyuck (Victoria), Warangesda (New South Wales), Kahlin (Northern Territory), Cherbourg (Queensland) and Alice Springs (Northern Territory), how far settlement in the managed institutions and town camps had altered (that is, been altered) from traditional lifeways. Part III introduces the Commonwealth government for the first time. By now we have already learned how the cross-purposes of community, governments national, state and local, and Aboriginal residents can deflect or distort the best managed administrative programs. Following an introductory essay by Jeremy Long (a former senior administrator in the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs), five authors present views from their own country of birth or study, from Redfern (Sydney), Fitzroy (Victoria), Roebourne (Western Australia), Launceston and Hobart (Tasmania) and Yuendumu (Northern Territory) in the period of the most decisive Commonwealth intervention. Three of the authors in this section have a particularly sharp viewpoint—that of Aboriginal participants in the programs successively unwound by the Commonwealth and translated (often inaccurately) by the states. Differing conceptions of the meaning of housing are no more stark than at the point where Penny Tripcony asks, not how many Aboriginal houses were built, but to what extent did Aboriginals achieve selfdetermination and self-management through the housing programs: The story of Aboriginal housing in Melbourne is one of the many aspects of Aboriginal struggle, adaptation and survival. It is about working to achieve adequate, appropriate and affordable accommodation for Aboriginal families, which cannot be divorced from the broader struggle by Aboriginal people for recognition and rights as equals within Australian society, including the right to manage their own affairs. (Tripcony, this volume) Kaye Price begins her account with an impassioned defence of Tasmanian Aboriginality. Irrelevant to the book? No, to the human recipients of the fruits of settlement, the preoccupations of identity, self-management, accommodation and self-respect are inextricable. Is there a happy ending? The discourse of Indigenous housing is contested, between and amongst the protagonists, the analysts and the recipients. Yet to conceive of the history of settlement as a continuing colonial struggle is not the same as a blackarmband history. It is perfectly possible to argue, as Long does, that despite inherent racism and intransigent state and local governments, substantial improvements have been made in Aboriginal housing quality, position and number, and Indigenous
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control. Equally one might discern a high point in the early 1980s from which national Aboriginal housing policies, in terms of funding and self-management, have declined. The book presents materials for strong opinions in both directions on the continuum; but that continuum remains one in which Indigenous communities, themselves with cultural and local differences, continue to oppose a wider national ethos of consensus and homogeneity.
Acknowledgments The contributors wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Urban and Environmental Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University. Professor Patrick Troy originated the project and established the processes to bring this book to fruition. The Program funded two conferences where ideas could be exchanged, draft papers presented and the format of the book decided. Thank you! We also thank Raylee Singh for her expert copy-editing.
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The Contributors KAY ANDERSON is Associate Professor of Geography and teaches in the School of Geography and Oceanography at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. She has published widely on cultural geographies of race and racism in Australia and Canada. BAIN ATTWOOD is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University. He has authored and edited several books on Aboriginal history, including, most recently (with Andrew Markus), The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A Documentary History. GORDON BRISCOE completed his PhD in History at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, where he is currently a Program Visitor. His doctoral thesis on ‘Disease, health and healing, aspects of Indigenous health in WA and Qld, 1900 to 1940’ is soon to be published by Melbourne University Press. He covers the National Hookworm Campaign in greater detail in his thesis and book. KARL ECKERMANN is an architecture graduate of the University of Queensland, currently working in the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre. His major research interest is the design of culturally-appropriate architecture for Indigenous user groups, specialising in institutional facilities. PAUL HAAR is an architect who focused the first ten years of his career on design for climate, and on revitalisation of a community-based housing culture amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in rural and remote parts of Australia. His small vibrant architectural practice is committed to designs and constructions, processes and solutions which celebrate the vitality and significance of community and the environment. CATHY KEYS is an architecture graduate of the University of Queensland where she recently completed her PhD thesis on ‘The architectural implications of Warlpiri Jilimi (single women’s camps)’. JEREMY LONG is a historian and former Commonwealth public servant who worked first in the Northern Territory and later in Canberra with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. PAUL MEMMOTT is Associate Professor and Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, in the Department of Architecture, University of Queensland. The xiv
THE CONTRIBUTORS
xv
centre specialises in research on Aboriginal housing and customary Indigenous shelters and architecture. PAUL PHOLEROS trained as an architect at the University of Sydney and has run a private architectural practice working on urban, rural and remote area projects throughout Australia since 1984. He is also a partner of Healthabitat which, for over twelve years, has worked to improve the health of Aboriginal people, particularly children, by promoting healthier living environments. KAYE PRICE is an Aboriginal Tasmanian and educator, who worked for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in the 1970s. PETER READ is a historian and Senior Fellow in the Urban and Environmental Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. He recently published A Rape of the Soul So Profound: The Return of the Stolen Generations. HELEN ROSS is an environmental psychologist, and Fellow at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University. She specialises in people’s interactions with both built and natural environments. Her detailed studies of Aboriginal housing include Just for Living (1987) and Aboriginal Housing Design Assessment for Bush Communities (1993, with Petronella Morel). TIM ROWSE is a Research Fellow in the Department of Government and Public Administration, University of Sydney. In 1998, he published White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia and in 2000, Obliged to be Difficult: The Coombs Legacy in Indigenous Affairs. STEPHANIE SMITH is a director of Innovarchi, a design and innovation-based architectural company. Her years of collaboration with the world-renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano have acted as a counterpoint to her recent research into self-constructed Aboriginal housing. Innovarchi, in association with Merrima Aboriginal Design Unit, are the design architects for the Indigenous Cultural Centre at Homebush Bay, Sydney. PENNY TRIPCONY, an Aboriginal (Ngugi, south-east Queensland) woman, worked with Victorian Aboriginal community housing groups 1977–89. She is currently Manager, Oodgeroo (Indigenous) Unit, Queensland University of Technology. WILL SANDERS is a Fellow of the Australian National University’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. He has conducted research on many aspects of recent government policy towards Indigenous Australians, including employment, social security, local government, intergovernmental relations and housing.
Abbreviations AA ABS ADC AHA AHB AHBV AHC AHL AHP AHRC AIS AIATSIS ALP APB ATSIC BLF CAA CBPA CSHA DAA DAIA DEIR DFSAIA FCAA FCAATSI FECA HCV NATSIS NHC NLA OAA RAIA RCADIC TAC UCA UPK
Australian Archives Australian Bureau of Statistics Aboriginal Development Commission Aboriginal Housing Association Aboriginal Housing Board Aboriginal Housing Board Victoria Aboriginal Housing Committee Aboriginal Hostels Limited Aboriginal Housing Panel Australian Housing Research Council Aboriginal Information Service Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Australian Labor Party Aborigines Protection Board Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Builders Labourers Federation Council for Aboriginal Affairs Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines Commonwealth–State Housing Agreement Department of Aboriginal Affairs Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs Department of Employment and Industrial Relations Department of Family Services and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders fully enclosed covered area Housing Commission Victoria National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey Nganampa Health Council National Library of Australia Office of Aboriginal Affairs Royal Australian Institute of Architects Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre unenclosed covered area uwankara palyanku kanyintjaku (a strategy for wellbeing) xvi
PART I
Settlement: Present and Past
CHAPTER 1
Lifescape and Lived Experience Helen Ross
So many themes create a history of Indigenous housing—patterns of Indigenous land use and residence, use of space and shelter; the architectural design philosophies and particular designs which mark the evolution of styles of Indigenous housing over the years; the government policies and funding regimes which have shaped the quantities and types of housing available; but most of all the lived experience of Indigenous people in and around their housing or shelter. None of these themes alone can provide a comprehensive history. Indigenous land use and land access provide an environmental and demographic context for the locations and use of housing. An architectural perspective would focus unduly on the landmarks of design, which represent only a small proportion of the houses Indigenous people have actually occupied. It would ignore the mundane bulk of designs provided by government housing authorities, few of which have actually been designed by architects or are particularly interesting from a design point of view. Government policies certainly do a great deal to shape the housing available, but again the history of policies—and housing built under those policies—does not tell us all we need to know. Government policies focus strongly on fibro and fixatives (‘bricks and mortar’ are scarce in Indigenous housing), the cost of providing the housing, and ways and means of delivering it. Despite the policy argument that housing is essential to other policy efforts to improve health, education and employment, they are apt to become divorced from the realities of Indigenous people’s lives. So what do we need to consider in terms of those lives? Not just the daily life in and around the house, or even the settlement design or town plan. While it is useful to know how people use, that is, live in, their houses, it is equally important to step back from a housing-centric view of affairs and consider how, even whether, housing plays a role in people’s daily and whole lives. As the people whose quotes gave me the title of Just for Living (Ross 1987) emphasised, the role of housing may not necessarily loom large in people’s lifescapes. This chapter canvasses each of these themes. In this book, ‘housing’ is interpreted very widely to encompass all aspects of spatial existence. At this level, housing includes far more than the forms of shelter used. It includes the way shelter is arranged in space—settlement patterns—and the ways access 3
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST
to land and the administration of that access affect Indigenous demography and geography. This chapter attempts a broad sweep over these themes to provide context for other chapters. As it draws upon my experience as a participant-observer in Indigenous affairs from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, these crucial years in the formation of contemporary Indigenous housing conditions receive much attention.
Recurrent Themes in Housing Policy and Administration The history of housing for and by Indigenous people must be understood in the context of general trends in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs policy, especially those which had significant effects in locating people. Thus, the expropriation of the majority of people’s customary lands, the creation and location of reserves, the nature of administration of the people on those reserves and missions, and the later ‘granting’ of land rights and the creation of mechanisms for small areas of land title on cattle stations and near towns, have all been important in shaping the way people lived. It remains to be seen how native title will continue to shape the context for lifestyles and housing, but we hear the theme again when the current government tries to divert public support for native title with claims that the old and measurable themes of disadvantage—housing, health, education and employment—are the true needs. Policies affecting Indigenous locations and demography occurred within policy organising principles, from ‘smooth the dying pillow’ when Indigenous people were assumed to be dying out (to 1933), to assimilation, then integration. Indigenous resistance (Lippman 1981; Howard 1982) is intertwined with these policy trends, with Indigenous wishes increasingly influential in policy since the 1960s. The campaigns for land rights and recognition of native title rights (particularly since the 1930s), and the homelands movement have been Indigenous initiatives which eventually transformed both policy and demography. Underlying the official government policies, and Indigenous subversion of them, are issues of control and autonomy. Housing arrangements on missions and government reserves in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were part of non-Indigenous strategies to control and ‘civilise’ Indigenous people (see Attwood, and Read, this volume). Likewise, housing was a strong vehicle for assimilation policies from the 1940s to the 1960s. In transitional housing, the form of the house expressed non-Indigenous attitudes about capacity to adapt in stages, though later stages were never built in sufficient quantities for interested Indigenous people to progress into them. Later, housing and associated services were used to resist the homelands movement, officials arguing that services (including education as well as water and housing) were difficult, if not impossible, to provide on a decentralised basis. The people moved anyway, and slowly the services, in different forms, followed.
The relationship between housing and culture is a perpetual theme, needing revisiting as local cultures and aspirations change. The architectural and social science
LIFESCAPE AND LIVED EXPERIENCE
5
works on appropriate housing have dealt at length with the issues involved in Western and non-Western living designs, including use of space (both inside and outside the dwelling), mobility and death. It puzzles me, however, that this has not been taken up in a sustained way in Indigenous campaigning about housing; instead, the quantity issue has predominated, apart from occasional issues such as the closure of the Aboriginal Housing Panel in 1978 (Heppell 1979b). Is it that those with a national policy voice, such as Charles Perkins and Lowitja O’Donoghue in the 1970s and 1980s, viewed overcoming disadvantage as a higher priority than supporting local culture? Why have those concerned about the relationships between housing and culture quietly sought local solutions through their housing associations and through forming homeland centres? Or is it that so much energy was expended in marshalling funds behind the disadvantage issues (including the need for large numbers of houses) that it appeared difficult to persuade the distributors of mass housing, the state and territory government housing authorities, also to be sensitive to the qualitative nature of Indigenous needs? The result is that while Indigenous housing associations have provided the opportunity for locally appropriate housing to be developed, the majority of people have never had a say in the types of house built for them, except for the limited influence of Aboriginal housing boards on state housing designs or purchases (Morel & Ross 1993). One theme which has been well understood by social scientists and the architects who work closely with Indigenous people, yet almost totally neglected in recent Indigenous policy and administration, is the relationship between dwellings and the layout of the settlements in which they are built. Attwood, Keys and Rowse (this volume) illustrate the role of settlement layouts in past government attempts to institutionalise Indigenous people and to change their behaviour. Since spatial relations remain crucial in the functioning of Aboriginal societies, town planning is vital (Morel & Ross 1993; Sinatra & Murphy 1997). In informally planned settlements it is often possible (or was in the past) for household heads to choose their locations. As the servicing of blocks and layout of roads more and more often predates these choices, town planning for Indigenous social and practical needs must join the agenda and skills base.
Historical Landmarks in Housing Indigenous Settlement Patterns As Heppell’s (1979a) unique collection on Aboriginal housing observes, Aboriginal settlement patterns in many communities well into the 1980s maintained social and environmental characteristics little amended from the distant past. Aboriginal people, depending on their locations and the abundance of local foods, adopted a seasonally mobile lifestyle visiting the places where foods and water were available. The size of their traditional country partially reflected the abundance of foods available—smaller
6
SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST
territories and higher population densities were common in the areas with most reliable resources (Birdsell 1953). In this volume, Paul Memmott describes the variety of seasonal dwellings used by the peoples of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria and Cathy Keys describes the shelters of Warlpiri people.1 In tropical and arid Australia, dwellings could be constructed in hours, and left to deteriorate naturally unless reconstructed on a later visit. In many, though not all, Aboriginal language groups shelter also represents relationships with traditional country, a common pattern being for language groups in large mixed settlements to live closest to their country. Heppell (1979a), Ross (1987), Memmott (1991) and Wallace (1979) are among those who have argued that the social dynamics suited to camp conditions transfer uneasily to conventional housing.
Housing on Missions, Government Settlements and Cattle Stations From early in the history of non-Indigenous people’s usurpation of Indigenous lands, Indigenous people were accommodated and institutionalised on government-run reserves and church missions. These were created both as refuges and repositories for them, permitting new landowners to conduct their businesses with less interruption from Indigenous presence and practices. Many were created in isolated areas to reduce non-Indigenous access and influence (Attwood, this volume). Agendas of control of Indigenous movements and livelihoods, and attempts to ‘civilise and Christianise’ Indigenous people (Attwood, Long, this volume) dominated these institutions. In New South Wales and Queensland, people were moved between missions and government settlements as part of control processes. As Read (this volume) points out in relation to New South Wales, these settlements had mixed success, since some of the people had alternative options such as camping independently. Some strengthened a sense of Aboriginal identity, while undermining Aboriginal social organisation, particularly the roles of men. One of the main strategies available to both missions and government settlements was to separate children from their parents in dormitories, in order to socialise them separately from parental influence. Some of these children had families on the same settlement, others were removed under the assimilationist familyseparation policies now referred to as ‘the Stolen Generations’. As non-Indigenous usurpation of land extended to northern and central Australia late in the nineteenth century, Aboriginal people began to gather around cattle stations, towns and mining settlements. Short-term and seasonal camping gave way gradually to more permanent arrangements for some. Aboriginal self-built dwellings began to use imported materials such as canvas or calico, and corrugated iron, producing the hybrid now generally known as the humpy (Keys, this volume). Some cattle stations provided accommodation for their employees, though reluctance to do so was a source of contention between governments and station owners (Berndt & Berndt 1987), and standards varied dramatically. The dwellings were often metal single-room huts, later supplemented in some regions by living quarters in which rooms were connected in a line. Some of these had concrete floors, some verandahs. Water and ablutions were
LIFESCAPE AND LIVED EXPERIENCE
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usually provided, if at all, externally to the building. In northern Australia, such structures persisted well into the 1980s. In the East Kimberley, the Western Australian government established two cattle stations in 1905 and 1912 (closing them in 1945 and 1955) to encourage Aboriginal people away from privately-owned cattle stations.
Transitional Housing The Northern Territory and some states adopted the philosophy that Aboriginal people needed a staged approach to moving from their traditional camp arrangements to conventional European-styled housing. This led to the development in 1957 of the ‘transitional house’ (Lippman 1981), which provided walls and roof, hopefully also a floor, in a very basic one- to three-roomed structure (Heppell 1979c; Drakakis-Smith 1980; Ross 1987). Some provided verandahs, usually only on one side of the house. None had water connected. The partial use of these dwellings by Aboriginals—who continued to live around more than in them—served to confirm some observers’ views that Aboriginals were not ready for housing. A climatic explanation, that these dwellings were sweat-boxes which failed to provide running water and ablutions, received recognition only slowly (Drakakis-Smith 1980; Heppell 1979c). Aboriginal Family Resettlement Scheme (NSW 1972) Another example of housing being used to shape Indigenous social arrangements in ways based on non-Indigenous logic is New South Wales’ monitored experiment in social change, the Aboriginal Family Resettlement Scheme. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the New South Wales government had been gradually closing down country reserves, and neglecting maintenance of housing on the remaining reserves on the assumption that people would migrate away from them. Government officials underestimated the attachment people had to these reserves, and the reluctance of many to leave. The Aboriginal Family Resettlement Scheme encouraged some reserve people to leave their country reserves and move to towns where their employment and educational opportunities were considered stronger. The scheme was established with several axes of migration, for instance from Bourke to Newcastle, on the assumption that people would adjust more easily if they went to places already successfully settled by people from their home areas. Those volunteering and accepted for participation in the scheme were given strong inducements, including the promise of a house and various forms of settling-in support at the destination. For most, the likelihood of a house at their existing base was many years away. The scheme was criticised for manipulating people’s options and discriminating against those who preferred to remain on their reserves. It was also criticised as depleting the skills base and social dynamics of the reserves, since those selected for the program were generally those with high aspirations and employable skills.
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST
Institutions for Housing Delivery Until the 1967 referendum, Indigenous housing had not been a major national policy issue. Aboriginal affairs became a significant and growing policy issue through the 1960s, with the key issues being equal pay in the pastoral industry, land rights following the Gurindji people’s walk-off at Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory, and the 1967 referendum (giving the Commonwealth the ability to legislate on behalf of Indigenous people). These campaigns generated public recognition of disadvantage, both in terms of political and civil rights, and in socioeconomic status and opportunities. From around 1967, Liberal–Country Party governments commenced reforms, and Aboriginal affairs was high on the social justice agenda of the reformist 1972 Whitlam Labor government (Long, this volume). In the race for solutions to past disadvantage, the two main threads of the Whitlam government’s policy approach became separated, with marked effects on housing policy ever since. The government emphasised consultation and self-determination to allow Indigenous people to decide the nature of their futures. Funded community management and local and state selfhelp organisations were organised in several policy fields (housing associations, health services, legal services). The consultation approach, however, required time for communities to consider their needs and desires. On the other hand, the commitment to redress disadvantage, supported by new large budgets needing to be spent annually, produced a rush to build houses (and provide other services) on a mass scale, largely through state housing agencies, without providing the time or mechanisms for direct consultation with people.
Commonwealth–State Housing Agreements While Aboriginal housing associations, funded directly by the Commonwealth government, represented the ‘self-determination’ aspect of Whitlam and subsequent Commonwealth government policies, Commonwealth–State Housing Agreements (CSHAs) formed the basis of the bulk of housing delivery required to redress a large ‘backlog’ of housing need (see Heppell 1979c; Long, this volume). Indigenous tenants were eligible for the standard state government housing provided by housing commissions, but in practice had a low rate of acceptance and retention under the state schemes. The Commonwealth funded state governments to provide further housing (especially for tenants), generally in metropolitan and town areas, to supplement the stock owned and managed by these authorities. By and large, the houses so produced were designed and managed in exactly the same way as those intended for nonIndigenous tenants. While the process has been effective in increasing the volume of housing available to Indigenous people, concessions to living requirements were few and slow in coming. The authorities persisted in building three-bedroom houses for two adult/two child families, despite the evidence of very different Indigenous household sizes and formations. While there were local differences in the strictness of administration, it was common for Indigenous people to be evicted for ‘over-crowding’
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their houses. Indigenous people had little influence over the location of the houses, though the authorities debated at length the pros and cons of creating enclaves of housing versus scattering them throughout each town. A frequent concern of the authorities, raised in correspondence with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) was the payment of rents. Arrears resulted in many evictions (Little, this volume).
Aboriginal Housing Panel (Early 1970s) A special conference on Aboriginal housing held in July 1972 led to the formation of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ Aboriginal Housing Panel, with funding from the DAA. Its members travelled widely, working with a number of communities— mainly in remote areas—to produce designs for alternative styles of housing. The first designs, such as geodesic domes for Papunya, struggled with the imponderable issue of combining the shelter and servicing package of ‘housing’ with needs for mobility. By 1975, influenced by its new majority of Aboriginal members, the panel began taking a more grounded approach with Aboriginal housing associations. Unfortunately, its reputation was irreparably damaged within the DAA and, despite favourable reviews of its work, funding was withdrawn in 1978 amidst considerable protest (Heppell 1979b). There has been no national organisation focused on the design of Indigenous housing since and evolution has been fragmented among particular architects and Indigenous housing associations. Aboriginal Housing Associations Long (this volume) describes the genesis of Aboriginal housing associations, and their role as an alternative to Commonwealth funding of the states to provide housing. The first metropolitan Aboriginal housing association was formed in Redfern in 1973 (Anderson, this volume). It remains one of the few housing associations to work at a local scale in a metropolitan area. Its initiatives and struggles show the variety of issues involved in housing ‘as a verb’ (Turner 1976), including the selection and support of tenants, collection of rents, creation and maintenance of a social community from a set of tenants, and dealing with neighbour tensions and press attention. This is in addition to the obvious and challenging issues of design, construction (including providing employment and training in the construction), maintaining financial viability and dealing with a host of other stakeholders. Heppell (1979c) observes that by 1974 there were already some 70 Aboriginal housing associations; at their peak in 1976 there were 158. Tripcony (this volume) describes the history of Indigenous residence and housing activism in Melbourne, especially the work of the Victorian Aboriginal Cooperative Ltd and the Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria. Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs has made a particular contribution to the way housing is designed and managed. Tangentyere was established in 1978 (Heppell & Wigley 1981) as a representative and servicing organisation for the Alice Springs town camps. Its early years were spent campaigning and negotiating for title to land and, with two Aboriginal Housing Panel architects, developing housing plans. Tangentyere has
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST
remained a pioneer in architectural design, maintaining its own well-staffed design department and consulting closely with prospective residents in the development of designs. Tangentyere has also been a pioneer in assisting each camp with self-management and households with adapting to the financial and social requirements of house life. Few of the other Indigenous housing associations have attempted to maintain their own architectural expertise, or indeed operated on a scale which would make this viable. But opportunities for community employment have also been created in the maintenance of houses and settlement environments. Since budgets for this are scant (communities are expected to pay for both administration and maintenance out of rents, but this is seldom sufficient), the Community Development Employment Program is often engaged in maintenance and landscaping tasks.2 Housing associations have used a wide range of sources for house designs. One difficulty has been the associations’ access to advice on housing sources other than through the state and territory authorities, or their funding body, the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC). For some years in the Kimberleys, the housing built in communities each year clearly reflected the changing preferences of ADC staff for particular commercial companies. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) is now remedying the former weaknesses in advice and funding to Indigenous housing associations.
Aboriginal Housing Boards Aboriginal people began to gain a say in the allocation of housing under the CSHA from the mid-1970s, with the formation of South Australia’s Aboriginal Housing Board (O’Donoghue 1977). Later, other states formed similar boards (Tripcony, this volume). In the majority of states, the boards’ roles were confined at first to management of the waiting lists—so that these no longer worked entirely on a first-come-first-served or emergency-list basis—and to consultation about impending evictions. South Australia went much further, seeking to match tenants to houses in the locations and of the sizes they required. The authority was also prepared to buy existing houses in metropolitan areas, rather than rely entirely on new construction inevitably at a distance from tenants’ relatives and employment (Price, this volume). Aboriginal housing boards have gradually influenced the administration of their state housing authorities, for instance the Western Australian board pressed successfully for Indigenous staff and trainees, maintenance programs in communities, and management support programs (Kickett 1993). All of this delivery of housing was made possible by special funding allocated by the Commonwealth under two streams: direct to communities and their housing associations and under grants to the states to supplement state contributions (a scheme which commenced in 1968, see Long, this volume). These modes were paralleled in other social welfare priorities, including health and education.
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Aboriginal Hostels Ltd Another Whitlam period initiative was the creation of Aboriginal Hostels Ltd (AHL) in 1973 within the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio to provide temporary housing for Indigenous people. Its initial concerns to provide accommodation for those living away from home for educational and employment purposes were quickly supplemented to meet other needs. The category ‘transients’ became differentiated to serve the particular needs of people visiting towns for business purposes, such as hospital visiting or obtaining legal aid, people staying in towns for long periods for primarily social purposes, and the homeless. An early innovation by AHL was long-stay accommodation to enable families in crisis to remain together, avoiding the risk of homeless parents having to place their children in foster care. In contrast to the handling of housing by its parent department, AHL maintained an expert staff (for a time including the author) to research accommodation needs thoroughly before investing in or altering the purposes of properties. While the majority of hostels are of conventional design, in some instances the company pioneered appropriate building designs to meet local needs. The company also placed a high priority on Indigenous staffing, achieving rates of close to 90 per cent incumbency within the first few years of its existence. From the mid 1970s all hostels were staffed entirely by Indigenous people, and the accounting and management systems were designed to make this achievable without a highly educated recruitment base. As well as operating its own hostels, it fully funded Indigenous organisations to run hostels. It now operates or funds 150 hostels throughout Australia.
Evolution of Understanding Parallel and loosely connected with these stages and initiatives in housing provision, our understanding of housing issues has evolved. This has been far from a linear process. Appreciation has always been strong, since the Aboriginal Housing Conference of 1972, that the unique features of life-styles, local environments and aspirations required at minimum a consultative approach to the design of appropriate housing. Through the efforts of the Aboriginal Housing Panel, Aboriginal housing associations, Aboriginal Hostels Ltd and individual architects and social scientists, our appreciation of the diverse housing design needs of Aboriginals has accumulated.3 Most of this work has concentrated on the so-called ‘remote’ areas of Australia,4 in communities and town camps. There is little research on the needs of southern and eastern Aboriginals, though the national housing lobby organisation Shelter has taken a long-term interest in these needs (O’Donoghue 1977; Foley 1993). Indigenous activists and advocates have said less about the design of housing, concentrating their efforts on securing funding, the management of housing through Aboriginal housing associations and housing boards, and housing in the context of community development.
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Town camps are an interesting case study in the evolution of understanding. ‘Fringe camps’, as they were known until 1982, were considered by the general public and many administrators as an anomaly, a blight on town landscapes, and a pit of social problems. Social scientists’ research such as Collman (1988), Sansom (1980) and Ross (1987) documented the reasons for these camps, and the dynamism of social and economic life within them. Some are indeed formed by rural people coming to town for extended periods, but some accommodate traditional owners displaced by the formation of a town in their midst (Memmott 1991). The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs (1982) reported on town camps, establishing the term for future use. It led to the creation of a Town Campers Assistance Program, which poured funds into this hitherto almost neglected section of the accommodation market. Another dimension of improved understanding is the area of the links between health and housing. Initial policy assumptions that health and housing were directly correlated have been refined progressively by subsequent research and reflection. While some diseases including trachoma are correlated with housing conditions (Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists 1980), others are affected by how the occupants actually use the house, and by social and psychological conditions related to crowding (Ross 1986; Kamien 1978). The high point of understanding the health–housing links is the Central and South Australian study known as the UPK Report (Nganampa Health Council et al. 1987) and subsequent work by members of its team (Pholeros 1990; Pholeros et al. 1993; Healthabitat 1999). This applied research by the Nganampa Health Council and partners has established the health risks associated with camp and housing conditions in the Pitjantjatjara lands, and concentrated on pragmatic, often inexpensive solutions with a focus on ‘health hardware’ and people’s behaviour patterns. Gordon Briscoe (this volume) describes a different set of linkages between health and housing, in the context of the governance of Aboriginal people by non-Aboriginal authorities. Sanders (1990) contrasts the ‘alternative’ housing agenda represented by this evolution with the ‘conventional’ housing supplied in the main by state and territory housing authorities (sometimes acting as suppliers to Aboriginal community housing associations). The latter supply stream has been far less concerned with housing design than with questions of efficient and cost-effective delivery on a large scale and, where the authority also manages the housing, with management issues such as selection of tenants, tenant house-hold compositions and behaviour, rent payment, and evictions. Focus has been on stretching the dollar, given the massive numbers awaiting housing, rather than on the qualities of the house produced. A review comparing the effectiveness of housing designed and built (directly or through contractors) in remote Central Australian communities by Tangentyere and by the Northern Territory Department of Lands and Housing (Morel & Ross 1993) showed the extent of minimisation by the latter, including lack of insulation, skimping on kitchen fittings, poor quality construction materials, and ill-considered design and orientation. The team also documented the success or otherwise of a range of design features. This research and
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that of Pholeros et al. (1993) is now informing reforms in the provision of remote area housing (ATSIC staff, pers. comm., February and May 1998).
Living in the House From Aboriginal occupants’ points of view, the architectural and policy perspectives on Indigenous housing are only tangentially relevant. They shape the housing options, what type of dwelling or house is available (often which house, given the lack of individual choice), where it is located, and what the cost structure for the occupant and the administering body will be. For some Aboriginal people, moving into a house and creating a sense of home there is a major aspiration. For others, the house is more incidental to their lives. The house and its location can play a major role in Indigenous social arrangements, since kinship and economic norms in many regions ensure that near and distant kin in need of shelter, food or company have access to house and hearth (Ross 1987; Memmott 1991). This openness to visitors and longer-term needy relatives is one of the factors involved in what non-Aboriginals perceive as ‘overcrowding’—the others are extended family living and the numbers of children common in Aboriginal families. It is important that we view housing in the context of people’s daily lives, as the chapters in this book do. There is a rich literature describing Aboriginal experience in houses. For instance, Kamien (1978) describes the pressures experienced by some Aboriginal residents of Bourke; Aboriginal women suffered the antagonism and expectations of their non-Aboriginal neighbours to an extent which affected their health. However, issues of gender in the experience of housing need more exploration. They are certainly pertinent—Ross (1984, 1987) has noted the inequitable financial burden of rents and household expenses on women, and the gendered allocation of space within conventional houses (see Keys, this volume).
‘State of the Art’ Now? While individual architects continue to make progress with architectural designs suited to particular community clients, the gap between best practice and the common practice of what is built on a mass scale remains so wide as to make architectural advances far less important than adoption of those advances under Commonwealth–State financed housing schemes, and by Aboriginal housing associations. ATSIC and state agencies are currently addressing the deficiencies in practice in a range of practical reforms through the National Aboriginal Health Strategy, the Commonwealth–State Ministers Forum, negotiation of new Commonwealth–State Housing Agreements, and the formation of Indigenous housing authorities in each state. In my view, important fronts for further improvement are appropriate technology
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST
for areas not serviced by ‘mains’ electricity and sewerage (such as the exemplary work of the Centre for Appropriate Technology), and building materials suited to environmental and social requirements. Analysts now have a much keener sense of the way housing has been used in a wider scheme of social engineering of Indigenous lives and opportunities, but watchfulness is necessary to ensure that this contextual understanding is transferred into future social policy. From the 1970s, the outstation movement counteracted the centralising demographic tendencies of past policies. This involved a temporary rejection of conventional housing and other high-cost services in favour of choice of location and independence. This trade-off is under policy debate again in the late 1990s, as the Liberal–National coalition government tries to promote welfare policy (particularly health) as an alternative to native title. To my mind, the main changes in recent decades have been in Aboriginal aspirations towards housing and the adaptation to the huge social impacts which it brought to remote communities. Whereas the first houses for remote areas were designed in consultation with household heads—elders, whose prior experience of housing was scant—the houses were immediately shared by a younger generation of their relatives, whose women had a different set of perspectives on what a house should provide. In many areas, the adults now leading households have had prior experience of living in boarding school dormitories during their school years. Southern and eastern Aboriginal communities made their adaptations to housing over a longer period, but Kamien’s (1978) detailed study of Bourke shows the stresses of adaptation involved for those living in conventional, reserve and transitional houses alike.
Conclusion: Aboriginal Housing as a Symbol In her description of ‘the house as a symbol of the self ’, Clare Cooper (1976) captured a thought long understood in the home journal market. This notion helps to explain much of the semiology of Aboriginal housing. The ‘humpy’ has been seen as a public symbol of disadvantage.5 Many Indigenous people have held the sad view that having ‘no good housing’ meant to the public (and even to themselves) that they were ‘no good people’. Housing has also been taken as a symbol of national caring and government performance; thus, it is no surprise that in times when Indigenous affairs rate high in national importance, Indigenous housing also assumes a critical position.
CHAPTER 2
The Way It Was: Customary Camps and Houses in the Southern Gulf of Carpentaria Paul Memmott
Introduction This contribution is historically set in the period 1880–1915 and concerns the Tangkic language group comprising the Lardil, Yangkaal and Kaiadilt ‘tribes’ of the Wellesley Islands in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria and the Ganggalida of the adjacent mainland (Figure 2.1). Although the colonists began settling in the wider region in the late 1860s, the Islanders experienced minimal contact with them until well after the turn of the century.1 The Lardil tribe occupied Gununa or Mornington Island (which is by far the largest of the islands), as well as Langunganji (Sydney Island) and Lingunganji (Wallaby Island). During the study period it is estimated that the Lardil population fluctuated between about 280 and 320, with an average patriclan size of ten, although actual clan size varied between one and thirty-six. The Yangkaal were a much smaller group occupying several islands between Kununa and the mainland, whilst the Ganggalida resided on the mainland coastal areas. The Kaiadilt territory was in the South Wellesley Islands. This case study is a reconstruction of aspects of customary lifestyle, mainly from the perspective of Lardil people living on Mornington Island. It aims to place the ethnoarchitecture of this group in the context of its traditional lifestyle pattern of mobility, hunting-gathering, trade, ceremony and social life. Various dimensions of domiciliary behaviour are explored, including culturally distinctive aspects of spatial and sensory behaviour. As is the case for most Australian Aboriginal groups, a repertoire of shelter types (often eight or more) was used under varying circumstances, mainly seasonal and climatic, but also dependent on length of planned stay, size of residential group, available material resources and range of technologies. Coastal portions of Mornington Island were (and are) divided into segments, each of which had many of its natural resources, for example, dugongs, turtle, water lilies and pandanus nuts, presided over by a patriclan leader. Despite the territorial division into patriclan ‘countries’, widespread movement occurred around the island for both social 15
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Figure 2.1
SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST
Map of Wellesley Islands and mainland coast, showing tribal and clan areas and Birdibil’s travel route between these camps. (Maps and diagrams in this chapter courtesy Paul Memmott.)
and economic reasons. The population size of camping groups therefore varied, with the well-resourced camps hosting fifty or more people quite regularly. For most of the year coastal resources were exploited, with hunting oriented to the sea.
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At another level of social structure, the Mornington Island coastline was divided into four segments by direction, each consisting of a number of the coastal patriclan countries (see Figure 2.2). The aggregates of patriclans occupying each of these divisions referred to themselves as the Larumbenda (south-east), the Lilumbenda (north-east), the Jirrkurumbenda (north-west) and Balumbenda (south-west). These various divisions were reflected in the socio-spatial structure of Lardil camps. A further dimension of social grouping was provided by the eight ‘subsection’ or ‘class’ system. This system structured many forms of everyday behavioural interaction between people, such as marriage, obligations to share food, choice of conversation partners and, in some cases, socio-spatial behaviour. The Lardil names for these subsections (or ‘skins’) are burrarangi, kamarrangi, kangala, yakimarri in one patri-moiety; and ngarijbilangi, buranyi, bangaranyi and balyarrinyi in the other. The case study is structured around three specific camp events which are set at different times of the seasonal year to reflect different usages of shelter. It is presented in a narrative form based on ethnographic reconstruction by the author which is derived from first-hand accounts of the period.2
The Timber-cutting Camp at Ngukaduldan Birdibil was sitting on the bank of a long waterhole, manufacturing with his grandfather (his father’s father), Buyal. The pair were cutting the limbs of kurrpurru trees
Figure 2.2
Characters mentioned in the chapter are all Lardil names for persons unless otherwise indicated. Note the distinctive Aboriginal kinship categories seen from the viewpoint of the central character, Birdibil (F = father, M = mother, B = brother).
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST (Acacia alleniana) into short segments, then splitting these segments into flat slabs. Their tools were a fire for cutting, a stone axe and a billet of timber for splitting. A bailer-shell knife was used for cleaning and scraping charcoal off the ends of the slabs. Birdibil’s (paternal) grandmother, Bilka, was sitting inside her windbreak playing with the infants, Burrud and Kathabin, the children of Birdibil’s older brother, Binban (or ‘Lightning’). Birdibil momentarily stared to the end of the waterhole where he could see in the distance his mother, Mapunya, and the other women catching maali, the freshwater turtle. But his mind was on other matters. He was worried about the forthcoming initiation and the pain he would suffer, and whether he would be brave enough to resist flinching or crying. He did not wish to bring shame on his family. His day-dreaming was interrupted by his grandfather commenting on the larumben wanngal, the south-east wind, which he predicted would soon end, making way for the warm dusty season of the year and the first rains. The cold wind had been blowing strong since the last new moon (‘new moon’ was in fact the meaning of Birdibil’s name). These cold winter wind cycles chopped up the sea, making it dirty and resulting in poor off-shore hunting. Birdibil’s clan had to leave their regular beach camps and their diet of dugong, rock cod, crab, oysters and many other seafood delicacies, and retreat to the ‘inside bush’, to the waterholes of the Gabanyari River. Their inland camp was at Ngukaduldan, regularly used for the collection of hard and durable acacia timber. The camp comprised four windbreaks with their back walls facing into the wind. As the sun dropped and the cloudless sky turned cold, Buyal instructed Birdibil to gather dead kurrpurru limbs for the windbreak fires that would be kept burning throughout the night. It was turning dark when Birdibil heard the women returning laden with their thumurr or bark coolamons. His mother Mapunya had the largest coolamon full of red and white ochre which she placed in the fork of a tree. His sister-in-law and younger sister carried coolamons of fresh-water fish, whilst his older (second) mother, Kwamu, carried two coolamons, one with cooked turtle meat and the other with ‘sugarbag’ (bee honey). The food was being distributed on to paperbark mats in the four windbreaks, as an outburst of shouting signalled the return of the men from the acacia groves. Birdibil’s elder brothers, Binban and Thungalkun-yaldin, were led by their father, Liyalin, and Birdibil’s second (older) father, Kununkurr. The four men each carried a curved limb of kurrpurru which would be split into slabs for making boomerangs on the following day. Birdibil’s family were preparing for sleep, when a bobbing paperbark torch was seen approaching from upstream. Shouts revealed that the visitor was a tribal messenger from Dijinkiya, the trading camp situated on the west end of Gununa Island beside Wurrurku, the Shark Channel. As he entered the camp, the messenger’s status was confirmed by the ochred design on his chest and the painted and feathered stick in his string belt. The messenger conversed quietly with Liyalin, then departed downstream on his way to the country of the adjoining Larumbenda clan.
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Liyalin informed his wife and children of the good news that three dugong had been caught in the Shark Channel, and that many clans were being invited to the feast and public dance on the following day. They would depart at dawn. All the food in the camp would be left behind for the elderly Buyal and Bilka who would remain in their clan country along with the two infants. Although Birdibil was warm in his family wungkurr or windbreak that night, lying next to a crackling fire and covered with some paperbark blankets (kawan), he had little sleep. His anxiety about his forthcoming ordeal was increased.
Windbreaks and Winter Camps The customary Lardil structure used for protection throughout the dry, cold, windy time of the year (May to August or September), in both coastal and inland camps, is the windbreak or wungkurr (Figures 2.3 and 2.4). The windbreak is in fact a universal form used right across Aboriginal Australia. The most common Lardil type is a low circular wall. Each domiciliary group occupied such a circular unit at night, each group comprising (a) a nuclear family, (b) a small group of single initiated men, or (c) a small group of widows and single or unattached women. The number of windbreaks in such a camp varied from a few to twenty or more. A warming fire was in the middle of the entry space of each shelter and the occupants were spaced around the fire with their feet pointing towards it. Larger groups of Lardil single men slept in parallel between two straight windbreaks. Materials for Lardil windbreaks were drawn from any convenient flora (leaves, grass, vines, branches). The ‘floors’ of windbreaks were excavated to a shallow depth in
Figure 2.3
A wungkurr or windbreak with an extension added after a change of wind direction. (A) = original wind direction. (B) = new wind direction.
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Figure 2.4
Cold weather camp showing sleeping arrangements of domiciliary groups in windbreaks.
order to clean and slope the floor correctly for sleeping, as well as to provide an extra weather barrier of sand at the base of the wind-break. This perimeter mound of sand was used for burying important artefacts for safekeeping. Other artefacts were stored under the windbreak walls, in the limbs of trees or on top of daytime shade structures. All windbreaks were oriented in the same direction, and were situated within several metres of each other, forming an aggregate of repeated forms at six to nine metre centres. The walls of the structure were usually low enough to see over and maintain a view of neighbours and entry paths to the camp. This facilitated ease of visual, verbal and auditory communication between domiciliary groups, and a style of ‘broadcasting’ occurred in larger camps whereby news events and grievances were transmitted across groups in the evening and early mornings. Daytime windbreaks were often built separate to nocturnal shelters, because daytime activity was usually focused at a different part of the camp site (such as in a shaded area or at a dance ground) and involved a different composition of social groups to that used for sleeping. Separate diurnal men’s shelters and women’s shelters were common in Indigenous camps across many parts of the continent.
The Dijinkiya Trading Camp Birdibil and his sister Wondid were shown Yerrbarrkan Creek by their parents and were told how it had been created by the rolling Full Moon. Walking along a narrow path through mangroves, they then passed the Bluefish Story spring and emerged at the Barracuda Story Place situated on the end of a beach in the Shark Channel. The smoke of numerous camp fires was now visible on the sand beach ahead. (As predicted by Buyal, the wind had changed to the north.) Liyalin’s clan had reached Dijinkiya, the trading camp owned by the western Lardil. To the south lay a string of small islands stretching to the mainland coast. These islands were the homelands of the Yangkaal people. The Yangkaal were intermarried with the Lardil and brought the trading goods from the mainland.
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Along the beach front could now be seen numerous wika or shade structures, occupied by either men or women. Each group shouted welcomes, and Birdibil could see many manufacturing technologies in progress under these shades. Women were rolling tufts of human hair and wallaby fur into string. Men were shaping acacia boomerangs with scrapers and attaching spear heads and prongs to hibiscus shafts. These men exclaimed with a craftsman’s enthusiasm upon sighting the many slabs of timber that Liyalin and his party were carrying, and Birdibil realised the value of this resource which had given him an aching back during the morning’s march. Now they ascended the sand platform to see some thirty or more nocturnal windbreaks distributed through the shady trees. The smell of roasting dugong meat wafting from many bark-covered ground ovens exacerbated Birdibil’s hunger. Bands of small children ran noisily through the camp with their toy spears, chasing and hiding from one another. Women passed by carrying piles of lulmurr grass on their heads in preparation for twine manufacture. Not only was the camp defined by windbreaks and fires but by other ‘lean-to’ structures on top of which were stored many bark containers of red and white ochres, spears and other weapons, roasted mud crabs and soaking mangrove fruits. From every quarter came calls of greetings, jesting and news for the incoming party. At last they reached the windbreak of Maali (meaning ‘freshwater turtle’), Birdibil’s elder sister. Her husband Durbal-Durbal emerged to welcome them. Maali placed roasted dugong ribs on pine needles as well as a large bailer shell of honeysweetened water in front of the tired party. They dropped their load of coolamons and wood bundles to partake of a meal and to rest. Liyalin and his elder brother Kununkurr then went to confer with the other Lardil elders, whilst the two senior women, Mapunya and Kwamu, supervised the construction of three more windbreaks beside that of Maali. Birdibil was taken by his two older brothers to an interior swamp to obtain branches of foliage, forked limbs and sheets of paperbark. For not only were they going to construct windbreaks but also a bark ‘lean-to’ inside each windbreak, in anticipation of the seasonal weather change. Heavy dews were expected as well as a possible shower as the northerly and easterly wind-influences supplanted the winter south-east wind. The clan’s domiciliary spaces were carefully sited in that sector of the camp reserved for the Larumben or windward division of the Lardil. The eastern, northern and western divisions were in the other designated sectors. Several days later, Birdibil was with a group of men on the beach, repairing nets under a barabar (a shade shelter with a horizontal roof ) and watching for the schools of dulnul fish. He was reflecting on the new dances he had seen at the corroboree on the previous night, when he noticed a number of families paddling rafts (walba) across the channel towards the camp. As they beached their walba nearby, he noted that the adults bore ritual designs. They formed into a tight huddle and, using their boomerangs for percussion, commenced ritual singing and walked towards Birdibil’s barabar. One man, wearing a bone nose-piece, whom Birdibil had never seen before, placed his hands over Birdibil’s eyes and said in a Yangkaal accent, ‘Do not carry fear;
22
SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST I am your father-in-law; it is time for you to prepare for your manhood.’ He then tied a string hair-belt around Birdibil’s waist as a symbol of Birdibil’s initiate status. Durbal-Durbal then appeared, took him by the hand and said, ‘I am your closest brother-in-law, and I will dance, work and care for you. Come to the thamurr (dance) ground now, to begin your Law lessons.’ Following an afternoon of listening to ritual songs about the ancestral dingoes, Birdibil was taken to the initiates’ shelter on the inland side of the camp behind the communal wells, where he joined some nine other youths, all wearing hair-belts. He was paired off with an eastern Lardil lad, Kulkij, whom he had met before and had the same ‘skin’ (subsection), kamarrangi, as himself. They all slept under kubul or grass blankets between two high parallel, but straight windbreaks, separated by small fires.
Shade Structures In the hotter periods of the year, shade was a prerequisite in any camp. If shady trees were not available, sunshades were constructed. The Lardil word for both shade and shade structure is wika. Several Lardil types were built, but only one shade structure had a special name: barabar, a flat-roofed shade (Figure 2.5). A rectangular or square plan was formed using four forked posts. These carried cross-beams and a series of rafters obtained from bloodwood or other saplings, all covered with foliage. This roof structure was most suited for use in the middle of the day when the sun was vertically overhead. For early or late in the day, two other forms of shade were used. The ‘lean-to’ or sloping-roofed shade consisted of only two forked posts supporting a cross-beam, and with rafter members leaning up against this beam and covered with foliage. Vertical shades were made by inserting a bushy limb in a foundation hole. This type of wika was often repeated, forming a line of vertical shade branches (Figures 2.6 and 2.7).
Transitional Shelter Forms A number of supplementary shelter forms were used during transition periods between seasons when weather conditions were changing and unpredictable. If intermittent or unexpected rain occurred in the southern Gulf, a ‘lean-to’ structure similar to that above, but employing paperbark to provide a degree of waterproofing, may have been constructed inside a wind-break (Figure 2.8). During the transition periods to the wet season, occasional storms or showers were likely to catch people without a waterproof shelter. A quick way to keep dry was to lie or sit under a large piece of paperbark. Such a make-shift shelter was called kawan in Lardil, meaning ‘bark blanket’. Bark was used in the same way to protect fires from rain.
CUSTOMARY CAMPS AND HOUSES
Figure 2.5
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A flat-roof shade barabar, constructed of four forked posts and cross-rails.
An alternative device was a kubul which consisted of a quantity of grass as long as could be conveniently found, perhaps up to 1.6 m long, tied together at one end to make an ‘instant’ shelter that was used to sleep under, one per person normally. Although it caused perspiration in humid weather, it provided protection from dew or cold winds, being a combined blanket and windbreak (Figure 2.9).
Figure 2.6
A mid afternoon wika using two forked posts and foliage.
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Figure 2.7
A late afternoon shade or wika made by inserting a leafy limb into a hole.
Figure 2.8
A combined windbreak and bark-roofed shelter for fluctuating wind and rain conditions (May or November).
Further Properties of Camps Aboriginal camps were not only places to sleep, eat and perform other body functions, but were also places of major social interaction and the base for economic activity. Their properties were multiple and varied. The association of behavioural traits and artefacts with the natural properties of campsites and their environs leads one into differentiating between seasonal shelters, forms of seasonal food exploitation, specialised food process-
CUSTOMARY CAMPS AND HOUSES
Figure 2.9
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A grass blanket, kubul, providing protection from cold, wind and light showers.
ing methods, specialised tools for carrying out economic tasks, and the capacity to sustain large groups for a substantial time. This in turn leads to the differentiation between types of camps used for particular economic, social and ceremonial functions. The artefactual contents of camps, including shelters, were also adjustable and changing. Distinctive physical components included raw materials waiting use or processing, food waiting to be cooked, or stored if it was surplus, water, bundles of firewood, and hearths. Dogs were another ever-present feature. Camps were all fixed places but the time, frequency and purpose of use, and the number of occupants varied. The decisions about when and where to shift were made many times by each Aboriginal family throughout the seasonal year, under varying social and personal circumstances. Given a choice of campsites, two properties were always considered as criteria of fundamental importance to the Wellesley Islanders: to camp on the beach and to camp where there was a freshwater supply. Nevertheless, some camps were more popular than others due to richer resources in the locale. At such camps it was likely to find stored artefacts that were not normally carried about, such as extra supplies of weapons, pounding stones and magical items.
The Mainland Initiation Camp of Tharrabayi The group of Lardil and Yangkaal Luruku (initiates) had been travelling from their homelands for four days when at dusk they reached the mainland camp of Tharrabayi in the heart of Gangkalida country. The last day’s travel had been through the wide band of sand ridges and long saltpans on the mainland coast which were already muddy from the first rains and showing crocodile tracks. The mud had worn out the young Luruku men who had been carrying the group’s trading items
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST (Melo shells, fish spears, fish nets and ochre pigments). The families of the initiates followed behind and established a circular nocturnal mosquito camp layout by creating a ring of fires and a thick cloud of smoke. The Luruku were then positioned in the centre. This sub-camp was at a distance of 800 metres from the main camp proper, for there was to be no contact until the morning when proper mirndi or ‘square-up’ rituals could occur. In the dawn light, Birdibil awoke to see some thirty or more grass-clad domes, on the open plain beside a freshwater stream. Birdibil had never seen such an architectural type before. Each dome had a small low entrance, which was emitting smoke from internal fires used to repel the swarms of nocturnal biting insects. He could hear women pounding cycad nuts on stones to prepare cakes for the morning meal. The stream was not yet running but contained a string of still pools separated by stone weirs and walls for trapping fish. Birdibil remained with the Luruku under the supervision of their brothers-inlaw (including Durbal-Durbal), whilst the older folks underwent ‘square-up’ or mourning with Gangkalida families to mark respect for the recently deceased. Two Jirrkurumben Lardil brothers and some Gangkalida men then duelled with boomerangs and fighting sticks to settle some past grievance. This was followed by two more similar duels between various individuals but nobody was physically hurt. The older Lardil and Yangkaal adults and women were then allocated a new sleeping area on the coastal side of the camp near the shelter of the Gangkalida Elder, Lelmiru, who was married to Birdibil’s nyerre (‘granny’ or mother’s mother), Yembi. The Islanders spent the day constructing their ngambirr or cubic-shaped wet-weather shelters, clad with paperbark cut from nearby swamps. Water was drawn from the stream in bailer shells and stored on the rooftops along with weapons and utensils. Lightning flashes on several horizons signified the necessity for the early seasonal use of these shelters. Birdibil was particularly happy to know his granny was in the camp. It had been a full year since Lelmiru and Yembi had visited them at home on Gununa. His granny belonged to that social category with whom Birdibil had a joking and teasing relation and she was always playing tricks on him. However, the initiates were separated from their close kin and taken to a secluded part of the camp where they joined some half-dozen Gangkalida youths also wearing hair-belts in preparation for initiation. Now they realised that the purpose of their journey had been not only to learn of the ancestral travel routes, sacred sites, camps and resource places right across to the coast, but also to meet up for a large-scale inter-tribal initiation ceremony. The initiates were sat down and addressed by one who seemed a most fearsome warrior, named Jijilbija, who informed them that he was one of their new bosses and told them in no uncertain terms of their ‘prisoner’ status for the remainder of their stay. They were then lectured at length on the customary significance of Saltwater Law and the severity of penalty for misdemeanours. Jijilbija wore a black and red
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cockatoo feather in his pierced nasal septum, emu-feather arm and pubic tassles and a pearl-shell pendant, items of apparel which were associated with the mainland culture, and exotic in Birdibil’s eyes. He also carried a pair of hooked and fluted boomerangs, and displayed a pattern of cicatrices on his chest that were also foreign to Lardil eyes. Jijilbija then dispersed the initiates to perform further allocated tasks under the supervision of their older brothers-in-law. Birdibil was sent with a small group upstream to an emu hide and trap, a strange but exciting experience as he had never seen an emu before. There were none living on the Wellesley Islands (although Lardil sacred histories recounted how emus had visited Gununa in the Dreaming). Birdibil’s party hid some distance from a number of timber stake yards or fences surrounding small waterholes, each with a narrow gate. As dusk fell, several emus approached and entered the races leading to the gates. Once inside, the young men took turns in spearing them and were shown how to pluck the best feathers for decorative apparel, sear off the remaining down and butcher the animals. In performing these tasks Birdibil was paired off with an older youth, Jamu, whom he later found had as his ‘promised’ one for marriage, Birdibil’s younger sister, Wondid. Jamu told him that Jijilbija was Lelmiru’s full brother and therefore a ‘grandfather’ for Birdibil and that he controlled one of the four principal song cycles used for ‘making young men’. Upon their return to the Luruku men’s area, Birdibil saw that the larger party of initiates had been constructing four domes with frames of sturdy gum limbs and grass cladding, one each for the kamarrangi and burrarangi, the kangala and yakimarri, the ngaribilangi and buranyi, and the bangaranyi and balyarrinyi youths. In this manner, Birdibil found himself assigned to a dome that contained a mix of Lardil, Yangkaal and Gangkalida youths, all of whom were in a classificatory relation of either ‘brothers’ or ‘fathers’ and ‘sons’. This division of the initiates into residential groups by class, also reflected the four different Dreamings and song cycles which each respective group would be taught during their ritual training. The youths were told that tomorrow they would be shown how to ‘plaster’ the grass-clad domes with a layer of mud and then cover the whole with sheets of paperbark. It was fully dark as Birdibil and the other youths were brought coolamons of roasted mudcrabs, cycad nut cakes and water by a group of women, including his granny who told him he would be held in this camp for several months while he was made into a ‘man’ and that she would be dancing for him to give him strength. The youths were then taken to the public dancing ground on the opposite side of the camp where a corroboree was in progress. They were sat down in their four subgroups with their own fires, noting that the Lardil, Yangkaal and Gangkalida all formed further separate sub-groups of audience in a circle. The Lardil elders then lit central fires on the dance ground to reveal a wet-weather shelter with two parallel windbreaks leading away. A dance of Thuwathu followed, portraying the famous Lardil sacred history of how Thuwathu as a man was burnt alive in his shelter by his
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SETTLEMENT: PRESENT AND PAST sister, then metamorphosed into a Rainbow Serpent and dug the Minyandaka riverbed trying to extinguish his body. As part of the performance, the shelter was symbolically burnt on the ground and the dancers then writhed in feigned agony between the windbreaks which symbolised the mangrove-clad banks of the river, all to the rhythm of Liyalin’s singing and boomerang percussion. That night Birdibil fell asleep exhausted with a mixture of security and fear, knowing his family was close by and guided by his grandparents, but knowing also that many unknown tests and tribulations lay before him in his path through the Saltwater Law of his people, before his final ‘smoking’ when he would at last be a ‘man’.
Wet-weather Shelters3 and Camps4 The Lardil and Yangkaal wet-weather shelter was cubic or rectilinear in form and was called ngambirr. It was constructed of four forked posts, horizontal side rails (two or three for each wall surface), roof beams, and a variety of claddings—long lengths of grass, paperbark, leaves—woven between the rails. Long sheets of paperbark usually were laid over the closely spaced rafter members to form a roof lining and covered with a layer of leaves or hummock grass, then a layer of sand. The sand served a double purpose of absorbing water and providing dead load to resist movement of the roof by cyclonic winds. Vines or bush string often were tied between structural members to keep the cladding firmly in place. As the rain became more intense, the open front side
Figure 2.10 Plan of a wet-weather shelter, ngambirr.
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Figure 2.11 An alternative wet-weather space for a large domiciliary group, made by placing two ngambirr opposite each other, and sealing off with a limb between two side walls.
was enclosed leaving a narrow entry, opening in the centre or to one side (Figures 2.10 and 2.11). A key architectural aspect of this case study is the contrast between the Wellesley Islanders’ cubic wet-weather shelter (ngambirr), and the northern mainland styles which included (a) the grass or paperbark clad dome type with a small entrance opening and a roof vent (Figure 2.12), and (b) vaulted platform shelters (Figure 2.13). These last two types are more commonly associated in the ethnographic literature with Arnhem Land and west Cape York, but were also used in the southern Gulf. Both the Lardil ngambirr and the mainland domes were employed towards the end of December, when the seasonal rain of the north-west monsoons usually begins. Several cyclones may also occur in the wet season, when rain is likely to fall consistently for periods of several weeks. Local flooding and boggy ground may result in the
Figure 2.12 Wet-season mainland dome, clad with paperbark and with internal fire.
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occupation of a single camp for up to six weeks. Shifting of camp occurred occasionally when the rain stopped for a day or two. The wet-weather shelters were the most elaborate structures of the seasonal repertoire and more energy was invested in their construction than in any of the other secular shelter forms. The wet-weather shelters were designed to repel mosquitoes by combining an interior of smoke with minimal openings. However, during the transition periods prior to and following the wet season proper, the Lardil combined two alternative techniques to minimise this discomfort: choosing a campsite exposed to the wind, and the use of fires spatially arranged with respect to sleeping positions so as to form a thick smoke barrier around the camp (as in Figure 2.14). This was known as a ‘mosquito camp’.
Continental Overview of Customary Houses and Camps5 Although there was a wide distribution of common structural principles and shelter forms across the continent, materials and construction details were subject to regional variations. In most areas, people either sat or lay inside shelters, so they were consistently low (height 1.2–1.5 m). More sedentary groups built taller shelters in which they could stand. These were used in circumstances of prolonged inclement weather such as that found in north-eastern rainforests, western Tasmania and western Victoria. The two types of mainland wet-weather shelters mentioned above and used across the northern monsoonal areas of Australia exemplify the influence of materials on form. The most suitable claddings were bark sheets from Melaleuca leucadendron (paperbark) and Eucalyptus tetradontra (stringybark). Paperbark is very flexible and thus suitable for making a dome over a structure of limbs or saplings. In contrast to paperbark, stringybark can bend in only one direction. Some weeks after the wet season had set in, the stringy-bark could be prised off its trunk and used in a range of vaulted forms supported on single, double and triple ridge-poles. To avoid the boggy ground, a further elaboration was a sleeping platform under which fires could be burnt to repel mosquitoes (see Figure 2.13). Domes covered either circular or elliptical ground-plans up to 3.6 m in diameter according to the size of the occupant group. A common type in the arid interior had a framework of rigid curved boughs. Cladding was of thatched grass, foliage or reeds, sometimes with a coating of mud or clay, possibly for insulation against extremes of temperature or to keep off rain (examples have been recorded in all conditions). In some parts of the south-east of the continent, domes appear to have been supported on low, circular stone walls. Conical and cubic forms were less common, but nevertheless widely distributed. Stringybark and other rigid barks were also used for unsupported structures of both a folded plate and a barrel vault type. Other common seasonal shelters were windbreaks (linear, arced and circular), open sleeping platforms and tree platforms in flood-prone areas. Entry ‘porches’ were attached to some enclosed shelters. Shades were constructed
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Figure 2.13 Vaulted platform shelter types used throughout northern Australia in the late wet season, using stringybark cladding.
using the range of techniques described for the Wellesley Islanders, but another aridarea type was a light-weight dome with an open lower wall structure. Together with fires and other artefacts these shelter units were used seasonally, combined in different ways, according to the prevailing weather conditions and sociospatial customs, to generate different types of seasonal and functional camp forms.
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Figure 2.14 Lardil mosquito camp layout showing sleeping arrangements and the location of fires. Young single men (initiates) are positioned in the centre.
Due to their often impermanent nature, individual shelters were seldom imbued with symbolism (an exception being the vaulted barrel vaults of Arnhem Land (see Reser 1977, 1978). However, many groups associated a specific shelter type with a particular sacred history, as was seen in the Lardil story of Thuwathu’s metamorphosis.6 The socio-spatial structure of camps and even sitting groups (for example, at a dance ground) could be generated by tribal and/or sub-tribal group identity. An alternate type of clustering involved grouping people based on their class identity as illustrated in the initiates’ (Luruku) sub-camp. Subgroups also commonly positioned themselves in camps according to the direction of their homeland. Spatial and interactive behaviour between individuals was further structured in camps by kinship rules which influenced (a) sitting positions, orientations and appropriate distancing; (b) whose camp one could enter; (c) avoidance of particular individuals and their residences; and (d) degree of formality or informality required between certain kin (e.g. Birdibil’s ‘joking’ relation with his granny).
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Customary houses or shelters were used like tools to make everyday life more comfortable from inclement weather. As such they were pleasurable and secure things for the time they were used. Their lifespan seldom exceeded a season and was more often several weeks or less. Although the timber frame structures may have endured through several seasons, they would ultimately collapse under white ant attack, or be reused as firewood or components in a new shelter. They were not a ‘home’ in the Western sense of being a permanent structure for physical protection against climate and other physical hazards, to which is also attached personal decorations, colours and symbols. Perhaps even more important properties associated with the Western home are the multitude of memories of past experiences and daydreams in its spaces that stretch back through one’s time of occupancy as far as childhood. For Aboriginal people, memories and experiences were associated with campsites and other places in the landscape, not with specific shelters which were too many, too similar and too impermanent to provide such a wealth of stable links with the past. The artefactual, behavioural and sensory properties of the Western construct ‘house’ are best construed in the Aboriginal context to be embedded in and between the domiciliary space and the camp rather than in the shelter per se.
PART II
Settlements of Enclosure Inter-group social interaction and mobility characterised the Tangkic speakers and other peoples of pre-invasion Australia. Indigenous materials and artefacts from far away, and later European goods, were utilised as tools or materials. Paul Memmott’s narrative illustrated the exchanges characteristic of Indigenous Australian living spaces and structures as a whole. The missionaries and the institutions changed everything, and the next four chapters deal with the short- and long-term consequences of the organised institution on living patterns and accommodation styles. The customary lifestyle of the Wellesley Islanders began to undergo directed cultural change after the arrival of the first missionaries in 1914. The mission site was located beside Dijinkiya, the trading camp at the Appel Channel. The people began to spatially concentrate in the mission settlement and gradually became more sedentary. Many of the residential practices and customs described by Memmott, however, are continued by the Wellesley Islanders, particularly when they go camping in their homelands or reside at outstations. It was not so easy in Victoria where the missionaries arrived earlier and transplanted European culture more comprehensively. Here the arrangement of cultural space, as Bain Attwood (Chapter 3) puts it, was probably as critical as the more obvious battle for religious expression. Spatial ordering, from the disposition of the dwellings to the position of the campfire, was as significant as the European-style houses and the girls’ dormitory. Lived experience was steadily transferred from the open ground between the domiciliary spaces, to beside and inside the buildings themselves. Victoria’s 1877 Royal Commission on Aborigines declared that Ramahyuck was the most successful of all its Aboriginal settlements. Yet almost immediately thereafter Ramahyuck went into decline, its land under pressure from nearby farmers and many of its residents expelled after 1886 because they were deemed no longer Aboriginal. In March 1908 it was closed. Nothing remained except a hundred unmarked graves (Horton 1994: 924–5).
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The Warangesda mission station, established in New South Wales on the Murrumbidgee River in 1879, took resocialising the children as its chief objective. Resocialising adults, who had learned to oppose the missionaries with the weapons of the strike, the deputation and the petition, became relatively unimportant. In Memmott’s analysis, children grow up in communities and are never left alone. The early missionaries, as Attwood shows, tried to fragment communities into family units. By the 1880s, the missionaries in the south-east increasingly turned to the well-tried Victorian procedure of re-educating the young through the physical artefact—the sinister and impersonal institution in which living, growing up and education are combined. At Warangesda, the girls’ dormitory was by far the biggest building, signifying its importance in the missionaries’ program. Today we understand all too well the psychological and emotional consequences of such interventions. Continuing the theme of the managed institution, Peter Read’s chapter moves to New South Wales, fifteen years after the period considered by Attwood. Now we are forced into analysing Indigenous settlement through the lens of the preoccupations of the time: age cohorts rather than families, degrees of descent rather than ethnicity, accommodation rather than housing—coercions, separations and expulsions. When Warangesda was opened in 1879, Aboriginal people of long memory were already familiar with its nature. A dozen optimistic and sizeable establishments begun by 1830 had withered and died by 1850. The missionaries and the mission residents had retired from each other, equally hurt and perplexed. The next generation of managed missions and stations was more historically significant. Although some were begun by missionaries, by 1900 all New South Wales stations were run by the state; that is, the managed Aboriginal institutions had become agents of state policy exercised through the Aborigines Protection Board as directly as it might in these still uncodified times. The managed stations were pivotal because it was here, more than anywhere in the last years of the nineteenth century, that the as yet unnamed policies of assimilation, acculturation and dispersal were shaped and enacted. It was here that the central questions of Australian Aboriginal policy were fought out. Were Aboriginal people to be forced or persuaded to adopt British civilisation? How much of their old culture might they be allowed to retain? In what sense were ‘partAboriginals’ really Aboriginal at all? In what manner, and where, were they to live? These questions are still not entirely resolved in the closing years of the twentieth century. Nor, of course, were they resolved then. Managed institutions created their own dynamics, and the White world
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just beyond the mission boundaries was never still, never ceased to beckon. Chapter 5 by Samantha Wells concerns the Kahlin compound in Darwin in the 1920s and 1930s. Here the managed institution, now under government rather than church control, has abandoned resocialisation altogether except for the production of a labour pool of domestic service for Darwin’s White residents. The compound inmates sleep on blankets on the floor. Unlike the church mission stations, Kahlin contains no library, cultural or recreational facilities, nor training in trades and occupations; the dormitory children have their morning porridge brought over to them in a kerosene tin and doled out, two children to a plate. The Aboriginals Ordinance stops unauthorised compound entry or exit. A high wire fence prevents adolescents escaping. We have moved a fair distance from Ramahyuck’s ordered cottages and Warangesda’s well-bred young ladies, and a great distance from the Lardil people’s temporary structures, rhythmic life patterns and socialised human spaces. Mission and state authorities seldom agreed on what should become of the residents of the institutions. On the remote church institutions there was never enough money to support a farming workforce, and yet the local non-Aboriginal community remained, at best, reluctant to employ mission residents. Should the mission residents move off, and if so, where should they go? Or should they stay on the missions forever? The long-term purposes of the institutions determined their physical form. The questions implied about settlement were: should Aboriginal accommodation be designed as basic shelter, or as an instrument for inculcating Europeanism? For the whole-of-life or just for childhood and adolescence? Hagenauer chose one route decisively, Australian governments chose another. The Kahlin and Bagot institutions still nominally served the purpose, as Chief Protector Cook put it, of training ‘the Aborigine’ to ‘take his place industrially and socially’ in the Darwin community. That was the rationale for separating children from their families. But the provision and maintenance of a docile labour pool actually took priority. Darwin’s ‘compound’ architecture was aimed more at control than indoctrination. In comfort, convenience and cost, the damp, single-room dwellings which Wells describes were far behind Hagenauer’s Ramahyuck cottages of fifty years earlier. The most obvious feature of Kahlin is not the family cottage but the barrier fence. For the domestic usefulness of Aboriginals to the Whites—the only reason, indeed, why the ‘compound’ was allowed so close to the city—demanded a much tighter level of control. The other, unofficial, town camps were cleared more regularly. In Wells’ account, Kahlin, and later Bagot, institutions were under secular control. The
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church now is unwanted. The mission has become, in Darwin, a compound concerned to produce and maintain a docile, efficient labour pool. The managed institution had become, as the writer of the 1924 Queensland Hookworm Campaign final report put it, a ‘home, benevolent society and reformatory’. The themes so far developing in these chapters include the consequences, seen and unforeseen, of gathering together large numbers of people culturally accustomed to living in small groups, over whom the controlling authorities retained their own agendas. One of these consequences, which Gordon Briscoe (Chapter 6) pursues, is the ‘disease pools’ found in both unorganised town camps and organised institutions. Just as the cross-purposes of providing a docile labour pool and a place for children’s acculturation related directly to the standard of Kahlin and Bagot accommodation, so did other cross-purposes interrupt the eradication of hookworm among Aboriginal people. As before, inconsistent agendas hindered improvement—the desire of the Federal Quarantine Agency to aggrandise itself, the threat of Aboriginalcarried disease to White Australians, and the desire, on the part of ‘Protection’ authorities, to spend as little as possible—all seemed to outweigh the aim of improving Aboriginal health in its own right. Aboriginal people, as Briscoe explains, were blamed for the spread of hookworm, a disease spread by their living in much larger groups than those which they desired themselves! The traditional camps analysed by Memmott were far smaller than any mission or government-managed institution. Institutional health facilities finally improved, but at the cost of tighter controls and forcible removal. Officials found it more convenient—to them—to move the managed camps further away from White population centres than to improve housing, sewage disposal or water supply facilities in the areas where the institutions were already established. Towns offered to institution residents the competing attractions of alcohol, picnic races, paid work and relief from the sameness of bells, parades and rituals. The Ramahyuck mission was too remote, but the town of Darlington Point was to the Warangesda officials a considerable counter-attraction and irritant to their work. It was at Darwin, though, that the tensions between work place, site of acculturation and holding camp were revealed most clearly. Alice Springs, the site of Chapter 7 by Tim Rowse, was different from Darwin. Many more Aboriginals had, over several decades, gathered
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around the town than could be employed. Because they could not simply be driven away from the town, many were placed in what were effectively holding camps, which were under simultaneous pressure to disperse their residents and to close. Rowse’s chapter points the competing claims of institution, medical service and town. In his conclusion, he recaps the tension at Alice Springs between the colonists’ demand for cheap Aboriginal labour and their dislike of close associations with Aboriginal people; between this dislike and the growing imperative to offer medical and other town-based services to Aboriginal people. New complications enter the debate. Who, among the many varieties of people of part-descent, was Aboriginal and who was not? Those who were driven from unofficial town camps because they were declared to be non-Aboriginal could not then be driven to the official camps because they were. The endless defining and redefining of Aboriginality which marks the unhappy history of most Australian country towns now takes on hard and pertinent meaning in the endless crises about which Aboriginals should be housed and which not, and whether they should be forced to live out of town, beside town or in town. Declaring an area of town to be a ‘prohibited area’ further complicated an issue already made needlessly complex.
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CHAPTER 3
Space and Time at Ramahyuck, Victoria, 1863–85 Bain Attwood
Since the early decades of the nineteenth century, government agencies responsible for the welfare of Aboriginal people and non-governmental bodies such as missionary organisations have been shaping Indigenous housing in Australia. In this chapter, following historian Greg Dening’s suggestion that ‘the story of cultural change is the story of the way in which space and time are reconstructed’ (Dening 1980: 63), I will consider the ways in which missionaries sought to reconstitute Aboriginal society by transforming their cultural practices in spatial as well as temporal terms. This process will be considered by means of a case study of one mission station, Ramahyuck, established in Gippsland, eastern Victoria, in 1863 by Moravian missionaries, Friedrich and Louise Hagenauer (although reference will also be made to another mission station in the same area, Lake Tyers). Ramahyuck, or Lake Wellington (as it was known by the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines), was regarded by many contemporary observers as the Aboriginal station which other missions or supervised government reserves should emulate; by the mid 1870s it was being acclaimed as the most successful station in the colony, ‘the highest regarding discipline and management’. Hagenauer had become the superintendent of other stations (such as Lake Tyers) and so other Aboriginal peoples also came under what this missionary called ‘the same system of operation’.1 I have chosen Ramahyuck for consideration, not so much because its story necessarily tells of the impact that agents of colonisation such as missionaries have had on Aboriginal culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rather because it exemplifies the ideas and attitudes of settler Australians who have repeatedly tried to change the environs in which Aboriginal people have lived their lives.
Choosing a Site In order to ‘civilise and Christianise’ Aboriginal people, missionaries in the Australian colonies believed that they had to be settled at one place, for their nomadism was seen to be ‘diametrically opposed’ to the ‘civilised life’ the colonial state wanted to create.2 At the same time as they tried to persuade Aboriginals to stay in one place, and so sever 41
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them from their traditional ‘country’, missionary superintendents believed that it was vital to isolate their charges from the contact with Whites that was devastating Aboriginal communities. This meant they preferred remote locations. Islands—Flinders Island and Palm Island are the best known examples—were ideal sites. Other considerations influenced the siting of mission stations: local settlers often objected to the places chosen (as was the case with Ramahyuck),3 and some missionaries and government agencies came to realise that their tenure would be more secure if they chose land unwanted by White interests, even though this could jeopardise the economic and cultural viability of the missionary endeavour.4 Although there are undoubtedly many instances where Aboriginals were forced off their traditional land and onto reserves, it is apparent that some Aboriginal communities played an important role in choosing sites for mission stations or reserves (Goodall 1996: ch. 6). In the Ramahyuck case, the local Kurnai clans refused to both move away from what they regarded as their own land and to settle at any place belonging to other clans. They clearly indicated to Friedrich Hagenauer where they were prepared to ‘sit down’: They all said they did not want to leave here [Sale] or the lakes. They would not go into the mountains, because this land here belongs to them. If I build a house up there, they would not come. They only want to live here or by the lakes. And if we did not get any land, that would not matter, because they would not go away from their land even if the policeman sent them away[;] they would not listen to the government.
Eventually a few Kurnai men guided this missionary to a place on the Avon River 4 km from where it flowed into the waters of Lake Wellington.5 These wetlands had traditionally provided many of the natural food resources exploited by the Kurnai, and was probably a place where three clans—the Braiakaulung, the Tatungalung and Brabiralung—had traditionally gathered for ceremonial business (Rhodes 1996: 18–19). In other places, too, missionaries selected sites nominated by the original owners and, in so doing, increased their chances of attracting and holding Aboriginals on the missions they founded. Yet missionaries and Aboriginals had very different ideas regarding the purpose of the land they chose. In this case, the Kurnai had repeatedly told Hagenauer that they wanted ‘a place they might call their home’, by which they probably meant a place where they would be free from White men’s power and law; but few had endorsed the missionary goals. Consequently, here, as elsewhere, there was a battle over the usages of the mission station. Most importantly, the Kurnai challenged the missionaries’ insistence that they settle down permanently on the station. They were accustomed to ranging over their estates for food and religious purposes, and at least one Kurnai clan had supported an earlier government proposal which allowed for this by reserving land for
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each clan within its own boundaries where they could ‘sit down’ and till the ground but from which they could also move away to hunt and gather, work for pastoralists, and maintain their associations with traditional land.6 For their part, missionaries realised that in order to establish a mission station they not only had to convert the Aboriginal people but also the land itself in which Aboriginal culture was embedded. This involved transforming the landscape by destroying what was unknown to Europeans and undermining those cultural systems which were integral to the Aboriginals’ sense of themselves and the way they ordered the land. For the missionaries—as for many earlier Europeans who had been taught to appreciate the pleasures of an improved and bounded nature and were inclined to draw sharp boundaries between culture and nature—sites such as the one on the Avon River were something of an untamed wilderness, because they saw it, as well as the Aboriginals who gathered there, as disordered and uncultivated. Hagenauer’s first step at the site of the new mission station was to try to name it in missionary terms and so inscribe the place with a sense of his intent and meaning. He called it ‘Ramah’, a Biblical name for a community which would bear witness to God. But the Kurnai responded by adding another word, yuk (our), signifying that they regarded it as their place. During the early years of this mission, the missionaries at Ramahyuck made solemn events of many such acts of conversion, and the Kurnai realised the purpose of these (even though they probably seldom grasped the meanings), for these rituals resembled their own ways of caring for country. For example, when the missionaries and the Braiakaulung, the Brabiralung and the Tatungalung gathered on the Avon River in the winter of 1863, Hagenauer conducted a ceremony to mark the occasion, seeking to possess the site in the name of God by dedicating it ‘to the Lord Jesus’. He concluded by leading the Aboriginals in singing the 100th Psalm—an exhortation to serve God joyfully as the creator and preserver, and a recognition of His goodness, mercy and truth. But as the ragged singing died away an Aboriginal man yelled out, ‘Now let us have a hurrah like white man’, and three hearty cheers were given for the government and Queen Victoria (which perhaps indicates that the Kurnai, like other Aboriginals in Victoria and New South Wales, might have seen Ramahyuck as land permanently granted to them by the imperial monarch).7
The Mission Landscape In seeking to ‘civilise and Christianise’ the Kurnai, the missionaries at Ramahyuck carefully planned the space of the new mission station. This was to be a didactic landscape which would, on the one hand, convey an ideal of what they wanted Aboriginal peoples to become; and, on the other, be an instrument which would mould Aboriginals according to this ideal. Hagenauer, who had trained as an engineer and as a minister in an evangelical church, believed that ‘a regular plan or system of operation’ was required:
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SETTLEMENTS OF ENCLOSURE In order to carry on the work successfully it needs ... a general Station plan which forms the centre of the whole and into which fall the parts, from the Mission house, the School house, and native houses and finally the order of every individual Black from the old man down to the child, so that each one knows his place and work.
This, he asserted, would enable ‘each branch to work separately and yet to form part of the whole machinery’ of the mission station.8 In advocating such a mechanism, Hagenauer was drawing upon Moravian missionary precepts as well as the practice of missionaries in the Pacific and other Australian colonies who had devised model villages for their missions. More generally, however, his approach reflected a much broader bourgeois strategy of social and cultural reform which was designed to change and control various social groups categorised as ‘other’.9 In other words, missionaries such as Hagenauer were not alone in the faith they placed in the reformative potential of ordering environments and copying the moral architecture of institutions such as schools, mental asylums and prisons (which were increasing in number at this time) (Foucault 1977, especially 11, 137–8, 209, 223). By the mid 1870s, Hagenauer’s ‘general Station plan’ had been inscribed on the land at Ramahyuck and could be readily seen by visitors to the mission station: the thousand-hectare reserve had been enclosed by ‘a good fence’ and the land so bound had been subdivided into rectangular paddocks. The appearance of a familiar order in the grounds around mission stations was held to be very important, but it was the arrangement of cultural space in the settlement itself which was most prized. The mission settlement and its surrounding gardens lay within the ‘best improved paddock’, covering some six hectares.10 It, like other mission settlements, was invariably described as a village or hamlet, and was noted for ‘the compactness of the whole plan, and the neatness ... of all the arrangements’. A Victorian Royal Commission into Aborigines in 1877 undoubtedly had Ramahyuck in mind when it argued that buildings on mission stations ‘should be ... arranged in a manner conducive to order and regularity of appearance’. It opined that: ‘The effect of tidiness and per contra, of untidiness on the Aboriginal mind, is very important; the inculcation of tidiness forms part of civilisation as well as of discipline’.11 The mission settlement at Ramahyuck, or the ‘compound’—as one astute observer of institutional architecture called it—was laid out so as to form a 2.5-hectare hollow quadrangle, enclosed by a fence on one side and buildings on the other three sides. The ‘village green’, as it was known, was lined by cottages on two sides, and was partitioned off from what Hagenauer called ‘the public buildings’ which lay within a smaller, inner square. On one side of this enclave was the mission church, the school house, the boarding house and some smaller service buildings; further back there was a hop kiln. In the centre was the mission house, and on the other side was a storehouse, a workshop and the house of the schoolteacher. By the early 1880s each building within this enclosure was surrounded by neat fences, as were the cottages outside (Figure 3.1).
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A definite hierarchy can be discerned in both the arrangement of this settlement and the size of its various buildings. The roomy mission house was situated at the head of the village and was by far the largest building on the station; it was a symbol of the power the missionaries wished to assume and the dominance they had established. The placement of this imposing structure was important for the missionaries’ position in ‘the whole machinery’ of the station in other ways: it enabled a close watch over station resources such as the stores, just as it enabled what one observer described as ‘prompt access to the little cottages’,12 and so it facilitated ongoing intervention in Aboriginal lives. The siting also allowed the missionaries some means of surveillance, although a more central position would have better served this purpose. The mission house, the church, the school and the boarding house were bordered off from the rest of the mission settlement by a white paling fence (Figure 3.2). This construction of precisely fixed posts and rails was not only an unambiguous statement of the missionary desire to impose their order on Aboriginal people; it was also a means of establishing distance between their domain and that of the Aboriginal people. It was also a way of separating Aboriginal children from contact with their parents and elderly kin, and so prevent the transmission of cultural knowledge. The maintenance of these hierarchical boundaries was a fundamental part of everyday life on Ramahyuck, shaping standards of conduct and regulating social relationships. The comment of one observer, that ‘inside the fences, casual visitors, unless quite comme il faut [just the right kind of person] would not be welcomed by Mr Hagenauer’ (Argus, 27 March 1886), reveals that Aboriginals only moved into the missionary enclave for specific purposes that were sanctioned by the missionaries (see also Trigger 1992: 79–87). Whereas the layout of Ramahyuck contained and conveyed a hierarchy of race, this, as well as other divisions, was evident in the interior arrangements of the various public buildings. In the church, a slightly raised platform ran alongside one wall and here the missionaries sat on chairs, the men on one side of the pulpit, the women on the other, facing the Aboriginal congregation. The latter were arranged on benches according to gender as well as age: the men were on the left, women on the right, their children in front of them. This segregation, a typical Moravian formation, might be regarded as similar to the spheres of men and women in traditional Aboriginal society, but their proximity to one another marked a change in Aboriginal culture, where strict rules determined social relations by establishing spatial boundaries between kin.13 Alongside the church on Ramahyuck lay the secular means of conversion—the schoolhouse. Closely modelled on the colony’s state schools, its requisite forms and desks, blackboards and copybooks, and its maps and books such as a history of the British Empire, Morell’s Grammar and Hackwood’s Morals, revealed its colonising purpose.14 Closely associated with the school was one of the most important buildings on Ramahyuck and, indeed, on many mission stations: the boarding house. Missionaries pinned their hopes of creating a civilised Christian community on Aboriginal young people, especially the children. Accordingly, Hagenauer and his fellow missionaries battled strenuously with the Kurnai for control over their children. The
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Bath House
Garden and Orchard
Hop Kiln Boarding Laundry House School
Store Mission House School Teachers House
Church
Toilet
Cottages
Cottages
Village Green
Figure 3.1
Diagram of Ramahyuck Mission, 1885. (Drawn by Gary Swinton, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University.)
missionaries believed that to break the children’s and young Aboriginal women’s links with their culture, they needed to remove them as far as possible from ‘the camp’, ‘the influence of their elders’ and other sources of ‘savagery’, so they tried to force those camps outside the mission village and limit interaction between children and parents.15 One critical observer pinpointed the purpose of the boarding house she saw at Lake Tyers: We noticed some new buildings since our last visit, and the missionary Mr Bulmer is putting up a weather-board hut for the children to live in, and so keep them away from their parents. The latter do not seem to mind this severance but it seemed to
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me rather horrible, this quenching of all natural affection. They must give up all idea of teaching their olden ways.16
Boarding houses have been described as ‘effective total environments for the reconstruction of a new reality’ (Dening 1980: 266) and on Ramahyuck the Aboriginal children were to undergo what the missionaries called ‘a process of reclamation’. Every care was taken to train them in the missionary habits of ‘industry, cleanliness and order’.17 One of the most striking characteristics of the interior of the boarding house was the separation of the sexes. The boys and girls were housed in different wings and there was to be ‘no communication’ between their quarters; this was quite unlike traditional Aboriginal society, in which children grew up together until the onset of puberty. The dormitories, moreover, were partitioned by high canvas screens, and each child had his or her own bed. This differentiation and segregation was matched by similar arrangements outdoors, where there were separate toilets, with shrubs as ‘screen fences’ to secure ‘privacy and the proper separation of the sexes’, and two playgrounds.18 The playgrounds were placed in front of the mission house, and the children could be observed from there as well as from the teacher’s house, the schoolhouse and the boarding house. Outside this domain of public buildings, the village green was, more than anywhere else in this structured landscape, a place where the empty spaces had as much meaning as the physical constructions themselves. This expressed the missionaries’ attempt to create Aboriginals as private individuated subjects by virtue of redefining their notions of space (and time). The missionaries sought to make each person an integrated centre of consciousness, distinct from the natural world and other Aboriginals. They were to become accustomed to choice and achievement of status, rather than bound by the obligations of a kin-based society which ascribed status. The individual was to replace the group as the fundamental moral arbiter, with a strong sense of sin and responsibility for his or her own salvation replacing notions of shame. For the missionaries, housing was a fundamental part of this civilising process. They were emphatic that there was a link between individual houses and civilisation and between what they called the ‘communistic camp’ and savage tribalism. Hagenauer stated this belief simply (in a statistical return for Ramahyuck in 1867): ‘35 Aborigines live in houses, a civilised life’.19 One of the missionaries’ first tasks with any potential male convert was to persuade the young man to build his own house. As one visitor to Ramahyuck, Alfred Howitt (who, like many later anthropologists, was unsympathetic to the aims of missionaries), caustically observed in 1870: ‘There is a terrible deal of humbug in the world. The other day a baptised black was married. Being Christian he is bound to live in a hut—but he has no furniture—and [if ] I were he, would rather be in a camp’.20 The 1877 Royal Commission on Aborigines explicated the missionary vision when it reported: ‘They [the Aborigines] dwell in houses; are decently and suitably clad; live with their families around them; polygamy is not known and marriage is respected’ (Royal Commission 1877: viii).
Figure 3.2
This 1877 photograph of Ramahyuck shows the church, boarding house and mission house at the top of the village, and the fence which marked off this domain from the village green where the Aboriginal cottages lay (in the top right of the picture). (Courtesy La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria.)
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Just as the mission station was constructed by enclosing land, so Aboriginals were to be reformed by placing them within houses and ordering their domestic life. By creating more socially segregated and differentiated space, the missionaries hoped Aboriginal people would withdraw from close interaction with one another and acquire a distinctive sense of self. Something of this is evident in a brief description of the living quarters of Ramahyuck converts Donald and Bessy Cameron. When they were responsible for managing the boarding house on the station, their home had ‘two neat little rooms’ where ‘a few books and some [needle] work and some nicknacks’ could be seen, and which was ‘just as whites might occupy’.21 The design of the houses of other married couples—and they and their infant children mainly occupied the houses on Ramahyuck—also conformed to European norms, with a functional and specialised differentiation of space. Similarly small, ‘somewhat in the tea-caddy style’, the cottages comprised two rooms: a living room of 14 x 13 feet and 9 to 11 feet in height, which was also the kitchen and dining room, and a bedroom of about 11 x 11 feet, with a verandah at the front. On the wall fronting the village green, there were two small square box windows either side of the door which opened into the living room. Most of the houses first built on Ramahyuck were bark and slab huts, but eventually these were replaced by weatherboard cottages. These were improved in the 1880s when brick chimneys and baking ovens were installed, walls were lined with pine, and iron roofs were fitted.22 The cottages were sparsely furnished by the standards of the upper working class of the day, but the walls were decorated and the mantelpieces had photographs of the Aboriginals and their children and other objects which were regarded as markers of taste and refinement. The most prized were rocking chairs, gramophones and sewing machines. One keen observer described the living rooms of the Ramahyuck cottages in 1877 in this way: There are, at least, a deal table, a couple of chairs, one or two additional seats of nondescript character, a chest or trunk, a sort of cupboard erection containing a few articles of crockery—the family dinner-service—and some cooking utensils of the simplest kind. The walls are papered and adorned with an illustrated sheet of the ‘British Workman’ or some such periodical. A bedroom completes the accommodation. (Southern Cross, 5 May 1877)
In terms of the missionary program, such houses were clearly meant to nurture a form of sociality which privileged a sense of private individuality and interiority rather than that of public community and communal life, a culture of individual selves and personal narratives rather than one of social relations and collective stories. The development of individual space was accompanied by an emphasis on nurturing a monogamous rather than a polygamous family household, and by weakening the integration with wider kin community so fundamental to Aboriginal society.
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More than any other facet of mission station life, perhaps, the preparation and consumption of food best illustrates the changes in sociality and social interaction which the missionaries tried to introduce. Food was to be both prepared and eaten inside the cottage and by the individual members of that cottage, husband and wife, unlike in traditional Aboriginal society in which food was prepared outside on an open fire, and was consumed publicly and communally. As anthropologist Barry Morris has argued, the camp fire has been ‘an important site for social intercourse’ in Aboriginal communities. It sustains social relationships and a form of sociality that is ‘premised on the absence of significant borderlines between public and private life’; by contrast, private, internal fireplaces such as stoves undermine ‘forms of familial and group interaction’ (Morris 1989: 81, 87–9). Similarly, Aboriginal men on Ramahyuck were to be encouraged to work productively for their own families in order to achieve economic and social independence, rather than sharing with other kin.23 This too was inscribed in the topography of the mission station, for the missionaries declared that each house should have some garden attached to it.24 In time the missionaries tried to deepen Aboriginals’ sense of self by further differentiation of the space on Ramahyuck. People were to be separated by the placement of cottages at regular intervals on both sides of the quadrangle, although later this was regarded as insufficient: fences were built to enclose the cottages and the gardens to the rear, and later still another border fence was proposed to demarcate the cottages from the village green, and so their individual inhabitants from that communal space.25 This spatial ordering can be compared with traditional Aboriginal social organisation. The cluster of adjacent miamias pictured here at Lake Tyers in 1886 contrasts starkly with the line of cottages on the same station at this time (Figures 3.3 and 3.4). Twenty years earlier on this mission station, some young Kurnai men had told missionary John Bulmer that they wished to erect tents rather than build houses, and while this was influenced by their experience as pastoral workers it was also an expression of a desire for the traditional Aboriginal intergenerational sociality implicit in such spatial organisation.26 The missionary emphasis on the boundaries between personal and private space, on the one hand, and communal and public space, on the other, was paralleled by a similar reconstruction of the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’. As part of their strategy to reshape Aboriginals, the missionaries sought to transform the nature of Aboriginal control over their bodily selves. They tried to inculcate modesty and abstinence, especially in the women, by emphasising a sense of sin and guilt in sexual matters. This was to be facilitated by the architecture of the cottages, where a distinctive functional space—that is, the bedroom—was to contain sexual relations. This concern with control over the body not only related to copulation but to other physical functions as well: bathing, spitting, urination and defecation. In these bodily matters, as in almost every aspect of the mission station landscape, Hagenauer was
SPACE AND TIME AT RAMAHYUCK
Figure 3.3
Figure 3.4
51
Humpies & Houses: Nicholas Caire revealed very different cultural worlds when he took these photographs at Lake Tyers in 1886 (see also Figure 3.4). (Courtesy National Library of Australia; La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria.)
Humpies & Houses (see also Figure 3.3). (Courtesy National Library of Australia; La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria.)
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insistent on ‘order’ which, in this case, imposed a separation between activities and behaviours classified as ‘clean’ and those classified as polluted or unclean. On Ramahyuck this was reflected in the provision of plunge and shower baths and, most importantly, in the provision of toilets. These ‘needful arrangements’, as Hagenauer called them, were to be placed at the bottom of the garden of each cottage, and were a further means of distancing Aboriginals from the natural world. The missionaries and their overseers in this region, the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines, came to regard toilets as essential. In the 1870s, the Board criticised some stations for their noticeable want of ‘closets’, declaring it was ‘now time that there should be the usual conveniences’ because ‘conventional decency, especially in reference to females’, was ‘a civilising agent’.27
Time on Ramahyuck Missionaries believed that reconstituting Aboriginal society was not only a matter of changing Aboriginal notions of space, but also required altering their conceptions of temporality. They believed Aboriginals did not have a proper, linear or progressive sense of time, and on Ramahyuck Hagenauer set out to establish not only a right place but also a right time for every activity, from sunrise to sunset. Eating, sleeping, working, praying, and playing were to occur in particular places at particular times. As on other mission stations, a daily timetable was drawn up, and its strict routine was buttressed by what the missionaries called ‘simple rules’ for ‘the proper regulation’ and control of the inmates, which were written out and placed in a prominent place, as was a large station clock.28 Every moment of the Aboriginals’ time on Ramahyuck was to be fully occupied. The day began around daylight, when the church bell would ring ‘as a sign for all to rise’—at 6.00 a.m. in the summer (and half an hour later in the winter). The first task for all was to wash. The men then gathered at the storehouse to receive their family’s daily rations of food, while the women made the beds, swept out their houses and yards, and prepared breakfast. In the boarding house the boys and girls each had small tasks to perform: the boys milking the cows and cutting firewood, the girls assisting the matron with cooking and washing. At 7.00 a.m. sharp they all sat down to breakfast. At 7.30 a.m. the church bell rang again to call the Aboriginals into church for a short service. After the morning service the children remained in the church for half an hour of religious instruction, after which they were allowed to play in front of the mission house before entering school for the morning. There their young minds were to be schooled in literacy and numeracy, which was supposed to make them into useful workers. They were also to acquire a new sense of space and time as they learned an imperial geography
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and history, and were taught to scorn the spatial and temporal concepts embedded in their own culture. While the children were in school, their parents and other men and women went about their allotted work. Hagenauer, as other missionaries, placed enormous emphasis on the value of labour. He saw Aboriginals as naturally lazy, disinclined to ‘work and restraint of every kind’, and incapable of ‘sustained labour’. Through work, he believed, the virtues of industry and discipline would be inculcated and indolence expunged. The capitalist notion of regular work for pay (or rations) was also taught to Aboriginal men—a form of exchange very different from the rights and obligations of traditional Aboriginal culture.29 On Ramahyuck the men worked in the gardens or elsewhere in the village under Hagenauer’s supervision, and the women laboured in their households under the superintendence of Louise Hagenauer. Work continued until 1.00 p.m., the dinner hour, when the children returned to the boarding house and the men retired to their cottages. At 2.00 p.m. school resumed for another two hours, after which the children were expected to do various chores before they were allowed an hour to play, once again in the segregated playground. For their parents, work was to continue throughout the afternoon until 6.00 p.m., when they had supper. An hour later they were again called to church for a short service. When this was concluded, the children filed off to the boarding house to prepare lessons for the next day, and their parents retired to their cottages for the night. It was by no means ‘all work and no play’ on Ramahyuck, but with ‘play’ the missionaries also tried to introduce change in that they distinguished between labour and leisure. It seems that there were ‘various odd hours and half-hours’ of leisure during the week, and Saturday was a half-holiday. The missionaries hoped to teach Aboriginal people how to occupy this time, recommending amusements which would enforce habits of steadiness and self-discipline, and which were oriented more to the individual than to the collective: temperance, reading newspapers and books, playing chess, cricket and football for men; needlework for women, and singing. On Sunday the sabbath was to be strictly observed. Every family was to keep a Bible and hold family worship in their cottages. A service was held in the church at 11.30 a.m. The children attended Sunday School in the morning, the men and women in the afternoon. In the evening they were all required to assemble for another service. By seeking to reorder Aboriginals’ sense of time and space in this way, the missionaries sought to formulate their day-to-day experience so that they would come to know themselves in a manner which was fundamentally different from their traditional ways of being. Having entered the missions collectively, the mission dwellers were to become individuals who identified themselves by reference to a particular space and its temporal rhythms.
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Outcomes Within at least two decades of the founding of the mission stations in Gippsland, much had changed among many of the Kurnai, especially on Ramahyuck.30 Many Aboriginals—especially the converts, the core of whom were not originally Kurnai—had come to regard this mission and Ramahyuck as their home and had adopted many of the missionary attitudes and values which were articulated through the sense of space and time I have been describing. However, these mission-dwellers also continued to have a different sense of space and time from that of Europeans. It is apparent that their customary understandings of place and self had not been extinguished by the missionary program. In part, this cultural continuity was actually facilitated by the mission station environs. Ramahyuck and Lake Tyers were both located on the edge of another spatial world, that of the river, lake and bush, a seascape and landscape which, for some time, retained familiar meanings and from which Aboriginals continued to draw sustenance. On both stations, as on other missions, Aboriginal access to this was facilitated by the economic underdevelopment of reserves which forced superintendents to allow Aboriginals to continue to hunt, gather and fish as well as work for pastoralists. As long as these practices continued, Aboriginals had an avenue for sustaining the forms of sociality associated with them. As I have discussed elsewhere, Aboriginal movement off the mission stations also gave them the opportunity to re-enter a distinctively Aboriginal social domain (Attwood 1989: ch. 3). On Ramahyuck itself, Aboriginals maintained a separate Aboriginal domain as well as a different spatial sense (although a lack of historical sources by Aboriginal authors means we can only glimpse this). In the face of the missionaries’ dominance, Aboriginals no doubt sought to use the village green in ways that made it their own enclave (just as the missionaries had their own enclosure); in so doing they tried to provide themselves with a buffer to resist the intrusive oversight of the missionaries. There is evidence to suggest that within their own domain the Aboriginals moved quite freely between one another’s cottages; certainly the missionaries complained that the women were ‘terrible gossips’ and wished to control their ‘unruly tongues’, revealing that Aboriginal people asserted a sense of community which contradicted the individuation the missionaries strove to cultivate.31 Likewise, it is apparent that Aboriginal social relationships continued to be determined by kinship rules, such as mother-in-law avoidance,32 and it would be surprising if the Kurnai on Ramahyuck did not choose the location of their cottages with these considerations in mind. Other sources suggest, too, that their inter-actions continued to be informed by the principles of the traditional kin sociality—inclusion, reciprocity and sharing (Royal Commission 1877: 39). Indeed, it seems probable that the assertion of these values, and the deep attachment the Kurnai and other Aboriginals formed to the mission stations, eventually led missionaries such as Hagenauer and government bodies like the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines to realise they had not succeeded in reconstituting Aboriginal sociality. This in turn provoked their attempt to break up the mission stations and force Aboriginal people away from the places they had come to regard as their only homes.
CHAPTER 4
Freedom and Control on the Southern Institutions, New South Wales, 1879–1909 Peter Read
The first of the new and more permanent generation of church and state Aboriginal stations in New South Wales was Warangesda. It was founded in 1879 by the selfappointed lay-missionary John Gribble (father of the more famous Ernest), in Wiradjuri country, on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River, close to Darlington Point and some one hundred kilometres downstream from Narrandera. At 800 hectares it remained, for nearly fifty years, one of the largest Aboriginal stations in the state. My intention in this chapter is to ask: what was the meaning of the new generation of Aboriginal institutions which were established in New South Wales in the last decades of the nineteenth century? What was their impact on Aboriginal civilisation, then and now? I will examine a single passage from the Warangesda manager’s diary, written in 1894—a short but eloquent piece which contains all those aspects of policy, conflict, personality and cultural clash which make the new generation of state-run stations so critical.
A Dormitory Confrontation On 7 June 1894, the manager wrote: There was another bother with MRS SWIFT today. She openly accuses FANNY HELAND of being enceinte & told the girls in the Dorm they ought all to laugh at her & while she was at the washtub yesterday called her a sulky looking pig. FANNY came & told manager this am & when he spoke to MRS SWIFT she said it was all false, that she did not use any such expression. The manager asked her if she ever said of NANCY MURRAY that she was a Chinese looking thing. Which she indignantly denied, but Buckley said he heard her use the expression and FANNY HELAND says she heard her call NANCY a yellow Chinaman. And called the manager a hypocrite and that all the whites were a lot of hypocrites. After the bother MRS SWIFT poked her tongue out at FANNY & made faces at her. NANCY MURRAY says she said to the girls in the Dorm she would put the people against the manager, & as far as the manager has been able to find out has not done so.1 55
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‘The Girls in the Dorm’ Of the snapshots of institutional life to be examined in this intriguing passage, we start with the most obvious—the girls themselves. The dormitory girls are aged between 6 and 16, and one, it seems, is pregnant. Probably there were never more than twenty or thirty in residence, but the girls’ dormitory was in some ways the showpiece of all the early mission stations. Girls’ education focused on all that the Christian missions were trying to achieve. The concept of the dormitory-school had been modelled on Victorian practice, in that not all girls had their parents living on the same mission station; some had been induced to come from elsewhere, even from outside Wiradjuri country. Like the Ramahyuck girls, they were to be specifically educated into the virtues and habits of working class White women: they were to become domestic maids, and later wives and mothers in British-style cottages. But unlike Ramahyuck, education on and for the mission station was no longer an aim in itself. An unfavourable report by the District Inspector of the Department of Public Instruction in 1887 had described Warangesda as a failure and recommended that the children be sent into domestic service (O’Byrne 1887). The stations, subject to non-Aboriginal pressures both to contain the inmates in groups within the boundaries and, simultaneously, to drive them as individuals into the community, had become no longer just a refuge but a clearing house. So Fanny Heland and Nancy Murray and all the other girls will soon come under pressure to leave Warangesda. Most, though, will refuse and the manager, unless he resorts to punishing them or their relatives by withholding their rations, will have no power to coerce them. If he manages to persuade any of the girls to leave what has been their home as well as their school, they probably will return soon, and he has no legal power to stop them. It was the same at Brungle, the other big managed station in Wiradjuri country near Tumut. Though it had no dormitory, the Brungle manager also was required to persuade the girls to leave their families and offer themselves as domestic servants. In 1891 two girls sent to Junee to be house girls returned after a couple of months, even though they had supposedly been ‘very kindly treated’.2 ‘Put the People against the Manager’ The manager’s power even in the dormitory was more apparent than real, and declining. Earlier missionaries found that rewards of tobacco and food produced much better results than punishments. Flogging for theft or absconding had to be administered sparingly because the population would not tolerate it for long. When, in 1834, the missionary William Watson seized a child from its mother to carry off to the Wellington Valley dormitory, the next day there was not an Aboriginal in sight; the whole camp had dispersed in protest, anger and fear (Read 1988: 14–18). The Warangesda super-intendent, fifty years later, could not resort to kidnapping. The manager’s lack of power to enforce discipline was amplified amongst the adults. The superintendent could neither bribe nor coerce people to come to church, and two months after this incident in the dormitory, he abandoned the Wednesday night services in the hope that Sunday attendance would improve.3 In matters secular,
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Victorian Kooris had learned that direct confrontation was not always the best method of opposing the managerial regime (Barwick 1998). By 1894 floggings at Warangesda were, from the manager’s perspective, counter-productive, because the residents had learned, mainly from their Victorian kinfolk, that written complaints and organised deputations to government or newspapers could achieve far more than confrontation. Rather than rising in rebellion, they preferred to draw up a petition and send it to the Board. Go-slows, passive resistance and strikes were difficult weapons to beat. In 1883 Gribble had recorded an incident which would have been most unusual in the early years of Ramahyuck: Strikes over the absence of flour or sugar were commonplace. General rebellion amongst men all this week. They want me to relax the working rule. As the government have granted a little money in aid, they think they have no right to work. These half-caste men are the ring-leaders. They have formed a deputation and have gone to Sydney to lodge a complaint.4
The men, according to Gribble, failed in Sydney, returned after a month, and were told to quit the mission if they could not obey the rules.5 The fact that he readmitted them at all shows the weakness of his position. The superintendent needed labour. If he ejected the married men who formed the great majority of male adults, probably they would take their wives and the dormitory children with them. They would gather about the regional towns of Darlington Point, Narrandera or Junee and the residents of those towns would complain to the Protection Board who would in turn ask the manager to explain his expulsions. There was, at this time, no solution. That was in 1883. Ten years later, at about the time of the dormitory confrontation, the manager tried to defeat a general strike by withholding all rations. The men went back to work, but two months later they went out again because there was no sugar. The Warangesda manager, whose station’s configuration superficially resembled the classical Victorian disposition of authority and power in space, both failed to halt the traditional movement patterns established throughout Wiradjuri country for centuries, and, at this moment, failed to fully control the behaviour of those who chose to reside upon it.6 For institutional life always remained one of several options available to the Wiradjuri. The only people who could be generally counted upon to want to remain permanently at the institutions were Aboriginal older relatives, often women, who took European education seriously, but who found their children excluded from every school in the district. While it was true that a large number of Aboriginals gathered together fomented White prejudice, making it difficult to find work locally, the simplest thing to do if one was expelled was to camp at the unofficial reserve outside the station boundary. Here rations, news and family relations were conveniently maintained, and outside the manager’s control. Here the disposition of Aboriginal space was maintained. All the missions and stations had ‘fringe camps’ from their inception, but by the 1880s, the increasing and more articulate White populations were apt to complain
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about them. Gribble regarded it a victory when he persuaded a single person to come from the camp to the mission.7 Thirteen years later, in December 1896, the camps remained the same source of annoyance to the administration. The Local Board, which technically oversaw the manager’s administration, ordered the Warangesda camp destroyed. If the order was carried out, the camp people merely moved somewhere else.8 The problem had been latent in the managed institutions from the beginning. Ultimately the institutions could only remain a numerical success if the inmates could be persuaded that it was better to remain on them than off them. This the missionaries had signally failed to do. The problem was intractable: the Aboriginals, refusing to use the institutions as the sponsors intended, used them for their own purposes—as convenient stopping and living areas, within the traditional ambit, until there was a social, cultural or economic reason to go somewhere else. Such cross-purposes are evident in the establishment of Grong Grong reserve, near Narrandera. In 1891 James Gormley MLA, under pressure from his constituents, recommended that a reserve be opened on the Murrumbidgee River at Grong Grong. Reluctantly the Protection Board agreed—and was flooded with applications not from Narrandera Wiradjuri, but from those at Warangesda!9
‘Buckley Said’ Only a single male appears in the extract, and he appears to be the manager’s informer. Where are the others? Perhaps institutionalisation harmed men culturally more than women. The number of men to women on the managed stations was always disproportionate. Men could rarely be paid a living wage, and smaller stations with less arable land were even more unpromising as work places. At Brungle in 1898, hardly a single able-bodied man remained on the station.10 Single men were never welcome; they symbolised or threatened disorder and insubordination. Their role as uncles or promised husbands or boyfriends was belittled whenever they were refused entry to school, dormitory or to the station itself. It happened frequently. The different managers’ daily diary entries are preoccupied with confronting the unscheduled and unauthorised arrivals of young single men from the traditional living areas near Cowra, Brungle and Yass, and from the new towns of Hay, Narrandera, Gundagai and Jerilderie. In 1891 the manager noted that three men had left for Brungle; in August 1892 nine men and boys arrived from Yass looking for work; in December a Yass police inspector complained of two men ‘just loafing from one mission to another’.11 In March 1888 eight men left Warangesda and camped in the reserve in protest because, according to the manager, ‘they were not allowed to associate with the girls when they pleased’.12 Is it not so surprising, then, that only a single male is mentioned? Is it significant that while the many women involved in the fracas are cheeky or defiant, the only male mentioned is the superintendent’s informer? A first glance recognises these young men as happy-go-lucky rolling stones, wandering about the country in search of adventure. But it is clear that the managed stations were not the kind of venues to inculcate feelings of masculine self-confidence and self-worth even for those few who were allowed to
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remain. It may be that the apparently carefree travel of those usually described derogatorily as ‘idle young half-castes’ was in part sponsored by insecurity and unemployment. The young men were peripatetic because they were wanted neither inside the stations nor in the workforce outside. The authoritarian and confrontational nature of the managerial structure left the men without a role, and diminished their sense of self-worth. Sociologists to the present have noted the dominance of Aboriginal women in management, administration and social issues.
‘Enceinte’ Fanny Heland may or may not have been ‘enceinte’. But plenty of children were born at Warangesda, and to a variety of parentage. Institutional births were crucial in twentieth century Aboriginal history. The dormitory girls knew Warangesda as their home; they knew no other. Already they were acculturated into that most central tenet of European culture: they recognised a permanent home. Simultaneously, they enjoyed a much reduced traditional education. Very few older Aboriginals (grandparents and great-uncles and great-aunts) lived on the station itself. If their fathers were skilled rural workers—shearers or drovers—they were generally forced to work far away from the Aboriginal centres if they wanted regular employment. Only their mothers and aunts, if anyone, could be expected to be in touch with them regularly. After twenty years (that is, by 1900), Warangesda people were beginning to recognise this part of the river as their home. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, Jack Bamblett, by Koori tradition an Aboriginal from Newcastle, married the Gaelicspeaking Scot and Warangesda nurse Mary Cameron. Their children, mostly born at Warangesda, married either locally or into the extended families within their traditional walkabout. Their children cemented local relationships. One married Jack Ingram from Maloga, the Victorian mission station started by Daniel Matthews. Another married a woman from Darlington Point. A third married Sophie Wedge from Yass and a fourth married a man named Howell from the Macquarie River, again in Wiradjuri country. Many of the large Bamblett clan, today extending over much of Victoria and southern New South Wales, regard the Murrumbidgee River from Narrandera to Leeton as their first country as well as place of origin. Many other modern Wiradjuri families also, like the Charles, Edwards, Ingram, Kennedy and Kirby families are intimately linked to Warangesda, in the same way the Grosvenor, Williams and Freeman families are linked to Brungle. Obviously, their ancestors had existed as Aboriginals before the establishment of the station, but Warangesda functioned to protect, stabilise, educate and record. ‘Nancy Murray’ At least one Aboriginal family name in the extract is significant. The Murrays, along with the Glasses and Coes, are regarded as one of the three founding families of Erambie station in Cowra, to which many of the Warangesda residents went after their own station was closed.13 For the Bambletts of the Murrumbidgee and the Murrays of the
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Lachlan at Cowra, the managed institution had acted both as catalyst and foundation stone for modern Wiradjuri extended families. In 1988 nine out of ten Wiradjuri individuals had a historical family connection with Warangesda mission (Read 1988: 46). Association with a big managed station sometimes has meant the ultimate difference between identification and non-identification. While a field worker for Link-Up, I met with several people wishing to reclaim an Aboriginal identity by way of ancestors to whom their Aboriginal identity had been a matter of unconcern, ignorance or shame.14 Some time in the last one hundred years, one or more ancestors had concealed an Aboriginal identity. But none had their family origins in Warangesda or Brungle. Warangesda residents, however else they may have thought about themselves, ultimately defined themselves as persons fundamentally different from Whites. The endless reiteration of dichotomy and division opposed any weakening of identity. Just as the children’s homes at Cootamundra and Kinchela reinforced the consciousness of the inmates’ Aboriginality, so the gathering together of Aboriginals in large numbers on the stations reinforced feelings of resentment and solidarity against Whites. The pressures not to identity were all on the outside, and the history of another Warangesda family illustrates the temptations. Bill Ferguson, a White man, married an Aboriginal, Emily Ford, from Toganmain Station in 1872.15 They lived at Waddi, in a fringe camp, for about two years. When Emily died in childbirth, the two boys Duncan and Bill were sent, despite the protests of their Aboriginal grandmother, to the Warangesda school. It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened had they not attended the school. Bill senior might at this point have easily left the district and married a White woman, and Bill junior, who was not very obviously Aboriginal in appearance, might then have grown up ignorant of or unimpressed by his Aboriginal ancestry and culture. It happened many times. But the boys did attend Warangesda Aboriginal school. Here their consciousness was reified, though probably not encouraged; they learnt whatever culture and language was available to them, they knew many of their extended family personally—and Bill junior grew up to become the famous William Ferguson, energetic activist and a member of the group of southeastern Aboriginals who conceived the Day of Mourning.
‘All the Whites Were a Lot of Hypocrites’ There is a significant point in that cheekily pertinent observation that the manager and all the other Whites were hypocrites. At Warangesda, and at all the managed institutions, the Aboriginals had learned to see the Whites en bloc just as the Whites had always seen them en bloc. They had entered the station as Wiradjuri clan members, Narrandera, Kutu-Mundra and Murrinballa (Howitt 1904: 56), and those from outside came as Ngemba or Joti Joti or Ngunnawal; but they lived within the station boundaries as Aboriginals. The managed institution, whatever the intentions of the management, cast people metaphorically if not literally into hostile camps. The solidarity of ‘Us Christians’ (never very firmly fixed in the missionaries’ minds) soon became the divided
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‘us’ and ‘them’. The big mission stations reinforced and to an extent created the firm and united Aboriginal identity which the Protection Board was forced to confront throughout its seventy years of existence. In our quotation, a simple and childish row has developed into a stand-up confrontation between Nancy Murray and the manager. It would not have taken much to ‘set all the Dormitory girls’ against the manager. They were potentially, if not explicitly, against him already. Within a year of their arrival, the names of clan groups were vanishing rapidly into memory and the Wiradjuri were coming to identify themselves in the terms the Whites used—the new categories of ‘Aborigines’ and ‘Blacks’, and ‘Half-Castes’.
‘A Chinese Looking Thing’ Fanny Heland called Nancy Murray ‘a Chinese looking thing’. Perhaps she was indeed of part-Chinese descent: Narrandera had a very large Chinese population in the 1880s. Warangesda contained many Aboriginals who were not of full descent. The managers and the entire administration were so obsessed with miscegenation that references to it permeated the everyday conversations of the station and found their way even into our quotation. Let us suppose that Nancy Murray was indeed of Chinese/Aboriginal descent. It was only eight years since the Victorian Aborigines Protection Board had passed legislation to evict all Aboriginals of part descent from its reserves and stations, as if they had become, by legislative fiat, White people. Yet in Victoria, as in New South Wales, definitions did not match reality. Both to the Whites as much as to the Wiradjuri themselves, a part-Aboriginal man or woman was not White, whatever the law. All the station officials from first to last regarded part-Aboriginals, with their better formal education and knowledge of the workings of the White society, as potential challengers. They did their best to rid the station of them. The only real power of expulsion they possessed was through the law against trespass: that is, if a superintendent declared a part-Aboriginal group to be ‘non-Aboriginal’, he could then charge them with trespass if they remained on the station. If the group then went to camp with their relatives at the Police Paddock, they might be charged with ‘associating with Aboriginals’—in effect with living with their own family. However, the other Whites in the district would now object if this group, by every sensible definition Aboriginal, continued to live outside the officially designated Aboriginal station simply because the mission manager could not control them! By 1910 it was not just the single young men who were caught in this impossible no man’s land; families also found themselves pushed and shoved by contradictory White demands. In that year four Aboriginal men, refusing to leave Brungle station, were prosecuted for trespass.16 In the same year the Darlington Point Whites complained of Wiradjuri people, frightened of having their children forcibly removed, gathering around the town and camping by the river. The manager was directed to take them back again and to warn them that they were more likely, not less, to lose their children if they refused to return.17
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‘A Sulky Looking Pig’ The reported conversations were carried out, not in Wiradjuri, but in vernacular English. Managers objected to Aboriginal languages, sometimes because English was useful as a lingua franca, usually because they could not understand it, and always because the use of Wiradjuri was regarded as a serious impediment to acculturation. The children in the dormitory and the school learned English as their first language. They were the last of whom it could be said that they were reasonably proficient in Wiradjuri. The language on the managed stations was dying. The institutional structure encouraged it, the officials demanded it. Probably the adults living in the camps outside were unaware of the consequences of not speaking the language routinely and every day. It was amongst this first generation of dormitory girls and schoolroom boys that the fate of the Wiradjuri language was sealed. It was the most significant victory of the managed institutions.
Future Implications Such were the implications embedded in the quotation. To conclude, let us leap forward thirty years (to 1924) to explore how the administration has resolved the tensions and weaknesses in the management and structure of the Aboriginal stations. The religious management of the station was vanquished in 1897, only a few years after our confrontation in the dormitory. The state has won control of the stations from the voluntary and religious Aborigines Protection Association, and wins its own Act in 1909. By 1924, with the aid of that Act and two harsh amendments in 1915 and 1918, the state’s Aboriginals are in a far more vulnerable position. The managed reserves have fulfilled their ever-present potential to become unmanageable, and all the weaknesses and tendencies of the managed institution that we have noticed have been magnified and exposed. The Aborigines Protection Board has no answer beyond greater punitive force. Parents continue to remove their children from the station while the girls themselves refuse to go into service. In 1899 two or three families leave Brungle for Cowra, and the Board, in an effort to have them returned, sues the parents for abducting their own children.18 The officials are furious that magistrates may sometimes declare an Aboriginal child not to be within the legal definition of ‘neglect’. The Board’s failure to persuade the girls to go into domestic service will be met with force. Through the Act and the 1915 Amendment, the state will grant itself the power to remove virtually any child it pleases. Of the 800 children removed from their communities in the period 1916–28, eighty-four will be Wiradjuri, seventy of them girls. Though the survivors were too old to give evidence to the 1995–96 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, it is these victims among the Stolen Generations who suffer the most.
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Institutional discipline has become much more coercive because the police, the health department, the judiciary and the Board have learned to cooperate. In 1916 the Warangesda manager is formally permitted to carry handcuffs and a pistol. Gambling, swearing, vagrancy (camping by the river) and disrespect for the manager are among the offences chargeable before a magistrate. The Board has met the problem of unwanted single men on its reserves by effectively declaring them, for the purposes of the Act, to be non-Aborigines. Circulars are sent around the stations containing the names of those proscribed—by 1920, 51 men have been expelled from Brungle, 41 from Warangesda.19 The effects are catastrophic.20 Self-doubt, which perhaps had begun to affect Aboriginal men from the earliest days of the managed institutions and missions, continues to corrode their identity. In 1950 the Brungle manager reports that the men appear to be under the sway of the women, ‘they let their wives set a standard to which they do not conform’;21 in 1995 Archie Roach writes his haunting, but devastating lyric, ‘She’s so tired of walking into doors’.22 In 1923 the Board is looking for assets to sell off to pay its debts. In July the Darlington Point police again complain of ‘undesirables’ around the town. On 17 October 1924 the Board decides to close Warangesda station forthwith. Almost exactly thirty years after the confrontation in the dormitory, the station is violently destroyed. Tradition holds that the last person to leave the station is Jim Turner, who nearly fifty years earlier came from Maloga mission with J.B. Gribble to establish the station. He is said to have defended his home at gunpoint until the roofs of the houses were pulled off. The dogs are destroyed, the large artefacts sold off and the broken remnants left for an archaeologist to investigate in 1995. The people, as they had to do seventy years earlier when a previous generation of mission stations failed, scatter to all points in Wiradjuri country and beyond. White farmers used the dormitory as a store and the church as a hay shed until they fell down, but the site has never again been occupied by Aboriginal people. The failure of the managed institutions precipitated the most hateful period for the Aboriginals of southern Australia in the whole of the 210 years of White occupation.
CHAPTER 5
Labour, Control and Protection: The Kahlin Aboriginal Compound, Darwin, 1911–38 Samantha Wells
compound, n. 1 (in Africa, India and elsewhere) an enclosure containing a residence or other establishment of Europeans. 2 (in South Africa and elsewhere) an enclosure in which African and other non-European labourers are housed during the term of their employment. 3 any similar enclosure for native workmen. 4 an enclosure in which prisoners of war are held. 5 an enclosure in which animals are held. (Macquarie Dictionary)
By far the greatest concentration of Aboriginals living within the Northern Territory town of Darwin during the 1911–38 period was in the Kahlin Aboriginal Compound.1 Others lived in such places as the Catholic Convent, the Plymouth Brethren Mission, on employers’ premises, in self-built huts and in ‘illegal’ town camps. As opposed to the Christianising and ‘civilising’ intentions of Aboriginal mission stations, Kahlin was established by the Commonwealth government in an attempt to provide an institution where Aboriginals employed in town and their families could be contained, controlled and segregated from ‘a civilisation that they do not understand and from which they need protection’.2 This chapter focuses on the establishment and existence of the Kahlin Compound and the way in which government policy dictated Aboriginal movement and living spaces during this period. It highlights a tension within the non-Aboriginal town between the demand for a domestic Aboriginal labour force and the undesirability of having an Aboriginal population living within an area colonised as non-Aboriginal space with the surveying, clearing and laying out of the Port Darwin township in 1870. Further themes concern the enduring acknowledgment of Larrakia traditional ownership of the Darwin region and the adoption of distinct policies for Aboriginals of mixed descent during this period.3
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Banishment Indigenous Larrakia family groups lived about the Darwin region in small, oval-shaped shelters made from forked tree branches or bamboo, joined together with strands of woven bark and covered with layers of thatched grass and paperbark. Factors such as climate, proximity to fresh water and the nature of the camp were reflected in the diversity and durability of these structures (Parkhouse 1895: 47; see also Memmott, this volume). While such structures survived colonisation, Aboriginals also began using materials like corrugated iron and tin in the construction of their dwellings. In 1885, 140 Aboriginal men, women and children were reported to be living in self-built galvanised iron and wood huts on Lameroo Beach or on vacant town allotments. Many were employed in town, looking after stock, collecting firewood and water, washing and ironing.4 While the labour performed by Aboriginals was obviously useful, the editor of the local newspaper insisted that the presence of ‘half-drunken savages and shrieking lubras’ in the town area was objectionable and that they were ‘just about full up of the mock humanitarian twaddle that because the country originally belonged to the “poor blacks” we should submit to be seriously inconvenienced by them’. The paper advised that the ‘Larrakeyahs’ should be made to camp outside the immediate precincts of the town and the neighbouring ‘Woolners’ be driven away altogether, as ‘they breed disturbances with the local tribe, they are incorrigible beggars and panderers, and a thorough nuisance and eyesore’.5 Increased tension over the presence, modes of living and growing number of Aboriginal people in the town area meant that by the late 1890s, local police, irrespective of the lack of legislative authority, began to forcibly remove Aboriginals from Darwin and to destroy their camps. Official reasons for such action concerned the proximity of Aboriginals to the ‘opium dens of the Chinese’ and increases in substance abuse and prostitution.6 Legislation proposed by Northern Territory Government Resident Charles Dashwood, intending to address such issues and improve existing employment, living and legal conditions for Aboriginals, was rejected by the South Australian government responsible for the administration of the Northern Territory.7 Continued debate in the local press over the presence of Aboriginals in the town and calls for the passage of legislation which required all Aborigines—unless they were employed or belonged to the ‘local Larrakeyah tribe’—to ‘retire to their own districts’, reached a climax two years later when the police, assisted by ‘black boys’, again pulled down Aboriginal camps within the town radius and burnt them. While there was some opposition to these measures, the Government Resident argued that reports of ‘leprosy’ amongst Aborigines and the belief that Aborigines were ‘better off ’ in their own districts justified such action. A certain amount of selectivity was evident in the burning of camps of Aboriginals who were unemployed or from the district in which leprosy had allegedly been found.8 While Dashwood and subsequent Government Residents lobbied the South Australian parliament to pass legislation in respect of Aborigines, it was not until three weeks
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before the Commonwealth assumed control of the Northern Territory that an Act to make Provision for the better Protection and Control of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Northern Territory, 1910 was passed. The Act, subsequently adopted by the Commonwealth government, established an ‘Aboriginals Department’ charged with the seemingly contradictory tasks of controlling and promoting the welfare of Aborigines. The Act and the Department were to be administered by a specially appointed Chief Protector who automatically became the ‘legal guardian of every aboriginal and half-caste child, notwithstanding that any such child has a parent or other relative living, until such child attains the age of eighteen years’. Under the Act, any ‘aboriginal or half-caste’ could be removed to or kept within the boundaries of any reserve or institution; unauthorised persons could not enter a place where Aborigines or ‘female half-castes’ were camped; protectors, assisted by police, could prevent the formation of camps or direct Aborigines to move their camps a certain distance from a township; towns could be declared prohibited areas for unemployed ‘aborigines and half-castes’; Crown lands could be reserved for the use of Aborigines; and the police were empowered to request any ‘aboriginal or half-caste’ found ‘loitering’ or ‘not decently clothed’ to leave the town.9 Within twenty-four hours of Chief Protector Basedow’s 1911 Darwin arrival, he ordered his staff to investigate the conditions of Aboriginal people in and around the town. Medical Officers Burston and Holmes reported that of the eight camps inspected, the ‘Larrekiya tribe’ was by far the most numerous and was gathered into two camps situated a quarter of a mile to the west of the town, one being on a cliff and the other on the beach below.10 Each camp consisted of half-a-dozen iron and bark ‘shanties’ enclosing a central open area. Other living areas visited were on beaches, in corrugated iron huts in the scrub about town and on vacant town allotments.11 Most of the camps were ‘kept fairly clean’ and the Aboriginal inhabitants reported to be ‘fairly free from serious disease ... well conditioned and contented’. Aboriginal Inspectors Kelly and Beckett also noted that the Larrakia was the largest group resident in the town and that, within some of the corrugated iron huts, a ‘rude semblance of order’ was observable. In a ‘primitive attempt to make a home, pans, mugs and occasionally a camp oven may be seen’. Contradicting the health inspectors’ reports of cleanliness, Kelly and Beckett suggested that an Aboriginal settlement be established which would ‘relieve Darwin of the eyesores which fringe the town in the shape of dirty and insanitary native camps’.12 A combination of administrative, legislative and political obstacles resulted in Basedow resigning within a month. While awaiting the arrival of Baldwin Spencer as the new Chief Protector, the main task of the ‘Aboriginals Department’ was to keep unemployed Aboriginals out of Darwin. To accomplish this, Inspector Beckett convened a meeting of the ‘Larrakeyah, Woolner, Wargite & Alligator tribes’ who agreed to ‘camp in amity on a piece of crown land ... nearly two miles from the town and to keep away from the town at night and when not at work’. Beckett enthused that ‘the whole cost of the removal of the blacks from the vicinity of the town’ would not ‘exceed a few cases of iron and one man’s labour for a week or two’ in assisting them to re-erect their huts, an expense offset by the ‘gain to the town in peace and cleanliness’.13
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Containment While Spencer spent only one year in Darwin, he nevertheless wrote a detailed report on future Northern Territory Aboriginal policy in which he highlighted the development and proposed function of a ‘village or compound’ on the outskirts of Darwin. Within the compound the ‘ramshackle, dirty huts’ of the Aboriginal camps were to be replaced by ‘neat huts with walls of stringy-bark and roofs of iron’. Families, single men, women and visitors were to be separated in individual huts and a school was to be established for children. Rations would be distributed to ‘old and indigent natives’ but able-bodied Aborigines were expected to be self-supporting, employed either in the compound garden, in business places or private houses. The Aboriginals Act prevented unauthorised people from entering the compound and required all Aborigines to be at the compound or their employer’s quarters after sunset. Spencer specified that Aborigines from outside parts were not to come into the compound, but recognised that the demand for domestic labour might require Aboriginal numbers to be ‘replenished periodically’ (Spencer 1913a). Spencer chose a site for the compound which he believed respected Larrakia traditions in providing a place where they could have two camps, ‘one right down on the seashore and another on the cliffs’.14 The Cullen Beach site, located a few kilometres from the town at Myilly Point, was the location of Chinese gardens and Spencer hoped that, after ‘turning the Chinese out’, Aborigines could be ‘trained’ to grow fruit and vegetables.15 Spencer believed that Aborigines in the town district had ‘so completely lost all their old customs’ that there would be no problem in gathering them together in the compound, but suggested that if Aborigines did resent the newly imposed discipline, ‘firm treatment’ would overcome such difficulties. However, the new Chief Protector, W.G. Stretton, reported in 1913 that while most of the camps in the town had been broken up, it had ‘been a difficult matter to induce the different tribes to amalgamate and fraternise’ in the Kahlin Compound. This factor may account for the recorded number of Aborigines moved into the compound (76) being considerably less than the number earlier reported within the town (305).16 According to plan, the compound was surrounded by a timber and barbed-wire fence and contained sixteen bark and iron huts, a boys’ dormitory and a girls’ dormitory built by those officially referred to as ‘inmates’. A kitchen, laundry, office, storeroom, coach-house and fowl house were later developed on the site. A full-time superintendent and matron were appointed when it was realised that the compound required ‘constant supervision by someone capable of controlling the natives day and night’.17 In 1917 the average population of the Kahlin Compound was recorded as approximately 230, with this number swelling to nearly 600 during the Wet.18 The NT Administrator reported that the compound huts were ‘much prized by their occupants, and all kept in thorough order’, that ‘native customs and names’ were encouraged, and that the cooperation which existed between ‘King George’ of the ‘Larrakeah tribe’ and the superintendent was of ‘considerable value in the maintenance of discipline and harmony’ at the compound.19
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In keeping with the distinctions ordained by the Aborigines Act, children removed from their mothers and families in Darwin and from outlying areas were brought into the compound and housed in galvanised iron dormitories comprising the ‘Half-caste Home’. That the girls’ dormitory was by far the largest signified a growing interest in controlling the lives and movement of women and girls, as did the fence erected in an effort to prevent contact between ‘half-castes’ and ‘full-bloods’.20 Tony Austin’s work with former residents of the Half-caste Home illuminates crowded living conditions, harsh discipline, poor schooling, inadequate meals and little substitution for the loss of affection resulting from the children’s removal from mothers and families (Austin 1992a). Daisy Ruddick remembers her first impressions of the Half-caste Home after she was removed from Limbunya Station in the early 1920s: ... when we got there we were locked up at night. We slept on the bed—no mattress, just a blanket on these iron cyclone beds. I think some of us were on the floor ... I don’t know ... there were that many of us at that time. We had to take the kerosene tin and use it as a toilet ... I remember this girl coming in with a great big aluminium dish. I tell you how those kids were starving ... they just jumped and knocked the plate. It was just ordinary bread and treacle and we had nothing because we didn’t do the same ... We used to have this weevilly porridge that I couldn’t eat ... But I tell you what! After the third day I was into everything! In the end I had to eat. (Ruddick et al. 1989)
A school was established for both Aboriginal and ‘half-caste’ children at the compound but the level of education was reputedly ineffectual, with the majority of girls leaving to be employed as domestics by the time they reached 14 and the boys trained to become messengers for various government departments or sent away to work in the pastoral industry (Austin 1992b). A small hospital was also built at Kahlin and it was sub-sequently reported that ‘natives show much less objection to going to their own hospital than they did to treatment at the general hospital’. Soon after the hospital was established, it was discovered that patients under treatment left the hospital at night to participate in ‘corroborees’ on Kahlin Beach. This was immediately and effectively prevented by wiring in the hospital wards and locking all the patients in from early evening until morning.21 Official reports on the compound continually emphasised that Kahlin was specifically for employed Aborigines and their families who were expected to pay the Aborigines Department a percentage of their wages to cover their costs at the compound.22 In further efforts to make Kahlin self-sufficient, residents were employed looking after chickens, a large herd of goats and the gardens, as well as baking bread, collecting water from the compound windmills and milking the cow. Convalescing patients were put to work cutting timber or scrubbing and cleaning, and residents made and sold water canteens and iron tanks as well as supplying fruit, vegetables, fish and wood to the compound, the Half-caste Home, the Government Hospital, Government House, and the
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Police Department.23 Women at the Half-caste Home conducted a laundry service and made clothes for sale to the Health and Aborigines departments.24 Aboriginals coming into town during the wet season found employment on public works such as destroying noxious weeds or clearing work at the Botanic Gardens. Within a decade, Aboriginals from the compound were performing most of the domestic and manual labour in and around Darwin and were primarily responsible for the upkeep of the compound.25 While the NT Administrator maintained that the success of Kahlin was apparent in that it prevented ‘nomadic natives’ from camping within the town and that Aborigines were ‘happy’ and under the ‘thorough control of the Superintendent’, newspaper reports and official correspondence indicates criticism of the compound and its proximity to the town. Much of it concerned a growing fear of disease being spread from there and the inability of the compound superintendent to keep Aborigines confined to Kahlin. Principal offences committed by Aboriginals at this time were drunkenness, use of opium, and being found in prohibited areas. The parlous resources of the Aborigines Department meant that Kahlin was never governed as the tight ship Spencer envisaged and oral accounts attest to both children and adults escaping to steal fruit from neighbouring gardens, to carry out ‘illicit’ affairs or to return to their own country. The replacement of the Aboriginals Act with the 1918 Northern Territory Aboriginals Ordinance endeavoured to address such issues by stipulating that all Aborigines in Darwin had to live at Kahlin and strengthening penalties for Aborigines found in prohibited areas or outside the compound during curfew hours without permission.26 Even so, continued public and official reports of the compound being a ‘brothel’ and a danger to public health, together with calls for the Half-caste Home to be moved away from the compound, resulted in the 1923 appointment of a Committee of Inquiry into the Kahlin Compound. The committee collected evidence from non-Aboriginal Darwin residents regarding the need for the compound, its location and the desirability of housing Aborigines and ‘half-castes’ in the same place. The main reason given for its maintenance was that it housed Darwin’s large number of Aboriginal workers. Further arguments for sustaining it were that it housed elderly Aborigines, assisted in confining Aborigines, contained the spread of disease, and provided supervision so that Aboriginal people would not be disinclined to work. The inquiry highlighted the persistence of unauthorised Aboriginal camps in Darwin as well as the Larrakia’s status as traditional owners, with some witnesses suggesting that the compound be specifically for the Larrakia and employed Aborigines, with all others being sent back to their ‘own country’.27 Although one witness asserted that the compound had existed on its present site for many years prior to town expansion and that it was the ‘recognised tribal area’ of some of the residents, the majority favoured its removal to a site three to five miles from Darwin. All witnesses favoured the removal of ‘half-castes’ from Aborigines, specifying that ‘half-castes’ should be placed in an institution managed by the government near Darwin. The committee subsequently recommended that the compound be maintained but removed to a new location and that the Half-caste Home be moved away from the
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compound.28 Northern Territory Administrator Urquhart claimed that evidence given at the inquiry was ‘95% fictitious’, but nevertheless ordered the breaking up of the unauthorised camps highlighted by the inquiry, the movement of the Protector of Aborigines’ office to Kahlin to ensure greater supervision, and the greater enforcement of regulations regarding prohibited areas and curfews. Urquhart argued that the costs of moving the compound were prohibitive and that the proposed alternative site was reserved for defence purposes.29 The Minister for Home and Territories agreed and Kahlin remained where it was. Five years later, Kahlin was again to feature in an inquiry by J.W. Bleakley into the conditions and treatment of Aborigines and ‘Half-castes’ in North and Central Australia.30 When Bleakley visited Kahlin in 1928 it had expanded to include forty galvanised iron huts comprising a clinic, dormitories, kitchen, storeroom, bakehouse and residences. The residences housed between 100 and 300 people who slept on blankets on the earth floor. While Bleakley acknowledged that there had been some criticism of the compound, he reiterated the importance of Kahlin in supplying and housing the ‘cheap domestic labour’ deemed so necessary for ‘white’ families living in the tropical climate. Bleakley found that the greatest non-Aboriginal objection to Kahlin was the presence of its clinic and the fear of infection from diseases being treated there. Whether such danger was real or not, Bleakley advised that the dilapidated conditions of the clinic justified building a new one next to the General Darwin Hospital. This would also clear the way for a reorganisation of the compound on ‘attractive village lines’. Accordingly, residents were to be given encouragement ‘to improve their little homes, better the living conditions in them, and cultivate habits of cleanliness and neatness’. Regulations governing prohibited areas and curfews were to be maintained and greater supervision and control of Kahlin residents was to be achieved with the appointment of a full-time superintendent and matron who would be assisted by a squad of ‘native police’. Bleakley recommended that Aborigines confined in Kahlin be offered a range of recreational and educational activities and that a retail canteen be established. Unlike the previous inquiry, Bleakley did not advocate the removal of the compound to another site.31
Separation Previous recommendations and growing public dissent regarding the presence of the Half-caste Home in the compound grounds resulted in twenty-one girls of mixed descent being moved to an ex-government elevated house just outside the compound in 1925. Boys were later moved to the house and accommodated in a specially wired-in section downstairs.32 While the standard of accommodation at the Half-caste Home was better than in the compound, Bleakley contended that the housing of seventy-six children, of different sexes, in a house large enough for one family, was not satisfactory. He recommended that ‘children with 50 percent or more aboriginal blood’ or a ‘pre-
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ponderance of other dark blood’ be divided between Bathurst and Goulburn Island missions to be trained with ‘civilised aboriginal children’ in rural school subjects, stock work, saddlery, blacksmithing, carpentering and the use of bush tools. Those with ‘a preponderance of European or Chinese blood’ were to be placed in an institution like the Darwin Convent (Bleakley 1929: 16). Furthermore, Bleakley supported the continued removal of children of mixed descent from their mothers and families to industrial missions where they would receive education and vocational training. Generally, Bleakley wanted to ‘check ... the breeding of half-castes’ by a stronger enforcement of laws for the ‘protection and control’ of Aboriginal women, by encouraging the immigration of ‘white women’ to the Territory, and by employing married men for positions where Aboriginals were employed or resided. While such views were reflected in Chief Protector Cook’s new ‘Half-caste Policy’—aimed at ‘the elevation of the standard of living of the half-caste to that of the white’ where ‘he’ would ‘take his place in the community both socially and industrially’—Cook remained a firm advocate of the non-sectarian institutionalising of children of mixed descent. By 1934 he boasted that ‘practically all half-caste children of both sexes, formerly left to live with aboriginals in compounds and bush camps to reach maturity as aboriginals, had been removed to half-caste institutions under Government control’. Cook maintained that improved schooling facilities and methods of training were provided at the home, which had resulted in the evolution of a ‘superior type amongst the rising generation of half-caste children’.33 A major impact of Cook’s determined efforts continued to be severe overcrowding in the home and the taxing of an already under-resourced Aborigines Department. Barbara Cummings’ work with ex-residents of the home portrays overcrowded conditions, where the children had insufficient beds, used jam tins as plates and cups, ate meals with their fingers and were subjected to floggings or made to stand out in the sun for such misdemeanours as talking at night, running away, fighting and swearing or talking to ‘full-bloods’. Porridge and goat stew were cooked at the compound and brought to the home in a kerosene bucket where it was doled out. If there were plates, there was usually an insufficient quantity, and the children ate two to a plate ‘watching each other like hawks’ to ensure they had their fair share (Cummings 1990). Public and official criticism of the Half-caste Home concerned inadequate wages paid to domestic servants and the Chief Protector’s control of these wages, inadequate food, clothing and linen, lack of toilet and shower facilities, insufficient teachers or educational equipment and the absence of training in trades and occupations, the lack of a library, cultural or recreational activities, and the heavy restrictions imposed on the social lives of the women as they were locked in on most nights by early evening.34 An unsigned letter, possibly from a female resident of the home or compound, protested that residents were badly treated, their attendance at picture shows restricted, the ‘older girls’ huts leaked and were badly lit, and that being in the institution was ‘worse than [being] an animal in a zoo’.35 The living conditions for over 200 Aboriginals in overcrowded huts at Kahlin were described by a government worker as ‘discreditable
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to the government’, as were the ‘small iron humpies’ housing elderly people on the beach, the kitchen and the dire state of the food being produced from within.36 The majority of the complaints against the Half-caste Home and Kahlin were adamantly refuted by Cook who regarded them as ‘absolutely worthless’ and showing an ‘ignorance of the factors contributing to the present situation’. While Cook agreed that some conditions could be improved and would be in a new compound or home, he nevertheless argued that the children were ‘better housed, better fed, better controlled, and altogether better situated than they would be in aboriginal camps or on any mission’.37 Adult ‘half-castes’, beyond or exempted from the legislative control of the Chief Protector, were nevertheless targeted in Cook’s ‘half-caste’ policy. Cook claimed that over forty ‘half-caste’ families were living in ‘insanitary, ill-ventilated, overcrowded, dark and usually unfloored’ huts in the ‘closest proximity to the lowest grade of coloured alien population’ or in the ‘unemployed camps’ about Darwin. For Cook, such conditions were capable of ‘evolving an immoral degenerate coloured population’ who, ‘under the influence of communistic agitators’, were ‘becoming indolent, embittered and revolutionary’. Cook instigated a ‘half-caste’ housing scheme in the belief that proper housing would ‘remove the principal contributory factors in their moral and physical degeneration’, inculcate a property sense and develop a ‘proper self respect’ in the individual which would fit them for their ‘assimilation into the white community’.38 Eight houses were initially built by labourers from the compound and home under this scheme. They consisted of a large room with verandahs on the front and back. Cooking was carried out at one end of the verandah, with the leftover space intended as a dining area. The remaining verandah was used for sleeping and the whole structure was said to ‘provide accommodation which meets the Darwin climatic conditions comparatively well’. However, the concrete floors extending beyond the face of the walls which resulted in the floors becoming ‘unhealthy wading pools’ during the Wet, combined with internal arrangements giving the occupants little privacy or encouragement to ‘observe proper domestic standards’, resulted in an alternative design being proposed for four new houses which aimed at ‘encouraging a higher standard of living than previous structures’.39 Within a few years Cook reported the scheme a success, as money borrowed on three of the houses had been fully repaid and the scheme had tended to ‘improve the occupants’ social status’.40
Relocation In 1934, Acting Northern Territory Administrator Carrodus argued that the presence of the compound in a populated area was no longer ‘desirable’ and urged that it be relocated, thereby freeing ‘one of the best sites in Darwin’ for the new public hospital.41 Cook agreed, claiming that the present compound was ‘obsolete in structure’, an ‘eyesore’ and that the ‘isolation necessary for the efficient control of the inmates’ no
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longer existed at the Kahlin site. Ministerial approval and funding was given to a subsequent proposal from Cook to build a residential area in Darwin exclusively for Aborigines of full descent which would be the means of carrying out a new policy aimed at the education of Aboriginal children, the ‘profitable employment of the detribalised aboriginal’ and the ‘elevation of the aboriginals generally to a civilised peasant class’. The infrastructure for implementing this policy included ‘hygienic’ barracks and accommodation, a school, industrial block, clinic, canteen, laundry, bakery, recreational facilities, and, in keeping with Cook’s objective of ‘converting the unproductive nomad into a productive peasant’, scope for horticultural production.42 Such a policy indicates a shift from previous attempts to segregate an Aboriginal workforce outside the town boundary to the interventionist assimilation policies of future decades. This was further reflected in Cook’s determination to establish the new compound within relative proximity to the expanding township. At a specially convened meeting to discuss Kahlin’s proposed relocation, Larrakia elder King George protested, ‘This is all the country we have left, and the Government should leave us on it. Years ago we used to have our camping grounds on Lameroo Beach and I was born there ... We have cleared the land and built our houses, and we should not now be asked to shift’ (Northern Standard, 24 March 1936). The Acting Chief Protector assured King George that the proposed site for the new compound was ‘definitely situated in Larrakeyah territory’ and would provide for them ‘a camping ground in their tribal area, proximity to centres of totemic and ceremonial significance and a sanctuary where their old people would find every comfort and care in their declining years’.43 Non-Aboriginal criticisms of the Bagot Road site concerned the dense nature of the country and its proximity to the sea, making it difficult to patrol and control the location of Aboriginal camps, said to be ‘centres of vice’ in the area; the closeness of the site to town; the proximity of the site to a proposed Air Force Base; and fears that a new compound would draw even more Aboriginal people to Darwin.44 In reply to a suggestion from anthropologist A.P. Elkin that the compound be relocated across the harbour, further from town, Cook argued that if the intention of the new policy was to ‘convert the aboriginal into a civilised, industrialised citizen’ it was essential that the compound be close to the ‘white population’, not ‘segregated in an inaccessible locality’. Cook maintained that the proposed site would ‘facilitate the control of the town Aboriginal population’ and suggested that if proximity to the Base was ‘regarded as a real and strong objection, I submit that the time has arrived when the interests of the aboriginal should take priority over non-essential public works’.45 A severe cyclone in March 1937 caused considerable damage at Kahlin Compound and the Half-caste Home and hastened the task of finding an alternative location.46 After further debate, the site initially proposed was acquired and compound residents began making roads, building fences and clearing land for buildings and cultivation plots on the new Bagot Aboriginal Reserve. By May 1938, all the Aboriginal residents of Kahlin had been transferred to Bagot. Immediately after their removal all the buildings in which they had lived were demolished. While it was planned that a new
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Half-caste Home for girls would be erected in the rural area, the home remained where it was until 1939 when it was taken over by the military and the residents transferred to the Bagot Reserve. Although the size of the original reserve was considerably reduced in 1965, the Bagot Aboriginal Community remains to this day. For many years the Kahlin site was used for the Darwin Hospital which was later converted to the Northern Territory University. The university has now moved and the site is again undergoing transformation, no doubt influenced by the establishment of the Cullen Bay Marina— an exclusive housing and retail development on the site of the old Kahlin Beach. The Kahlin Aboriginal Compound provided the non-Aboriginal town with a place to house ‘their’ Aboriginal workers and the Commonwealth with tangible evidence that something was being done to ‘protect’ Aboriginals from an iniquitous town. Underlying all motives was a determination to keep Aboriginal peoples and Aboriginal lifestyles well outside the Darwin town boundaries within this period. Aboriginal resistance to such authoritarianism is evident in the persistence of town camps and the need for authorities to continually rework legislation in an effort to effect greater control over a seemingly recalcitrant Aboriginal population. Prohibitive legislation aimed at controlling and separating ‘castes’ of Aborigines restricted Aboriginal people of full descent from associating with their ‘half-caste’ kin and Larrakia people, in particular, from travelling about and culturally maintaining their country within the immediate town area. Even so, oral and documentary sources attest to continued acknowledgment of Larrakia traditional ownership in the Darwin area throughout this period. Oral accounts leave no doubt that conditions in Kahlin and the Half-caste Home were often appalling; however, they also portray ceremonies, football games, hunting trips, picnics, small kindnesses from town residents and local churches as well as a pride in being the ones who had built, maintained, worked and raised families in the compound over many years. While the public memory of the Kahlin site as an Aboriginal living space may be eroding through its various transitions, the shared life experiences, memories and relationships of the ‘Kahlin mob’ and their descendants ensure that it retains an integral role in the dynamic Indigenous history of the Darwin area.
CHAPTER 6
Aboriginal Shelters and the National Hookworm Campaign, Queensland, 1909–24 Gordon Briscoe
In this chapter I look at how diseases became an immediate threat to Aboriginals as they began to live for longer and longer periods in one place, and in more permanent shelters. If we talk about housing in terms of what White society means, we exclude Aboriginal actors from the historical account. If we see housing as something different from ‘dwelling’ we may be able to include the Aboriginal perspectives as legitimate and avoid relegating them to an anthropological past. Rather than ‘housing’, then, I use ideas like ‘shelter’, ‘disease compound’, ‘fringe-camp’ and ‘relief or ration depot’. Although the subject of this book is Indigenous housing, it is inappropriate to discuss housing in many parts of Australia prior to 1920. Therefore I begin this discussion with ideas of shelters and diseases. As Memmott shows in this volume, in a traditional setting, shelters were generally something that Aboriginals across the continent, with some exceptions in the south-eastern areas, used as dwellings to shelter from both the heat and the wind. Most shelters were both simple and easily constructed. When groups moved from the location, the structures were abandoned. In this sense, the windbreak or wiltja, which is a Pitja Pitja1 word for shade (see Cathy Keys, this volume), was used to denote where the hunting group decided to camp, eat and rest for the night. While it may be argued that these structures were important, they were low in the priority of material culture. More important were routes that people took in moving from one place to another and the locations of birth.
Diseases to the End of the Nineteenth Century Many diseases are the enemy of the human species—especially where human beings decide to live permanently for long periods of time. The immune responses of the human body and the questions of hygiene are two opposing forces that make health a paradox. In his groundbreaking work, The People’s Health, 1830–1910, F.B. Smith made the point that ‘wellbeing’ and ‘medical knowledge’ were as inscrutable as providence
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(Smith 1979). Different pathogens enter people’s bodies and the soil around permanent living sites. They also threaten and inhabit the living places which people chose or were compelled to occupy at relief depots, on mission stations and on the fringes of White society. Health concerns formed a part of Aboriginal peoples’ cultures and knowledges about some aspects of what Western medicine today calls diseases. For example, from the ethnographic record we know that people related some areas of pain to the temperature of the patient. Healers knew something about massage and relief of suffering. Similarly, objects carried by healers were at the ready for people with some kind of complaint or injury. Fear of others or of mysterious objects (what we might call today psychological trauma) were well appreciated. Much of this knowledge, however, was seen by Europeans to be related more to sorcery and metaphysics than fact and science. In spite of Western medicine’s seeming superiority, it was no more successful at preventing infection, and even more unsuccessful in preventing the spread of a number of diseases, than traditional Aboriginal health practices. Probably from the time after the isolation of mainland peoples ended until well after Europeans had arrived, Aboriginals were not in danger from powerful pathogens which could be transferred between humans or from animals to humans, such as hydatids and rabies. This was largely due to the temporary nature of people’s shelters. A wiltja, for example, was constructed of materials found in locations where people decided to camp. Some were made by heaping branches in a half circle or, for longerterm gatherings, the structure was usually made using tree branches as uprights and cross-beams as a roof truss. The roof covering was either gum leaves, bark or spinifex. If living sites were occupied for long periods, overhanging rock shelters were the most widely used shelters in pre- and post-contact times. But Aboriginals, unlike their Amerindian counterparts who began using off-ground bunks 700 or so years prior to European contact, slept on the ground, where ground-using parasites like hookworm thrive.2 Pre-contact diseases tended to be different from those following contact. Infections of a public health nature in pre-contact times tended to be confined to diseases such as yaws, syphilis and forms of chlamydia (or trachoma) infections. Once Melanesians began to inhabit offshore islands in the Torres Strait, tuberculosis and possibly hookworm entered to form pools of infection along the northern coast. Arguments about the immune responses of small Aboriginal populations suggest that Aboriginals were simply unable to retain forms of immunity to virulent viral epidemics such as smallpox (Goldsmid 1988: 13–27). After White settlement, patterns of illness changed. From 1788, when it expanded from Botany Bay, viral infections like smallpox spread perhaps far beyond White settlement and recurred a number of times to 1845. Reports indicate that infections such as scarlet fever (a bacterial infection) affected many groups up to 1900, as did seasonal winter colds. Viral infections such as smallpox, measles, strains of influenza (including the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918–19; see Briscoe 1996) all affected Aboriginals in some way.3
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The hookworm parasite may have existed in pre-contact times, but we have no facts to support such an assertion. Periodic visitors like the Macas-sans, Melanesians and people from China may have brought the parasite with them on their voyages, or on their trips to harvest sea life. The infection was first located in Kanaka labour camps and by the turn of the century was found in high concentrations among small groups of Aboriginals camped near early sugar plantation developments in Queensland (Saunders 1976: 25–50). Around the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, ‘public health’ was a concept used primarily by the medical profession, mostly those trained at the Londonbased School of Tropical Medicine. The Queensland government, with the help of the Bishop of Carpentaria, Gilbert White, collaborated to create the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine, which commenced in 1910 under the leadership of Dr Anton Brienle.4 Apart from the Institute, almost no health infrastructure existed in Queensland up to 1920 and the government relief depots, disease compounds and missions were free to manage the populations who migrated to the locations they controlled. The normal pattern was for missionaries to establish a clearing and camp, and remain at that location for up to a decade before a sizeable population amassed. When the population came in, children were put into schools, and people were encouraged to stay. Within a few years, populations increased from a small group of ten or so people to small townships of 150 residents who would use the mission as a permanent location. Women used the missions as a refuge; men moved backwards and forwards (from bush to town) for ceremonial or work-related reasons. Hunting played some part, but a decreasing one, of mission residents’ search for food (McKenzie 1969). In early twentieth century Australia, health officials, magistrates, protectors and missionaries worried about the health of Aboriginal populations in regional centres. Government and mission interest in hookworm was well described in the reports of the National Hookworm Campaign. Scientists defined hookworm as ‘an insidious infectious malady’, caused by two species of parasitic intestinal worms: the ‘Necator’, a species originating in the Pacific, and the ‘Duodenale’ type, originating in either Africa or the Mediterranean. Both species are ‘nematodes’ (unsegmented worms) that pass through the larval stage in the ground.5 The final report of the campaign noted ‘a preponderance of the Necator’ in Australian populations.6 The hookworm larvae prefer warm, moist, oxygenated habitats which stimulate the hatching of the egg. The larvae cut through the human (or other animal) host’s skin to enter the bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream the worms travel through the lymphatic and blood vessels to the heart and lungs. They break down the thin walls of the alveoli of the lungs, travelling up the trachea, down the oesophagus, and finally attach themselves to the delicate inner lining (or mucous membrane) of the small intestine.7 The real health problem is from complications arising from prolonged hookworm infection—internal bleeding and anaemia which reduce the energy of infected persons (Concise Medical Dictionary: 324). Throughout the world, the social
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stigma of the disease caused it to be labelled as ‘the germ of laziness’ (Etting 1981). Groups of people burdened with poor group hygiene are most likely to be affected. This was especially the case where Aboriginal fringe-camp hygiene practices resulted in the creation of reservoirs of hookworm infection.8 Although hookworm infected White Australians, the infection was more widely reported among Aboriginals, in the decade 1910 to 1920.9
Hookworm Survey, Queensland, 1911 Two pilot surveys were carried out by the Australian Institute of Tropical Health: one prior to the First World War (1911) and one following (1919). Both surveys were funded by the United States-based Rockefeller Foundation which continued the program until 1924. The campaign made a number of spot surveys of parts of the Australian population to discover the locations of the hookworm infestations. The campaign, however, also centred on the Aboriginal community at Beagle Bay near Derby.10 The survey examined human fæces of sample populations in each state, searching for hookworm or other parasites. Across Australia the campaign examined 248,721 people, of whom 48,256 (or 19.4 per cent) were found to be infected with hookworm.11 In this chapter, however, I will concentrate on the operations of the earlier sample survey in Queensland, 1911. The highest local infection rates in Australia were found in Aboriginal camps in tropical areas. In these camps, the rate of infection by intestinal parasites was similar to that found in Papua and New Guinea. Recent indications show, however, that hookworm was never as serious as some medical administrators suggested. Although the parasite causes anaemia and can be fatal, the kinds of parasites found in Aboriginals at the time of the survey could have been found in many other Australian populations, small or large. It seems strange that a national agency was so interested in such a wellknown infection, particularly since most of the parasites found among the Aboriginals screened proved relatively harmless.12 One explanation for the attention received by the hookworm project is that it was a political device presented by the Federal Quarantine Agency as a means of expanding itself into a fully fledged ‘Public Health’ department. The question that is interesting in light of the themes considered in this book is: did long-term hookworm infection occur in Queensland, and if so, to what extent were the changes to people’s shelter and dwelling patterns responsible? If such changes were partly to blame for the long-term infestations of diseases, they were aided and abetted by authoritarian administrations. This in turn highlights the interconnectedness of Aboriginal health issues with the imposed European modes of settlement. In Queensland, authorities at population centres such as Cairns were worried about Aboriginals harbouring social diseases such as hookworm and respiratory infections; the latter was less important as an infectious disease but prominent as a state, federal and international public health issue. Consequently, the spread of diseases became a factor
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in the administration of Aboriginal welfare. What began in the latter years of the first decade of the twentieth century as a cooperative international disease eradication program, continued into the second decade as an international initiative for the development of an Australian public health structure. The program was interrupted due to the restrictions imposed by the First World War; but when the fighting came to an end, the program recommenced. The districts of greatest infestation were Charleville, Longreach, Hughenden, Rockhampton, Ayr, Bowen, Mackay, Ingham, Innisfail and Cairns.13 These areas were identified by the Australian Hookworm Campaign as those with the ‘Aboriginal problem’. The campaign’s report, made public in 1924, claimed that hookworm existed in Aboriginal groups prior to White settlement, but only in a limited way. Although the authors had no way of proving this claim, they wrote that the Papuans and Malays were most likely to have introduced the infection. With White settlement, ‘the “natives” have been gathered into ... fixed localities, such as missionary settlements and cattle stations’. These conditions were ideal for the spread of hookworm disease. In certain areas the hookworm rate on first examination was 90 per cent and subsequently 50 per cent. This meant that if the eggs of the parasite were allowed to spread, the longterm adverse effects on the health patterns of Aboriginals would be severe. The report specified that ‘the Aboriginal settlements acted as centres for the spread of hookworm disease to Europeans, and ... they still present a problem’.14 In 1911 researchers located hookworm in north Queensland.15 Breinle pointed out that the disease occurred in children of the Townsville, Ingham, Innisfail and Cairns areas (Cumpston 1998: 240). Much of his knowledge came from earlier surveys, but conditions had changed. Camp populations had trebled, depot populations had increased and the Aboriginal population had more than doubled by this time. In the period from April 1918 to September 1919, the survey region comprised the coastal area from Cooktown to Townsville where 22,844 people were screened. Of this number, 4605 were infected, representing a total infection rate of 21.1 per cent. The number of Aboriginals examined was 992 and this group revealed an infection rate of approximately 81 per cent. The differences in the infestation rates between one area and another closely matched ‘the amount of rainfall in the several districts, and it reflected the amount of soil pollution prevailing in the various communities’ (Cumpston 1998: 239ff ). The hookworm surveys also found higher levels of infestation among some migrant groups than among British Australians. In the original investigation conducted in three north Queensland districts, of 1339 Italians examined, 32 per cent showed infection by hookworm. In a group of 221 Spanish people, the rate was 29.1 per cent, while among 112 Pacific Islanders the rate was 30.3 per cent. In a sample of 12,318 British Australians, however, the rate was only 15.3 per cent. By contrast, in a group of 393 Aboriginals the rate of infestation was 62.1 per cent (Gordon 1974: 111). One of the results of the surveys was that the campaign developed into a national program. In Queensland, after the results of the 1918 and 1923 surveys of the popula-
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tions along the central Queensland coastal districts were made public, health authorities blamed Aboriginals for the infection. As a result, reforms were introduced throughout the 1920s that contributed to the transformation of the old style of ration and relief depots into settled, permanent and segregated Aboriginal townships.16 Aboriginals by this time were widely perceived to be in need of ‘improvement’, and the post-war phase of the national campaign was entwined with the growth of ideas about public health; and from these the Aboriginal ‘Betterment’ movement emerged.17 This movement boasted such important figures as the state governor, religious leaders, and members of the university establishment in Queensland. A conference involving these people and politicians was held in 1919 to launch the notion that Aboriginals would be welcome in the workforce, especially if bad publicity could be prevented. The view included a belief that Aboriginals could productively assist during post-war reconstruction.18 One approach to ‘improvement’ was to ensure that Aboriginals coming into the labour camps were free of infectious diseases which could threaten the rest of the workforce; but the ‘disease of laziness’ notion had to be dispelled immediately. The campaign therefore targeted Aboriginals as the group most vulnerable to hookworm infection and the group among whom the disease had to be treated first. The report claimed that previous research had revealed that practically all Indigenous groups of north Queensland were affected by hookworm.19 Some groups had extremely high rates of infestation. One researcher found a 100 per cent infection rate among Aboriginals at Yarrabah, a mission near Cairns. Three years later, the survey found an infection rate of 75 per cent in the two settlements of Aboriginals on Palm Island. At this time the islands were used either as disease screening stations or as penal establishments for people breaking the conditions of the protection legislation of 1897. When the data collected by the campaign were released to the public,20 selective material was presented to show the incidence of the disease among some Aboriginal groups only.21 The report indicated that with white settlement the natives were eventually gathered into more or less permanent groups in fixed localities, such as missionary settlements, and cattle stations, and these altered conditions were ideal for the spread of hookworm disease. In certain areas the hookworm rate among them on first examination, was found to be over 90 per cent, while 50 per cent and over was usual. These Aboriginal settlements have acted as centres for the spread of hookworm disease to the European, and as a matter of fact, they still present a problem.22
The problem extended to those Kanaka, Chinese and White populations who failed to construct ‘privies’ at their place of residence and whose habit was to defecate close to their houses.23 The final report also indicated that the population was a shifting one, which meant that a number of mass treatment visits became the normal eradication strategy. Aborig-
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inal settlements, the report stated, resulted from the inability of Aboriginals to live in comfort among the White population, though in some cases their placement in settlements was for misdemeanours under the protection legislation. The report claimed the settlements were like ‘a home, a benevolent asylum, and a reformatory’. The people surveyed at the Ingham Aboriginal reserve displayed an infection rate of 70.4 per cent out of a population of 92 people. Although very young children had been infected, throughout the population tested, older children and young adults appeared to have highest rates of infection.24 Barambah (later Cherbourg) in southern Queensland began as a relief depot and in little over a decade its residents had become an institutionalised population. At this settlement, of a population of 602 persons, 142 presented with hookworm infection (24 per cent).25 The Barambah rate was clearly much lower than in the north. The reason for this disparity may have been that Barambah and other southern settlements had already been treated with chemicals. Phenyl was sprayed on the ground surrounding the toilets and urinals. In addition, most houses on depots and most public facilities, including the diseased camp areas, were sprayed with the disinfectant by pressure pumps. A total of 1079 Aboriginals were living in this district: apart from the Barambah population of 602, a further 426 lived in fringe-camps near Murgon (a farming service town close to both Barambah and Taroom Aboriginal ration and relief depots) and another 51 Aboriginal workers of the district had no specified dwelling place.26 The incidence of hookworm infection by age and geographical distribution revealed that the highest infection was in the age group between 6 and 18 years, most of whom lived in the fringe-camps.27 At the reserve, however, the figures revealed that 62 people in the 6–18 year age group were infected, or approximately 10 per cent of the total population. In the camps, out of a total of 417, only six were infected. As the researchers stated, the numbers were ‘too small for any importance to be attached to these groups’.28 In 1923, Dr Elkington, the new director at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, indicated to the Commonwealth Quarantine Officer in Darwin that hookworm constituted a ‘menace to white people’ in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and would consequently require all available funds for a considerable time.29 Dr Raphael Cilento, a senior officer in the Commonwealth Health Department, had a different approach that focused on public education. His view was that the new hookworm campaign was basically educational. Illustrated pamphlets in Maltese, Italian were distributed in the community and lantern light slide lectures were held to demonstrate ... [the need] for clean sanitary habits. Hookworm nurses and inspectors visited schools and other public places. There were laboratories in most centres for testing samples of faeces for the presence of hookworm eggs ... It was difficult to collect faeces from sugar farmers ... among whom domestic sanitation was appalling ... [they] had little or no English, lived in poverty in squalid hovels and kept to themselves. (Fisher 1994: 45–66)
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Cilento had strong opinions about the conditions and habits of workers in the canecutting districts.30 The Health Commissioner of Queensland conducted a two-day follow-up survey among the various Aboriginal groups, including those living at Dunwich, Myora and Amity Point. According to the report, the survey commenced on 14 August and persisted until 16 August 1924, and the numbers [of people previously infected] examined in Dunwich was 309, and of these only two cases were found positive, and these men were aged 52 and 75 respectively. This showed the previous treatment ... [to be] very successful. At Myora 24 cases were examined ... [and] 15 harbour[ed] hookworm.31
The difference between the Dunwich and Myora figures was remarkable. John Bleakley, the Chief Protector, believed that if the attempt to eradicate the disease was to succeed in the long term, then Aboriginals had to stop walking around barefoot and should wear ‘some foot-covering’.32 Dr John Cumpston suggested that the Institute of Tropical Medicine should become a central testing agency for medical practitioners of the north. Cilento, however, changed the research orientation of the institute from a preoccupation with disease conditions to one of preventive medicine or, as he put it, ‘from sickness to health’ (Fisher 1994: 46). He argued that further study of the disease was unnecessary because ‘by the early twentieth century the aetiology and cure for hookworm infestation had been well understood’.33 Those leading the development of public health tended to overstate the threat of hookworm in Australia. There was concern that the effects of the disease on Aboriginals would create a permanent pool of infection that would pose a threat to the broader Australian population. Cilento was one whose views on this subject were extreme. The final report of the national survey concluded that the main cause of the spread of the hookworm disease was a lack of proper toilets and latrines. Further, it argued that those people not already infected would eventually become victims by coming in contact either with infected material such as polluted soil or through direct contact with other humans and animals.34 Sanitary conditions in the cane plantation regions had been poor and, as a result, most plantation workers became infected. The same was true for the Aboriginal camps and depot groups. Sanitary closets were not extensively provided because of the costs of installation and maintenance. In the mid 1920s Bleakley had tried to argue for improving sanitary facilities in Aboriginal settlements, but he had difficulty proving that Aboriginal populations were increasing on reserves. Although the populations in the fringe-camps were increasing, precise information on their size was never collected. As a result, the demand for toilet facilities was never accepted as a legitimate health need. Nevertheless, the human waste systems of temporary relief depots and places of segregated detention were described as ‘primitive’. What this meant was that, of the hundreds of campsites and scores of homes occupied by Aboriginals in the various
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depots, settlements, missions and fringe-camps, only six had privies.35 According to the final report on hookworm, mission, camp and depot populations were observed to defecate and urinate where they stood, slept and ate, or in the bush nearby.36 Researchers reported that the ground around Aboriginal living sites soon became polluted—the constant use of the dwelling site as a repository for human excreta ensured this. Even where toilets had been constructed, they were allowed to overflow and pollute the surrounding areas for some distance.37 Where latrines were provided, it was optimistic to expect an immediate change in the human waste disposal behaviour of people who had so recently emerged from bush life. In the period from 1920 to 1923, there were two further inspections of Aboriginal settlements and the second revealed a vast improvement over the results of the first. Comparisons of hookworm prevalence in places completely re-surveyed in September 1923 showed, for example, that whereas the first inspection at Purga Aboriginal mission near Cairns had found a 70.4 per cent infection rate, by the second inspection the rate had fallen to 45.9 per cent. Even with a 24.5 per cent improvement, however, the figure was still too high at almost two or three times higher than the rate among other groups.38 Other Aboriginal settlements showed improvement too, but the incidence of hookworm infection remained unacceptably high. Palm Island, which had an infection rate of 66.2 per cent at the first inspection, fell only by 9.3 points to 56.9 per cent. A similar small improvement occurred at Barambah where the initial rate was 25.0 per cent, falling by 4.7 points to 20.3 per cent at the second survey.39 The second inspection confirmed that improved sanitation and treatment led to a reduction in infection rates, but other factors such as the continued pollution of living areas ensured continuing high levels of infection. Aboriginal camps, however, had no sanitation whatsoever and in these locations the rates of infection sometimes increased.40 At Barambah, conditions improved because the government acted deliberately to reduce the risk of infection by providing toilets, cleaning the surrounding polluted soil and disposing of human waste. In the whole of the Queensland survey, as reported by Sweet in 1924,41 167,290 people (Blacks and Whites) were screened. Of this number, 15,472 (9.2 per cent) were infected with hookworm. The Queensland infections accounted for 6.2 per cent of the Australian total (248,721 people were screened nationally). The highest rates in Australia were among the Aboriginal groups of Cape York, where tropical conditions were similar to those in the Pacific Islands.42 Following the screening and treatment program, a permanent control plan was devised and put into operation in 1923. The campaign employed sanitary engineers to inspect sites identified by the surveys as ‘hookworm polluted’. Their strategy was to carry out surveillance of infected sites and to make sure that the public was being educated about the complex nature of ‘soil pollution’. In addition, the engineers had to consult with local government authorities who then followed up on the engineering advice. The data collected by campaign engineers went to the Queensland Health Department for follow-up treatment and surveillance work (Sweet 1924a: 11–12). But
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the final report did not refer to what the states ought to do in respect of either followup or continuing surveillance. Except for continuing work among Aboriginal camp groupings, the campaign completed its work in 1924. Although it had national responsibility for monitoring control measures, its diagnostic laboratories were hampered by limited funding. Although in 1925 it planned to have a number of laboratories located around Australia to continue the survey and treatment program, in practice this proved difficult to achieve. No further treatment of hookworm followed, either in Aboriginal institutions close to rural service towns or in isolated religious missions (Sweet 1924a: 12). When Cilento became Queensland Chief Protector of Aborigines in 1935, he reinstituted the hookworm program among Aboriginals and it remained in effect until long after the Second World War. Neither social historians nor anthropologists pay sufficient attention to the role that diseases play in shaping people’s lives. This chapter shows that the circumstances created by diseases shape Aboriginal cultures as much as Aboriginals make the circumstances in which they find themselves (Marx & Engels 1976: 61–2).
CHAPTER 7
Housing and Colonial Patronage, Alice Springs, 1920–65 Tim Rowse
Australian colonialism sometimes created zones of physical exclusion. The colonists called these places where the Indigenous people could not go ‘towns’. In The Remote Aborigines Charles Rowley devoted about one-third of his argument to the theme ‘frustrated urbanisation’. He suggested that ‘the crucial point in the whole Aboriginal “problem”, in the settled areas as well as in the “colonial” region, is in the fringe settlement near the town, whether this is on Crown land or town common, a reserve, or a managed institution of some kind’. Towns were bastions of colonial privilege. In their traditions of municipal order there abided rationales for holding Indigenous people at arm’s length. In contrast with towns, the cities had proved much more absorptive of Indigenous Australians migrating from the countryside since the Second World War. But towns such as Port Augusta and Alice Springs set tests for bush people, argued Rowley, highlighting ‘the confusion of contradictory values, the incompetence and inadequacy of the man from the bush in his new or temporary role of town dweller, the conflict of the principle of reciprocity with the logic of the cash economy ...’ (Rowley 1972: 31, 34). So these towns set up barriers—Davenport, Amoonguna—where people were supposed to be trained up to a living standard appropriate to their full entry into town life. Such places ‘deferred, perhaps even begged’ the issue of integration in towns. In Rowley’s view, ‘the Aboriginal, to gain equality, has to be established as part of, and with equal membership in, the towns and cities which form the dwelling places of over 80 per cent of the Australian population’. To frustrate urbanisation was to undermine Aboriginal choices to belong to the wider society. ‘Assimilation’ was only a pious hope if governments lacked a strategy of Indigenous urbanisation; an effective strategy must empower Indigenous people to break through municipal and shire exclusions. Thus, the problem of the ‘fringe’ community included the issue of housing, but went beyond it. Political representation was the deeper issue, Rowley argued. Distant governments (in Canberra and in the capital cities) must thwart the shire and municipal authorities which had constructed ‘the check-points where the darker-skinned people have remained for generations’. As well, ‘there has to develop Aboriginal as well as government pressure for integration into the urban communities’. He recommended that Indigenous people be given material and other encouragement to form corporations and to mobilise as pressure groups in local politics (Rowley 1972: 34–5). 85
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If the question of housing is bound up with the question of political mobilisation, a history of Aboriginal housing in Alice Springs can be written as a political history of that town. I will show that, from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, Aboriginal people were afforded a certain space within the town and championed in a guarded way by a number of different colonial patrons. Rowley was dissatisfied with the legacies of such patronage. He looked forward to the formation of a local Indigenous pressure group which could transmit some of the weight of a reformed national Aboriginal housing strategy. He got his wish, I would like to think, in Tangentyere Council, an organisation which began to function effectively within ten years of his writing the words I have been quoting. I will try to answer the question: what was there before Tangentyere?1
Excluding Town Campers Throughout the inter-war period, the federal Department of Interior administration officials anxiously noted town camps around Alice Springs. The campers were viewed not only as a threat to the segregated rearing of ‘half-caste’ children at the ‘Bungalow’ school, but also as a nuisance in their own right. These camps—sites of malnutrition, unsanitary living, prostitution and apparent spiritual dejection—seemed to prove that the Arrernte culture of the Alice Springs region was in ruins (Spencer 1928: xvi; Porteous 1931: 131). The administration took several steps to tidy up what they saw as the messy, dangerous and embarrassing problem of Arrernte ‘hangers-on’ (Fuller 1975: 223). Section 10 of the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918 allowed the declaration of ‘reserves’, and Section 11 provided for ‘Prohibited Areas’ to be gazetted. Under Section 17, a Protector could direct Aborigines camping or about to camp ‘within the limits of or near any municipality, town, township, public house, or wine and spirit store, to remove their camp or proposed camp to such distance (...) as he directs’. Section 50 empowered the creation of a ‘camping area’ into which unauthorised (non-Aboriginal) people could not intrude. In 1927, the authorities set up such a camp across the Todd, ‘just outside the town boundaries’. As the administration’s Annual Report 1926–27 proudly continued: The camp has been laid out in blocks, subdivided by streets, and the natives have vied one with the other in building up-to-date wurleys. They cleaned up the deserted camp and now take pride in their new surroundings. They have been instructed in modern methods of sanitation.
In May 1928, a zone within a two-mile radius of the Residency (the government office in the centre of town) was gazetted a ‘Prohibited Area’. Officially, only employment redeemed the Aboriginal urban presence. The same year, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Queensland, J.W. Bleakley, in a commissioned report to the Commonwealth government, distinguished between a camp of sixty rationed people who should
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be told to walk back to Hermannsburg and those who could stay. The latter he described as ‘working natives ... in town on holiday or awaiting fresh employment’. For them he wanted ‘a hut, with fireplace and sanitary convenience, where they could be ordered to camp and be out of the town, while near enough for police control’ (Bleakley 1929: 18). Bleakley’s report thus outlined a principle by which to govern the Indigenous town camp presence in Alice Springs. His distinction between workers and non-workers expressed the enduring contradiction between the townspeople’s need for cheap labour and their desire to distance themselves socially from Aboriginals. In the days before electricity (which was connected in the late 1930s) and sewered homes (the 1950s), cheap or free Indigenous labour took care of heating (by gathering firewood), fresh milk and meat (by tending the town’s goat herds), and the elimination of human waste (by staffing the ‘night-soil’ service). In 1930, Aboriginal town campers were assigned a camping spot (not gazetted as far as I know) two miles west of the town, accommodating 125 people. Thirty to forty residents worked daily in Alice Springs and young men were recruited from this camp to help push motor cars through difficult stretches of countryside.2 In 1933, the administration gazetted a camp on the eastern side of the town, with a medical hut. However, some campers were prosecuted for loitering in the town. Worse still, from the administration’s point of view, the numbers of Indigenous people camping around Alice Springs had been swollen to 400 by the drought which had since broken, in March 1935. According to the administration’s Annual Report for 1934–35, ‘it has been recommended that these detribalized natives be either removed to a new reserve at a distance from the town, or that the present town reserve be converted into a compound with a superintendent in charge’. This idea was canvassed again in the Annual Report for 1935–36, when pastoralists complained that unofficial camps at the ends of stock routes leading to Alice Springs were a hazard to the condition of the cattle they were delivering to market. However, no compound was ever set up. Instead, the administration opened a ration depot at Jay Creek in 1937. T.G.H. Strehlow, appointed as Patrol Officer in 1936, argued the futility of trying to improve the camp by making it a compound; he also believed that it was better for the town campers to be far from the town’s corrupting influences.3 Though a number of those rationed in Alice Springs were relocated 45 km west to Jay Creek in 1937, and placed under Strehlow’s supervision, the police did not cease to issue rations in Alice Springs until November 1940.
Missionaries and Town Camps In the summer of 1935–36, the Roman Catholic church intervened controversially in the zoning of town camping. Notwithstanding the ‘Prohibited Area’, Catholic missionaries began catechism classes for Arrernte children in the presbytery at the northern edge of the town, only a few hundred metres from the administration’s own office, the Residency. Chief Protector Cook, knowing that the Catholics were seeking to do
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Early Aboriginal cemetery Early Aboriginal cemeteries
ol
edo
ngl
to A
"The Sand Hills"
A R bor es ig er ina ve l Bo kh ar a
to Weilmoringle
Goodooga
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a
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Figure 7.1
Alice Springs c.1950 with 1990s road system superimposed. (Courtesy Cambridge University Press.)
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missionary work among the Arrernte, wished to give them land well outside the town. However, while that was being arranged he allowed the Catholics to use their presbytery as a classroom and eating area. The Arrernte mothers could accompany the children and, like them, be fed. This temporary dispensation proved too much for some townsfolk. The police scandalised Father Maloney, the parish priest, and his lay helper, Frank McGarry, in December 1936 by ‘raiding’ a presbytery crowded with Arrernte mothers and children. Cook was not moved by such anger. The administration allocated a site for the ‘Little Flower Mission’ on land along Charles Creek, a little upstream from where it meets the Todd River—only a few hundred metres north of the town. Well within a two-mile radius of the Residency, the site was in effect an excision from the Prohibited Area. The northern side of Charles Creek had recently (in 1936) been incorporated into the Bungalow reserve, in order to graze the goat herd from which the Bungalow’s Indigenous residents were fed fresh milk. Rather than obtain room for the goats by excising from the Bond Springs pastoral lease on the Bungalow reserve’s northern side, the administration preferred to compromise the Prohibited Area. In 1936 the Catholics built huts and a church and sank a bore. The administration’s Annual Report 1936–37 described the Little Flower Mission as ‘a well ordered camp for working aboriginals’. It was removed to Arltunga in 1942. The Lutheran missionaries of Hermannsburg were the other notable source of town camp patronage in the 1930s. As Finke River Mission superintendent F.W. Albrecht wrote in 1941, ‘white centres will never be the ideal for the Australian Aborigine; they can be considered graveyards for them’.4 Evangelical emissaries were sent to the town from Hermannsburg. In 1923, the western Arrernte evangelist Moses ‘spent four weeks there and preached daily to the local natives about Jesus as the saviour of sinners’ (Scherer 1994: 40). The Lutherans rather reluctantly set up a permanent camp in Alice Springs when they heard that the itinerant missionaries, Mr and Mrs Kramer, who for many years had conducted summer Sunday services in Alice Springs, were quitting. In December 1938 a Lutheran church was erected on a rented block south of the town, across the river from the large gazetted camp. ‘We would prefer, however, not to see any of these people [in Alice Springs] at all’.5 The result of these evangelically motivated infringements of the Prohibited Area can be gauged by a town camp census made in the winter of 1942 by the Acting Director of Native Affairs, V.J. White.6 He estimated that of the 356 Aboriginal people he counted in camps around the town, only 111 (72 men, 39 women) were employed. There were also 117 children, 51 ‘aged and infirm’ and 77 not employed. The significance of the two missions’ patronage of town camping was evident in White’s figures for the Lutheran mission block (50 adults, 19 children) and the Little Flower Mission (111 adults, 68 children).7
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Army Time During the Second World War, the town’s demand for Indigenous labour intensified as Alice Springs became a military staging post supplying Australia’s northern defence. The militarisation of Alice Springs implied another change: as well as having to deal with the police, the Native Affairs Branch (the agency succeeding the Aboriginal Protector in 1939), and the churches, Indigenous town campers now faced the patronage and authority of the Australian Army. Responsibility for supervising the town’s Indigenous labour force was divided between the branch and the local military command. The army soon became dissatisfied with the branch’s administrative laxity. Indigenous labourers were essential to the town’s greatly expanded system for the disposal of human waste. On seven hectares of former commonage south of Heavitree Gap, well outside the town’s residential limits, the collected ‘night soil’ pans were emptied into trenches and then washed. The sanitation workers camped nearby in makeshift shelters. There had been ‘Gap camps’ for a long time, indeed for as long as there had been a town on the Todd flood plain north of the Gap. Now these camps included workers in an essential town service. However, their presence threatened another town service, its food supply, for along the Todd River south of Heavitree Gap were Brandt’s piggery and Lackman’s dairy, and just north of the Gap stood the town abattoir. The army worried that the insanitary camping conditions of the sanitation workers and others camped along the Todd near Heavitree Gap threatened the town’s health. The army included medical officers and officers dedicated to the monitoring of hygiene. In 1942, the administrator received ‘repeated complaints by the Army, including most adverse medical reports’ about the sanitation service.8 The administration took the service over from the private contractor in September 1942. However, the army remained dissatisfied, and in the winter of 1944 the local command mounted a campaign of increasingly outraged correspondence with the administration, demanding that the workers be properly housed and latrined. The administration supplied tent flies, and then reported that the private employers of the riverbed campers (including Brandt and Lackman themselves) had done even less. It is difficult to judge, from available evidence, the extent to which Aboriginal people themselves benefited from these clashes between civilian and military administrations. However, there is no doubt that the administration had never before faced a critic as persistent and well-resourced as the army. The administration had previously resolved the tension between the town’s need for Aboriginal labour and its disdain for Aboriginal fellowship by conceding Aboriginal people only impoverished living conditions in and around the town. From 1941 to 1945, it was repeatedly told by the army that such a solution was not good enough for the town’s collective wellbeing. In this argument over the town’s interests, the housing needs of some Aboriginal people were incidentally advocated.
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From ‘Rainbow Town’ to the Gap One of the effects of the army’s stand was the abandonment of ‘Rainbow Town’, a cluster of about thirty-five crude buildings between Todd Street and the Todd River south of Stott Terrace. The army called for the area to be vacated in 1943. Inspections by the administration in May and June of 1944 estimated that 109 adults and 169 children lived there, ‘90 per cent of them coloured’.9 The administration found a site to which the thirty-five families of Rainbow Town could be resettled, further out of town, just north of Heavitree Gap. These families included many ‘graduates’ of the ‘Half-caste Institution’ or Bungalow. The Bungalow had been relocated to the old Telegraph Station in 1932 and many local Aboriginal youngsters had been given a rudimentary schooling there before the war. Upon leaving that institution, many found a place in Alice Springs’ stratified social order. Their upbringing stigmatised them, according to sociologist Alison Harvey. She reported in 1946 that the Bungalow had made ‘Europeans think of the mixed-blood [Aboriginal person] as potentially or compulsorily a member of an institution for education or punishment (e.g. the local gaol where they tended to be continuously represented) and hence on a quite different social plane from themselves’ (Harvey 1946: 129). The administration’s decisions about this group show a lack of resolution in determining the significance of skin colour. When planning the cottages for Heavitree Gap, the administration had decided to rent rather than sell them. As a Lands and Survey officer advised in 1944, ‘greater control [over rented houses] can be exercised regarding cleanliness, overcrowding, or any other condition that may be stipulated ...’.10 In 1949, the cottages were placed under the responsibility (supervision of hygiene, collection of rent) of the Director of Native Affairs. This made sense, up to a point. Nearly all occupants, apart from a handful of co-resident Europeans and some ‘exempted’ individuals, were ‘Aborigines’ under the Aboriginals Ordinance, that is ‘natives’ or ‘half-castes’ married to or associated with ‘natives’. Yet all Gap residents had become used to a kind of customary, if secondary, membership of the town. Many had jobs (most in unskilled trades and many in an administration agency) and their children made up one-quarter of the Alice Springs school enrolment.11 These so-called ‘half-castes’ were ambiguous objects of European governance. Conceded the potential to ‘rise’ above their Indigenous origins, they were ever under suspicion that they might slide back. A reminder of their tenuous hold on European sympathies came in May 1950, when police suddenly began to enforce the Prohibited Area. Indigenous residents of the town, including those known as ‘half-castes’, were convicted of being where they were not allowed to be. Acting District Superintendent McCoy (who had known many Gap Cottages people since he supervised their life at the Bungalow in the 1930s) was disturbed at this imposition of the law upon town custom. He immediately detailed to his superiors the usages that a literal application of the law would interdict: attendance at Sunday football matches; drovers’ and stock workers’ camps on the town’s periphery; going to the cinema on Saturday evenings. The police
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action, he protested, would ‘adversely affect certain part-aborigines who have been resident in the town for years and who command award rates of pay’.12 Nonetheless, harassment continued, provoking exasperated Gap residents to refuse to send their children to school on 26 February 1951.13 Director of Native Affairs Moy advocated their point of view to the Administrator: ‘The action of the police ... has proved most embarrassing to the Government and to the Branch ... If a piece of legislation, due to current trends, becomes obsolete or unnecessary, it should be removed from the Statute ...’ Moy told the Administrator that, after consulting with the Crown Law Officer on the day of the parents’ boycott, he had issued a general permit the following day ‘granting all half-castes [permission] to be within the prohibited area of Alice Springs’.14 He urged the Administrator to put the ‘general permit’ into the Ordinance by an amendment excluding from the definition of ‘aboriginals’ all ‘halfcastes’ aged over 18. This was not done until September 1953. The Gap Cottages became notorious for their rowdy parties, their sub-standard sanitation (including an uncontrolled dog population) and the difficulty of good housekeeping in overcrowded houses. Native Affairs Branch officers were worried that the Gap residents were beyond instruction. Moy referred to their ‘defensive and almost sullen attitude’; a week later he observed that ‘inspecting officers must be prepared for some abuse and invective’.15 In January 1953, 195 people had been counted there, just over eight persons per two-room house. The sanitation system was now judged to be defective. From the point of view of health, the Gap Cottages had become a disaster. The Medical Officer-in-Charge at Alice Springs, Dr Welton, told the Administrator that the whole town’s health was now at risk from the residents’ outbreak of infectious diarrhoea.16 The case for many residents to leave the cottages was thus clear to the authorities, but where could they go? Patrol Officer Penhall reported the residents unwilling to move: The people say they will not go to the Bungalow [since 1945, a Welfare Branch settlement] because they are not ‘black fellows’, they will not camp on the reserve at the back of Anzac Hill because there is no water, they will not camp outside the Gap as it is too far from town. They will not go bush because their children have to attend school. As can be seen our main problem is with the negative attitude of the people themselves.17
Contradictions within ‘Assimilation’ The administration developed two strategies for dealing with the Gap Cottages. In 1953, officials began to try to inspire a new ‘community spirit’ among the residents, and, under orders from the minister, the authorities began to promote selected households into other parts of the town. I suggest that these two strategies were contradictory.
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The wish to promote community spirit expressed the administration’s continuing sense of responsibility for the Gap Cottage residents. Yet the amending of the Aboriginals Ordinance in September 1953 was supposed to have removed the legal basis of supervision of ‘half-castes’. Some officers pointed out that the Native Affairs Branch no longer had a duty or right to inspect the Gap Cottages, and Acting Chief Clerk Greatorex suggested that to continue branch oversight ‘seems certain to arouse hostility and resentment’ and would ‘militate against assimilation’.18 However, the Acting Government Secretary, C.R. Stahl, disagreed, insisting that ‘the tenants in the Gap Settlement cannot be considered to be the usual type of tenant in Government houses. The government has set up a scheme for a class, who may be described as depressed people requiring the help and guidance of Welfare Officers virtually as much now as when they were legally “wards” of the State ...’.19 The Acting Administrator agreed that the inhabitants needed to be guided ‘by regular advice into a domestic routine so that they might attain a proper standard of living’.20 Paul Hasluck, the Minister for Territories, encouraged the administration to try community development: the people at the Gap would contribute their labour and enthusiasm to the formation of a community centre at the Gap, with the possibility of including health education among its uses. The Super-intendent of the Methodist Children’s Hostel, N.C. Pearce, was keen to inspire voluntary labour to build such a centre, using materials bought by the government. However, by August 1954, he was reporting difficulty in arousing Gap residents’ interest. In July 1956, the Acting Administrator judged that it was time to give up looking to voluntary labour. The Gap residents were not interested, so Welfare Branch carpenters would do it, training Aboriginal labourers who participated. In February 1958, the Administrator reported a change of priorities—to educate parents in child care. ‘Through the mothers and parents associated with the pre-school centre it is hoped that there will grow up some community spirit and organisation ...’21 To my knowledge, no formal association of Gap residents eventuated, though ten years later Rowley noted that the Reverend Jim Downing had recently (in fact, in 1966) encouraged the formation of a club run by an Aboriginal committee. Rowley hoped that this club would be a forum to articulate the needs of Aboriginal people (Rowley 1972: 53–4). It is likely that the assimilation strategy known as ‘pepper-potting’ or ‘dispersal’ contributed to the frustration of community development in the Gap area. Assimilation strategies were sometimes calculated to break, not make, community bonds. In his essay ‘The Outcasts and the Country Town’, Rowley argued that the obstacles to political cohesion among ‘fringe-dwellers’ lay in the intrinsically degrading process of colonisation itself: Perhaps their major problem is that, having lost most of their traditional organisation, and having been restrained from opportunities to work out their own adaptations and new social controls, they were divided amongst themselves. (Rowley 1972: 53–4)
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The social divisions to which Rowley referred—pitting ‘those on the reserve against those squatting on the town common; those living in town against those in the “camp”’—should not be understood solely as manifestations of Indigenous pathology. Though Rowley does not say so, such divisions were probably exacerbated, even fostered, by government policy, which according to Rowley encouraged ‘attempts by individual families to break out of the cycle of poverty and wretched living conditions, of distrust, of brawling, or reckless throwing away of life for momentary satisfaction. Such families tried, mainly in ways pathetically ineffective, to be accepted as “respectable” by the whites’ (Rowley 1978: 113–14). Such families were assimilation’s model clients. Some time in 1952, the new Minister for Territories let it be known that he did not want to see the Gap consolidated as a ghetto: the problem of over-crowding would be dealt with by moving suitable families out into other homes dotted around Alice Springs. This provoked debate among his officials. The Director of Lands, Mr Barclay, argued that to place Gap house-holds on five available blocks of land between the Todd River and Lindsay Avenue—the new ‘East Side’ subdivision—would depress land values.22 The Acting Government Secretary saw the point of Barclay’s objections, but commented that ‘if the policy of assimilation is to have practical application, surely now is the time to make a start with the better type half-caste families’.23 Director of Native Affairs Moy agreed that ‘five families could be selected to take up residence to whom no objection could be taken. Selection would be a matter for Native Affairs Officers’.24 The Administrator, F.J. Wise, feared protest from non-Aboriginal townsfolk. Better not to select five families from the Gap, he ordered, but rather from among those ‘half-caste families already housed in other parts of Alice Springs’.25 Hasluck approved the five East Side sites, shrewdly advising Wise to delay announcing the dispersal policy until it could be linked with an announcement of the government’s program of home-building assistance to the general public.26 The problems raised by the Administrator, said Hasluck, ‘have to be overcome as far as possible by the careful handling of the project, both as regards the white community and in the selection of the coloured families to live in the new houses’.27 According to a list compiled in September 1954, twelve applicants then residing in the Gap Cottages or in the southern Gap Road area were judged suitable to move into the East Side. McCoy’s assessment of their relative fitness was expressed in the words: ‘good’, ‘reasonably good’, ‘reasonable’, ‘fair’ and ‘very low’.28 The government’s policy of cautious desegregation was evidently supported by a significant number of Aboriginal householders in the Gap area who applied to be moved out; but these aspirants had to compete with one another for the ‘reward’ of town residence, rivalling one another in perceived adherence to nonAboriginal norms of domestic order. Is it so surprising that the government’s parallel effort to draw these people together as a community was unsuccessful?
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Mission Block Since 1938, the Finke River Mission had held a town lease on a Gap Road block where missionaries and their helpers could make beneficial contact with Aboriginal people who, for one reason or another, lived in Alice Springs. Post-war expansion of Alice Springs had begun to make the Mission Block an anomaly within the increasingly regulated ‘welfare’ domain. Native Affairs Branch officer Bill McCoy warned F.W. Albrecht in September 1949 that, whereas formerly his Mission Block could be considered to be on the outskirts of the town, it now occupied a central position with which it must conform. Albrecht, ambivalent about the Block since its inception in the late 1930s, agreed in 1951 that he was worried about any ‘attempt to make the Mission Block [Aborigines’] holiday resort’ (quoted in Heppell & Wigley 1981: 19). In the 1950s, the security of the Block’s evangelical patronage was eroded. By 1960, the Director of Welfare, Harry Giese, was bemoaning the Block as a ‘sore spot’.29 Subject to criticism by the administration about the unhealthy conditions on the Block, the missionaries sought government help to bring the camp up to health department requirements.30 McCoy admitted the Block was useful. The Gap Cottages were full, and so transfer of any Block residents was out of the question. As well, the Block was an adjunct to the hospital. Generally, McCoy wrote, ‘patients ... will not come in from Hermannsburg, Areyonga or Haasts Bluff ... unless accompanied by a relative or relatives and [they] usually camp at the Mission Block until the patient is discharged, which, at times, further complicates the accommodation question’.31 His superior officer, Frank Moy, was unmoved. McCoy was directed to bring ‘extreme pressure ... upon the owners of the Block’. The Bungalow (about three-quarters of an hour’s walk north of the hospital for a fit adult) was the place for such visitors. There was a school there for visiting children to attend. ‘Firm steps’ by McCoy would make that clear.32 Aboriginal people employed by the mission were authorised to camp at the Block, with their dependent kin, but unemployed and ‘itinerant’ campers were to be moved to the Bungalow.33 This regime left a certain discretion in the hands of local Native Affairs Branch officers. They could consult Pastor Albrecht or his deputy and then form a judgment about who was to be hounded to the Bungalow and who was to be left alone. The category, ‘employed native’, could extend to a certain number of kin and associates— ’permanent residents’ who were then distinguished from the movable ‘itinerants’ and ‘unauthorised persons’. Throughout 1954, Native Affairs Branch patrols of all the known town camps included visits to the Mission Block. Usually, there was nothing to report, but the persistence of this monitoring and intervention is suggested by such comments as that for 8 April 1954: ‘A number of natives (12 adults, 5 children) were removed to the Bungalow or returned to Jay Creek. This area which was untidy is in the process of being cleaned and is much cleaner. Quite a number of natives are still visiting here
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daily’.34 Sometimes Albrecht pointed to ‘itinerants’ and sought branch help in getting rid of them.35 However, Albrecht’s permissiveness sometimes troubled the branch. In September 1954, McCoy reported that the mission had sold to the resident families the huts in which they lived ‘for a nominal sum, which does not tend to simplify a solution’. The ‘problems’ requiring ‘solution’ were that some of the Block families were made up of employed ‘half-caste’ men married to ‘full-blood’ women, and their way of life was ‘substandard’. As well, the mission now intended to surrender that portion of its lease on which these huts stood.36 To E.C. Evans, the ‘half-caste/full-blood’ alliance was the ‘core of the problem’ of regulating the Block. Native Affairs could not force these people to move, as ‘half-castes’ were not ‘wards’ under the Welfare Ordinance. Officials worried that ‘full-bloods’ tended to drag ‘half-castes’ down. Evans hoped that when Gap Cottages became vacant (as a result of Hasluck’s dispersal policy), these families would move there. Their huts would then be demolished, for which they could be compensated by the administration. His superior officer thought it fairer that the mission pay the compensation, since ‘these people have been fostered by the Mission’.37 When Welfare Branch officers ventured a night patrol of town camps, they found that the Block was in even worse order than they had thought. ‘Unauthorised natives’ were staying the night there, ‘leaving early in the morning and not returning until late in the evening’. These people were removed to the Bungalow and other settlements. The Block, McCoy conceded, ‘now constitutes the main obstacle to be overcome in the matter of effectively exercising control over the movements of natives within the town area of Alice Springs ... the Mission representative is totally unable to exercise efficient supervision ...’.38 Albrecht evidently admitted that he had lost control, and the branch removed one couple—the man was a retired police tracker—who had been listed only two and a half years before as ‘permanent residents’. Their change of status arose from the man’s inability to ‘prevent tribal relatives and others from using his camp at will’.39 The branch’s next opportunity to do something about the Block was when the former Sanitary Camp south of the Gap was judged to be fit for authorised town camping. The Block residents were unwilling to be transferred, however, citing the Sanitary Camp’s distance from work, shops and the hospital and the quality of the water there. These residents were still waiting for transfers into the Gap Cottages: recent vacancies had been awarded to other applicants. The original rationale for Lutheran patronage of their problematic camp was the perceived need for the Finke River Mission to help preserve town-based Aboriginal people from Alice Springs’ morally degrading environment. In the post-war era, the Block also served as a stop-gap measure for employed Aboriginal people who were up against the ‘shortage’ of authorised housing. The hospital benefited to the extent that the Block’s proximity made it easier to keep Aboriginal patients in touch with visiting relatives. However, the Block was now ‘in town’. The administration would not meet Albrecht’s 1952 request for funds to upgrade the Block, and it was not in the mission’s interests to develop a town facility which was working out so badly. A brawling town
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camp was not a fit setting for a church. So the Block lost its patronage. In April 1957, F.W. Albrecht told the Alice Springs Medical Officer that he would be ‘happy to see these people removed to some other area ... as it is impossible to control others who come here to stay for shorter and longer periods ...’.40 The withdrawal of Albrecht’s patronage must have been evident to the residents themselves, for within a year three of the Block’s extended families had decamped to the hills west of Morris Soak.41 It was from this camp, in 1963, that came the first (to my knowledge) collective Aboriginal bid for a piece of Crown land, to give their town camping security of tenure. Evidently these were people who had been ‘banned from camping at the Finke River Mission Block’ (Heppell & Wigley 1981: 76–9). Throughout the 1960s, patrol reports occasionally noted the Block as one of a growing number of town campsites from which Aboriginals of Central Australia continued to access the town. With the lifting of powers to regulate the movement of Aboriginal people in 1964 and with increased access to wages and social security benefits, Aboriginal people ceased to be a controllable element of the town’s population. A subcommittee of the Town Management Board concluded in 1970 that the town must now provide authorised camping areas and must consult with Aboriginal people about how to do so.42 That recommendation preceded a change in Commonwealth government practice. Influenced by the Council for Aboriginal Affairs and the writings of C.D. Rowley, the Commonwealth was soon to encourage local forums of Aboriginal political representation and service delivery (Heppell & Wigley 1981: 88–90, 174–86).
Conclusion A political history of housing for Alice Springs Aboriginals must start with the twin contradictions of Alice Springs as a colonial institution: the tension between the colonists’ demand for cheap Aboriginal labour and their dislike of close associations with Aboriginal people; and the tension between this dislike and the growing imperative to offer medical and other town-based services to Aboriginal people. These tensions made town campers the objects of diverse acts of colonial patronage which qualified the significance of the letter of the law: the Prohibited Area was open to local negotiation. I have described as ‘patrons’ those with a forceful interest in such negotiations: the church missionaries, the military command, the administration officials in Darwin and the administration officials in Alice Springs. Competition between colonial agencies (such as the army and the Native Affairs Branch) prised open a space for the articulation of diverse versions of the town campers’ interests. These patrons did not necessarily see themselves as working for the betterment of Aboriginal people; in the case of the army, it was more a matter of redefining the hygiene needs of the town as a whole in the light of the massive troop presence. Assimilation policy was patronage at its most sophisticated. Envisaging that Aboriginal people would move into regular housing, as their tuition in European ways
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qualified them, family by family, for an orthodox house, assimilation was necessarily selective. Hasluck’s desegregation initiative illustrates the typical practice of grading and differentiating Aboriginal people through a surveillance over which they had no control, only an option of negation. Some Aboriginal people were recruited by assimilation’s patronage, but many were not. For a variety of reasons—European resistance, constrained public housing budgets, housing commission criteria, Aboriginal preference for living according to their own habits and associations—an alternative urban society of town campers arose throughout the post-war period.43 ‘Assimilation’ was an ideology and practice of individuation (of households as well as persons), an elaboration of the colonists’ cultural hierarchy, quite alien to the theory of ‘community development’ espoused in the policy era of self-determination. There was a contradiction between summoning ‘community spirit’ in the Gap area and selecting out the ‘best’ Gap families for the reward of full admission to town life. As Rowley recognised, the inclusion of Indigenous Australians in the wider society must respect their needs and wishes to maintain group identities. The Alice Springs town camps have shown that a committed application of that political principle can give rise to a distinct Indigenous urbanity.44
PART III
Settlement and Government
The entry of the Commonwealth government into the funding and administration of Aboriginal housing was the most significant milestone before the establishment of self-managed Aboriginal housing associations. The 1968–69 federal budget set aside $2.3 million for housing programs on the proviso that they were to supplement existing state expenditures held at previous levels. There was general agreement that ‘ghettos’ were to be avoided—a continuation of the states’ preference for ‘pepperpot’ housing. One expanded part of the new Commonwealth program was direct grants to Aboriginal associations to construct and manage their own houses. The number of local Aboriginal housing associations which could buy existing houses jumped. Whitlam’s government in 1973 provided for a large increase to $30 million for a ‘housing program’ and offered to resume responsibility for policy and coordination of state programs. By 1976, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs reported a backlog of 11,000 houses, and a need for 1000 new constructions annually just to keep pace with the rate of family formations. Yet the overall statistics for both rental and owner-occupier houses in the period were encouraging. Jeremy Long, a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, attributes the success to the state housing commissions’ sensible and effective administration of the massive additional Commonwealth funds. In Chapter 9, we refocus briefly on the remote managed institution. The site is Yuendumu, a large government settlement a few hundred kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. What, seventy years later, has the equivalent of Ramahyuck become in the hands of the secular state? Cathy Keys’ doctoral thesis concerned housing policy and practice at the Northern Territory government settlement of Yuendumu. In her chapter she outlines the variety of housing styles of varying degrees of suitability which have been tried over nearly fifty years, mostly without consultation with the Aboriginal residents. Not only were many of the styles and materials inappropriate; the administration gave little thought to meeting architecturally the variety of traditional lifestyles the residents wished to preserve. Like Hagenauer, the officials imposed uniform familystyle accommodation on a wide variety of individuals.
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As at Ramahyuck, the imposition of the monocultural yupukarra (married people’s camp) was no accident. The Lardil of Mornington Island, like most Aboriginal communities elsewhere, differentiated their society into families (a man, wives and children), single initiated men and a third group comprising women who were widows, single or unattached. Keys finds a similar societal disposition at Yuendumu. In Warlpiri country, women customarily married men many years their senior and lived with co-wives and their children. If not remarried, they spent the rest of their lives in the women’s camp. In law, religion and social arrangement, customary sanctions and societal divisions such as these were very strong. Living outside this law traditionally brought punishment, ill health and even death. On the entry of the government administration, we may ask rhetorically—which domiciliary life-pattern, signified by the dwelling place, was likely to be favoured by housing authorities, and which discountenanced? Primarily, those people who lived in the family group, the yupukarra, were considered as suitable candidates for ‘transitional housing’ and the social process of ‘assimilation’. Those who wished to live in non-European patterns had to build something for themselves. It was only in 1994 that the first gender-specific architecture was constructed at the settlement—funded, at the request of the Yuendumu Women’s Centre, by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13 investigate what the new Commonwealth shared powers meant in practice. First, Kay Anderson begins with an original and striking revision of the way in which Indigenous urban settlement can be analysed. Opposing community discourses predicate opposing spheres of actions: a revived Aboriginality, self-managing and self-assertive, against an assimilationist program to obviate disadvantage, ghetto, slum and disorder. In Sydney, as in the Alice, the South Sydney City Council found that it could not simply send the Aboriginal residents of Redfern back to their homelands. Many now regarded Sydney as their home. Ministers of religion were again among the first to insist on proper Aboriginal living areas. There is an analogy between the Alice Springs Town Management Board declaration of a prohibited area and the Sydney City Council refusing building applications for further renovations to houses in Redfern—a move designed, as Anderson puts it, to prohibit the occupation and upgrading by Aboriginals of extra terraces. Aboriginals, as in Alice Springs, appealed beyond the region; the new Tangentyere Aboriginal Council fulfilled a similar function to Redfern’s Aboriginal Housing Committee, and at about the same time. We notice again the Yuendumu phenomenon of an imposed monocultural housing style, when the South
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Sydney Council tried to insist on housing one single family in each dwelling. The similarities are striking, but so is the difference: the Redfern experience took place in the heart of Australia’s premier city. Aboriginal housing was never to be the same again. The direct housing aid which Melbourne Aboriginals hoped would flow from Whitlam’s Commonwealth government was side-tracked into the control of the Victorian government’s housing commission. Nevertheless, the Victorian Aboriginal Cooperative, analogous to the Aboriginal umbrella-style councils in Alice Springs and Sydney, gained experience and a measure of control over Aboriginal rental properties. Penny Tripcony, in Chapter 11, considers the establishment of the Victorian Aboriginal Housing Board with rather greater powers. Though direct funding and large-scale purchasing powers still mostly eluded the board, by 1983 it was grappling with issues of housing maintenance, rent collection and allocation. At the same time Aboriginal liaison officers were working for the mainstream housing commission. The pervasive monoculturalism of European-style housing was fiercely opposed. Always uppermost, Tripcony writes, was the maintenance of Aboriginal lifestyles and values. Tasmanian Aboriginals suffered the great burden of having been officially defined out of existence for nearly a century. Yet, as Kaye Price explains in Chapter 12, individuals applying in person for rental housing might well be rejected because they were Aboriginal. Even the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre could not compel the Tasmanian Department of Housing to give more than token membership to the ‘allocation committee’. In this account, Launceston in the 1970s emerges as one of the least successful unions of Commonwealth and state Aboriginal housing authorities. In truth there were worse problems than the state housing administration. A conference in 1973 called for ‘deliverance from rat-infested, overcrowded and inadequate housing, and unsympathetic housing authorities’. In Launceston, Department of Aboriginal Affairs Assistant Secretary Charles Perkins, investigating poor housing, found people cooking on an open fire amidst stinking drains and derelict buildings. He described the dwellings ‘incredibly squalid, inconvenient and soul-destroying’. In 1976 the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) negotiated with the housing department to establish a policy committee, of which Price was a member. Consisting of two TAC members and a state housing official, its purpose was to meet whenever a house was to be allocated to an Aboriginal family. But who was Aboriginal? To Price, Aboriginal identity was the first principle to be established.
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Rod Little, in Chapter 13, resumes many of the themes and styles of accommodation we have already encountered. His parents and their large family lived at times in unofficial reservations like The Gap at Alice Springs and in official ‘Native Welfare’ reserves like Yuendumu. They also lived in ‘tin camp’ architecture like the Aborigines of Goodooga (Stephanie Smith’s chapter). Like many Aboriginal people, his family still meets endless resistance and discrimination at the hands of the official state housing and private authorities when seeking rental housing. The differences are also significant, though depressing. Little’s family was constantly moving, a feature of life for many rural Aborigines throughout the nation for most of the century. Out in the bush, they did not enjoy the services of an Aboriginal umbrella organisation or a selfassertive Aboriginal housing board. As the fear of the ‘Native Welfare’ apprehending the children declined and work became more scarce, Little’s siblings and parents became more sedentary; but it still takes a person of Little’s education and authority as a senior Aboriginal bureaucrat to protect family members from discrimination in rent, maintenance repairs and allocation.
CHAPTER 8
The Commonwealth Government and Aboriginal Housing, 1968–81 Jeremy Long
Background to Commonwealth Intervention Policies and Programs in Aboriginal Affairs in the 1960s In 1951 the Commonwealth and state ministers responsible for Aboriginal affairs had subscribed to a policy aim of equal citizenship for Aboriginal Australians—a policy which they unhappily labelled a ‘policy of assimilation’. But through the 1950s, both legislation and administrative practice had remained largely geared to the policies and practices of the past half century when the emphasis was on separation and control, as a means of protecting the remaining population from exploitation and mistreatment. Government authorities focused most of their attention on the groups living on reserves, in communities administered either by governments or by mission bodies. In 1953 Paul Hasluck, then Minister for Territories, had made a notable advance by having all reference to ‘half-castes’ removed from the Northern Territory Aboriginals Ordinance, effectively according ‘full citizen rights’ to people of mixed descent. But otherwise most of the traditional restrictions remained in place there as they did in the states. By the mid 1960s, however, both Commonwealth and state governments had made progress towards matching their legislation and administrative arrangements to their policy aims. From 1958, the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA, later FCAATSI) was campaigning for the repeal of discriminatory legislation and equal citizenship rights and also for constitutional change to allow the Commonwealth parliament to legislate to promote integration. Rather more influential were the concerns of the Commonwealth government to distance the country from South Africa’s apartheid policies and to ensure that Australia would be in position to sign on when the Racial Discrimination Convention, then being drafted in the United Nations, was finally promulgated. To that end, officers of the Attorney-General’s Department scanned the statute books (state and federal) to locate the offending provisions and a clean-up campaign initiated to repeal all discriminatory legislation. Notable results were the amendment of the Social Security Act in 1960; of the Electoral Act in 1962; and of 103
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the Northern Territory welfare legislation in 1964.1 By 1965 most of the states had substantially altered the legislation and administrative regimes affecting Aboriginal people; only Queensland was slow to respond and even there newly drafted Acts had been passed in 1965 which slightly reduced the scope of official controls. The 1967 referendum and the consequent amendment of the constitution, deleting the two references to Aboriginal Australians, might be seen as a kind of symbolic climax to this process (Attwood & Markus 1997). Meanwhile, the ‘assimilation’ policy had come under increasing public criticism, not because it promised equality for all but because it seemed to accord no value to Aboriginal culture and to entail a process of forced change, even ‘absorption’. Prompted initially by Don Dunstan and successor South Australian ministers, the responsible state and federal ministers at their meetings in the 1960s modified the wording of their policy summary, stressing choice and affirming the value of Aboriginal culture and heritage: Assimilation does not mean that the Aborigines should lose their racial identity, or lose contact with their arts, their crafts, and their philosophy. (Department of Territories 1960: 23)
But the term ‘assimilation’ had become so associated with a set of oppressive administrative and legislative regimes that no amount of explanation and qualification could make it acceptable to Aboriginal leaders and their allies in the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement and similar organisations. In 1967 when the Commonwealth government came to respond to the referendum result, the latest information on the numbers and distribution of the Aboriginal population was the 1961 census which showed it to be still predominantly rural, in contrast to the rest of the population. But already it was evident that many were moving into towns and metropolitan areas, notably in Victoria (49 per cent urban) and New South Wales (39 per cent urban). This trend was confirmed when the 1966 census figures became available, showing that the increasing migration into Sydney was mirrored on a smaller scale in other metropolitan areas. It was apparent that Aboriginal people had for some time been joining the general movement from country areas to the big cities.
Responding to the 1967 Referendum The overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote at the referendum could only be interpreted as expressing a public desire that the Commonwealth should act vigorously to ‘solve the problem’. The press certainly interpreted the vote thus and was strongly critical of the government’s ‘slow response’ when the winter passed with no substantial decisions announced or action taken. The states knew what they wanted: the Commonwealth should provide an infusion of funds to allow them to expand their programs and should avoid interfering in their administration of Aboriginal affairs. Initial comments by Commonwealth ministers stressed continuity, indicating that administration should be
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left with states since local differences called for local strategies and the critical areas of health, education and housing were all matters within state powers. The Commonwealth would confer with the states, using the established mechanism of the ministerial meetings of the Australian Aboriginal Affairs Council. The Commonwealth department with state-type responsibility for Northern Territory administration (the Department of Territories to early 1968, then Interior) favoured this approach: minimal change, with that department and minister giving advice on national policy issues, and providing a small permanent secretariat to the ministerial council. When the Commonwealth and state ministers met in Perth in July 1967 for their two-yearly Aboriginal Welfare Conference the conclusion was that ‘little real hope lies in dramatic, immediate solutions’ (Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives (PDHR), 7 September 1967). At that meeting the ministers gave a good deal of attention to their various housing programs, noting that in the previous five years they had spent nearly $6.3 million on these, and estimating that another thousand houses had been provided through the housing commissions. They stressed the need for ‘advice and assistance in family living where required to help families to make the difficult transition from “fringe dwelling” to life as part of the community’. They expected that many Aboriginal people could be provided for under the ‘normal housing commission programs’ and commented that it was ‘sometimes unavoidable’ but ‘generally undesirable that they should be grouped in houses which are designated as Aboriginal housing’. ‘Transitional type housing’ was also needed (PDHR, 7 September 1967). Prime Minister Harold Holt recognised the political imperative to be seen to be taking genuinely new initiatives and, with the benefit of advice from Dr H.C. Coombs, announced in September and November the establishment of new bodies: a Council for Aboriginal Affairs (CAA, hereafter the Council), to be served by an Office of Aboriginal Affairs (OAA, hereafter the Office). The three appointed to the Council were clearly not identified with the existing administration or past policies, and both Council and Office were strategically situated close to the prime minister, which was important if they were to work effectively with both Commonwealth departments and state administrations (Coombs 1978: 2). The Council’s announced functions were to advise the government on the formation of national policies and to consult with Commonwealth departments and authorities. The Council initially stressed an intention to respond to Aboriginal wishes and initiatives, distancing itself from the ‘paternalist’ approaches of the past, and hoped to see groups and communities organising to express their needs and manage their own local affairs. This notion owed much to the thinking of Charles Rowley, whose Aborigines in Australian Society was then unpublished but was read in typescript by Council members (Rowley 1972). Another guiding principle was that it was necessary and desirable to involve the functional authorities, both state and federal, in program administration, rather than developing the kind of separate, ‘omnibus’ department that had characterised state and Northern Territory administrations in the recent past—a
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system that seemed destined to deliver second-rate services in areas such as health, education and housing. This was the approach that Coombs had adopted as DirectorGeneral of Post-War Reconstruction twenty years earlier and he saw distinct parallels between that task and the one the Commonwealth government faced in Aboriginal affairs. But Holt’s scheme was short-lived, terminating before it was properly established when, after his death, his successor, John Gorton, appointed W.C. Wentworth as Minister-in-charge of Aboriginal Affairs, distancing the Council from prime ministerial authority and interest. Later, in 1971, Gorton’s successor, McMahon, moved the Council and Office farther away from the prime minister to the newly created Department of the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts, further weakening the Council’s position.
The Council and Office of Aboriginal Affairs, 1968–72 Commonwealth Grants to the States The top priority for the states was to obtain a substantial boost to the funds they were allocating to housing programs. When the Council members first met state officials in February 1968, they were unable to make any firm offers but, after the 1968–69 budget was brought down, $3.6 million of the initial provision of $10 million for ‘Aboriginal advancement’ was allocated to the states and most of this ($2.3m) was provided for housing programs. Since most states had by then devolved responsibilities in health, education, welfare and housing to the functional authorities, these housing grants went to the housing commissions (and the Housing Trust in South Australia). In the Northern Territory, the housing commission had been routinely housing Aboriginal (‘part-coloured’) families in towns and a scheme for priority allocations to Aboriginal families nominated by the Welfare Branch had been in place for some years as a quid pro quo for the surrender of sections of the Bagot reserve in Darwin, for suburban subdivision. The Welfare Branch, like the equivalent Aboriginal affairs authorities in Western Australia, built ‘transitional’ dwellings on settlements with its Mobile Works Force. Queensland alone insisted that all the ‘Aboriginal advancement’ grants would be used by its Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs (DAIA). This department had a strong position in the state administration and continued to resist Commonwealth pressure to repeal discriminatory legislation or otherwise change its policies, or to reduce its control by devolving responsibilities to functional departments and the Queensland Housing Commission. The Office officers established effective collaboration with other state housing authorities in settling administrative arrangements for the use of the Aboriginal housing funds and priorities for allocation to additional housing in metropolitan areas, in
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country towns and on reserves. The general condition on which all grants were made to the states was that these Commonwealth funds were to supplement existing state expenditure; the states were required at least to maintain the real level of their spending in each category. Aboriginal housing grants were used for the construction of houses, and purchase of land and houses, for Aboriginal families, supplementing, not replacing, each state’s existing special Aboriginal housing programs and also their provision of housing for Aboriginal applicants from general housing grants. Rental payments were to be credited to the Aboriginal Housing Trust Accounts to provide more Aboriginal housing. There was general agreement that ‘ghettos’ were to be avoided and, wherever it was feasible, ‘Aboriginal houses’ were to be scattered; but efforts were to be made to locate one house reasonably close to another for mutual support. Strategies initially varied considerably from one state to another. In New South Wales, about one-third of the houses in the early years were built in the Sydney– Newcastle–Wollongong area and the rest in ‘country centres’, with a concentration in north-western towns like Moree and Walgett, whereas in Victoria all the building occurred in country towns (see Tripcony, this volume). In Queensland, virtually all the building was done in the north, in the reserves and large provincial centres like Townsville, and not in Brisbane. In South Australia, the first program was entirely devoted to country and reserve communities, but by 1971 Adelaide was getting some attention. In Western Australia, all the regions figured in the first program and by 1971 between a quarter and a third of the houses were being provided in Perth. In fiscal year 1969–70, Aboriginal housing grants to the states increased slightly to $2.7 million (in a total of $5.4m for all state programs) and expanded by 75 per cent in 1970–71. Labor Opposition speakers in the annual debates on the States Grants (Aboriginal Advancement) Bills consistently argued for greater expenditure on the whole program and particularly for substantial increases in spending on housing, pointing out that even the accelerated provision with Commonwealth funds was not adequate to keep pace with population growth. They advocated a program of expenditure comparable to the War Service Homes scheme on which the Commonwealth was spending $60 million annually in 1970. Their argument that the government should be setting targets by which the success of programs could be measured foreshadowed Labor’s 1972 election commitment to house the Aboriginal population within ten years. These debates, in which it was rare to have more than one member contributing from the government side, provide some insight into the thinking of concerned parliamentarians at the time: Bryant (Wills, Vic.): It is almost impossible for the child who lives in bad housing to cope with secondary education. … we know very little about the problems that face an Aboriginal person moving into a modern living machine such as a house.
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SETTLEMENT AND GOVERNMENT Kirwan (Forrest, WA): There is a need to provide housing where there is employment available to the men. Cohen (Robertson, NSW): I think it has been said by every speaker tonight that the housing situation is the one that will be the rock upon which we will build the answer to the Aboriginal problem. Until we have them off these filthy revolting rubbish tips and out of these disgusting shanty towns, we have no hope of making any progress. We have to provide them with a way of surviving in our competitive capitalist society. (PDHR, 22 October 1970)
The Council and Office, along with the state ministers at their meeting in March 1970, had also maintained pressure for additional funds, arguing similarly that expected population growth—doubling in less than 20 years—meant that ‘present efforts in many areas required substantial expansion’. The states also stressed the need for support services as their programs began to reach ‘families having no familiarity with conventional houses’. Some states developed pilot schemes for ‘home management services’. This was also one of the themes taken up by the Senate Committee on the Social Environment which was examining ‘the environmental conditions of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders’ from October 1971 to April 1974 and recommended ‘immediate measures to establish … counselling and homemaker services … employing competent Aboriginals whenever possible’. This committee also proposed that, ‘as a first principle, proper and effective water supply and sanitation services be provided for nonurban Aboriginal communities’ and that ‘continuous 240-volt electricity supply be made available for reserve housing’ (DAA 1974: 20–1). By 1972, $15 million had been provided in States Grants for housing (of a total of $25m given to the states) in four years.
Direct Grants to Aboriginal Groups for Housing Programs The direct grants program of the Office provided a means of supporting a variety of local initiatives and some of the earliest grants provided funds for hostel accommodation. One of the first grants for housing was made in 1970–71 to the Aputula Social Club, Finke, ‘to assist the establishment of a housing association’ and several grants were made that year to establish housing associations in Northern Territory reserve communities (Maningrida, Ngukurr, Warrabri, Umbakumba) (PDHR, 30 September 1971). This hastily developed scheme in the Territory entailed collaboration with the Welfare Branch, which made matching grants (but in due course the Office contribution was shunted across to Interior’s vote). The Council envisaged locally managed housing programs, particularly in the reserve communities, as a means of community development, providing experience in establishing and managing group organisations and enterprises, as well as local employment and skills training. Wentworth was a keen supporter of schemes for local building teams using local materials on the Northern Territory mission and settlement communities (PDHR, 26 September 1969). He also supported a scheme for the purchase of transportable houses
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from the Snowy Mountains Authority for removal to New South Wales reserves and town camps (Browns Flat, Brungle). Another proposal was that government should guarantee any loans by cooperative building societies to Aboriginal tenants buying their houses. Wentworth also promoted the establishment of an Aboriginal Aged Persons Homes Trust to receive gifts from the public and use those funds to provide the one-third contribution to match the two-thirds offered by the Commonwealth government under the Aged Persons Homes Act (PDHR, 26 September 1969, 10 March 1970). A few months later, during the debate on the States Grants Bill, Manfred Cross commented that the lack of response to this initiative indicated that ‘the community is not prepared to invest in Aboriginal housing’ but expected governments to find the money (PDHR, 22 November 1970). Yet another proposal considered at this time (early 1970) was based on reports of a scheme in Britain where local associations bought run-down slum dwellings, repaired and refurbished them, and rented them at economic rates to immigrant families which had been paying high rents for poorly maintained premises. The rental income was used to buy and renovate more houses. It was suggested that similar conditions applied to Aboriginal families, especially in inner Sydney suburbs, and that a ‘Metropolitan Aboriginal Housing Association’ might be appropriate. One of the most contentious issues for the Council in its first years was the government’s response to the strike and walk-off at Wave Hill Station in 1966. The group had settled on station leasehold land and resisted government proposals that they should live at the small Wave Hill township nearby. This particular issue proving difficult to resolve, the Minister for the Interior established a committee to report generally on the situation of Aboriginal groups on pastoral properties in the Northern Territory. On this committee, Coombs was able to win support in principle for a policy of negotiating for the excision of ‘living areas’ from leases so that groups could at least obtain leasehold title to the land on which they lived, making it possible for the government to provide grants for housing and other facilities, which employers had failed to provide to an adequate standard. Subsequent progress in negotiating surrenders of suitable areas was slow, but several groups on Territory stations (and others later in the north of Western Australia) developed villages over the next few years. Outright purchase of properties was another means such groups used to gain title to land and become eligible for government housing grants.
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The Whitlam Government and the First $100m Budget for Aboriginal Affairs The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the States Gough Whitlam’s first, two-man ministry established a new Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) in December 1972. This was constituted initially by the Office of Aboriginal Affairs, together with a small contingent of officers of the Interior Department in Canberra, and the much more numerous Welfare Branch in the Northern Territory. Along with the appointment of a Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (Gordon Bryant), this marked the end of the 1967 plan to deal with Aboriginal affairs from a policy and research unit in the Prime Minister’s Department. Spending on Aboriginal affairs was given an immediate boost with $13 million added to the 1972 budget allocation. In March, Bryant introduced another States Grants Bill, providing for an increase of $7.5 million in the grants provided for in the 1972 legislation. The states received $10.73 million for housing in 1972–73, a substantial increase ($2.48m) on the $8.25 million originally provided (PDHR, 7 March 1973). The 1973 budget provided more than $100 million for Aboriginal programs, with $30 million for ‘a massive housing program’ designed to meet Labor’s election policy commitment: ‘All Aboriginal families to be properly housed within a period of 10 years’. Grants to the states increased to $14.65 million—almost 50 per cent more than the whole amount allocated for Aboriginal affairs programs five years earlier. A further increase came in 1974 (in legislation then titled ‘State Grants (Aboriginal Assistance)’ rather than ‘Advancement’) with an allocation of $20.28 million for housing, providing increases in spending in all states except Queensland (Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 16 October 1974). The Queensland government’s intransigence ‘in respect of the Australian Government’s attempts to achieve a collaborative approach to Aboriginal affairs throughout Australia’ and in particular on the question of land rights prompted Bryant’s successor, Senator Cavanagh, to divert increased funds allocated in the 1974 budget for housing in Queensland to Aboriginal housing associations (AHAs) rather than to the DAIA (DAA Annual Report (AR), 1974–75: 24). The Commonwealth had offered in April 1973 to assume responsibility for policy and coordination of programs in the states and to incorporate the state Aboriginal affairs agencies into the DAA. The offer was accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm by all states except Queensland, which also maintained its resistance to involvement of the State Housing Commission in the housing program funded by the Commonwealth grants (DAA AR, 1974–75: 8–9). The DAA progressively established regional offices in all states between December 1973 and December 1975. These were able to deal directly with state housing commissions in settling detailed Aboriginal housing programs (except in Queensland).
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In New South Wales, an ‘Aboriginal Voluntary Resettlement Scheme’ had been begun with DAA funds (1972) to help families move from small country towns in the west of the state with high rates of unemployment to growth centres and cities such as Bathurst–Orange, Tamworth, Wagga Wagga, Albury and Newcastle. By June 1977, eighty-four families (497 adults and children) had been provided with houses, and helped to settle in and find work (DAA AR, 1975–76: 28; 1976–77: 18).
Housing Associations, 1973–75 The sudden and substantial increase in available funds for housing associations from $8.1 million in 1973–74 to $13 million in 1974–75 prompted a rapid expansion in the number of local associations from 71 to 143. In Queensland, some thirty local associations had been set up by June 1975 to make use of the funds diverted from the States Grants. Queensland government opposition to this approach led to difficulties in incorporating associations and buying land (and provided another reason to prepare Commonwealth legislation for the incorporation of Aboriginal associations). In order to accelerate their programs, associations resorted to direct purchase of existing houses. Most AHAs in Queensland and the other states were established in provincial cities and towns, but some were set up in reserve communities, as in the Northern Territory where by June 1975 a total of forty-nine were operating. Associations engaged private consultants, sometimes architects, and contracted with builders in order to achieve their construction targets quickly (DAA AR, 1974–75: 24; 1975–76: 2, 29). Allegations of extravagance and mismanagement of AHA funds appeared in the press and were taken up by the Opposition, to the dismay and irritation of those involved in the majority of associations which were satisfactorily managed. The DAA acknowledged that some had ‘accepted unsatisfactory designs’, some had ‘exceeded budgeted allocations by substantial amounts’, and some had ‘failed to complete their approved building programs’. Remedial measures included enlisting the help of the Department of Housing and Construction to provide technical and management services (DAA AR, 1974–75: 24). The most notable and controversial metropolitan AHA was established in 1973 to buy run-down terrace houses in inner city Redfern (Sydney) which a developer was about to refurbish and sell up-market (see Anderson, this volume). The scheme attracted criticism from the outset, as threatening to create a ‘ghetto’ situation; but Bryant was keen and officers felt obliged to respond positively to this Aboriginal initiative. Critics included Charles Perkins, then at odds with the government and his department; he described the group running the venture as ‘not representative of the Aboriginal people in Redfern and Alexandria’ and considered that there had not been adequate consultation at ‘grass roots level’ with ‘both the white and black people in the Redfern neighbourhood’ (National Times, 29 October–3 November 1973: 8).
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Remote Communities and the Search for ‘Culturally Appropriate’ Designs Much of what was provided as ‘transitional housing’, particularly the aluminium ‘Kingstrand’ units erected in Northern Territory reserve communities, had attracted criticism as serving few of the purposes of houses effectively. The Council was keen to find better answers and had early enlisted the help of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) for discussions of the issues and possibilities with interested architects and others. In 1971 the RAIA was invited to arrange a seminar to discuss ‘the design of low cost, self-help housing in central and northern Australia’ (PDHR, 2 December 1971). After this seminar, the RAIA established an ‘Aboriginal Housing Panel’ (AHP) in 1973, funded by the DAA to ‘examine and advise on Aboriginal housing programs throughout Australia’. It was to promote the development of new designs, coordinate advice and assistance to communities and evaluate designs, in ‘remote and traditional areas’. The AHP set up a task force in 1975 to erect and evaluate ‘a range of experimental housing structures’ at Papunya, Warrabri and Yuendumu.2 The Western Australian Housing Commission also ventured into the provision of housing for remote communities, initially at One Arm Point and Looma, developing house designs and town plans in consultation with the communities (DAA AR, 1975–76: 30). In the Northern Territory, Bryant had persuaded the Defence Department to provide hundreds of army tents, which were due for disposal, to Central Australian communities, where they were well received, and the Council and DAA developed programs to improve camp conditions, both in urban fringe areas (Alice Springs and Tennant Creek) and in reserve communities, such as Hooker Creek (Lajamanu) which was the subject of a special report by the Council. Other Initiatives: Hostels and Housing Loans After the Office had funded a number of local initiatives in providing hostel accommodation to meet a range of needs, a separate company, Aboriginal Hostels Limited (AHL), was established in 1973 to provide ‘essential and urgent accommodation’ primarily for people moving to cities and towns for education or employment, and for medical care. The aim was to meet needs with minimum red tape and maximum flexibility. By 1975, AHL had 56 hostels and some 1000 beds. The Aboriginal Loans Commission, established to manage the Capital Fund for Aboriginal Enterprises (which had been set up in 1968) was provided in 1974 with an additional amount of $5 million to provide low-income families with loans (or guarantees of loans) for the purchase of houses at low rates of interest. Another $5 million was provided in the 1975 budget and, by 1976, 400 loans had been made worth $9.9 million. The DAA commissioned a study of housing needs in 1974 which, based on the 1971 census data, indicated a backlog of ‘some 3160 units with an ongoing demand of some 585 units per year’ (DAA AR, 1972–74: 23). The estimated cost at 1973 prices was $53.4 million, plus a continuing $10.3 million per year to meet demand from family formation. The level of expenditure proposed in the 1974 budget, with a total of
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more than $40 million, nearly half of which ($17.6m) was to go to the states, looked to be enough to make real inroads into the backlog in a short time.
Consolidation, 1976–81 State Grants The Liberal–Country coalition government elected in December 1975 had adopted an Aboriginal affairs policy which took up most of the Labor government’s policy changes but was pledged to eliminate ‘waste and extravagance’. The DAA budget was immediately trimmed and several intensive reviews of expenditure and ‘delivery of services’ were conducted, including a joint review in May 1976 with Department of Construction of the effectiveness of the programs of both state authorities and AHAs (DAA AR, 1975–76: 29). Overall spending on housing was maintained in 1975–76 at the previous year’s level, but grants to the states were cut back and further trimmed in 1976–77, then held at about $10–12 million for the next five years. By 1976, the DAA was reporting an estimated housing backlog of 11,000 and an additional 1000 dwellings needed each year to match the rate of family formation. The department used these figures to back its annual budget bids. The Queensland government continued to resist proposals to involve its housing commission in providing housing with special Commonwealth grants. South Australia had established an Aboriginal advisory committee to its Housing Trust in 1972 and in 1975 incorporated this committee as an Aboriginal Housing Board (AHB), with a full-time Aboriginal chairperson and nine Aboriginal members. Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia then began to establish similar advisory mechanisms. By 1981 the South Australian AHB had eight regional management committees; and the Western Australian Board (set up in 1979) had thirty-seven regional management committees and local management groups. Victoria replaced its steering committee with an AHB in 1981. In the Northern Territory, local housing management committees were established in Katherine and Alice Springs (DAA AR, 1980–81: 23–4). The Western Australian Housing Commission expanded its programs in remote communities, building ‘villages’ at Fitzroy Crossing, and at the Go-Go and Christmas Creek stations and the Beagle Bay, Lombadina and La Grange missions in the Kimberley region. Between 1976 and 1978, the commission also built on seven ‘town reserves’ in the south-west to rehouse thirty-one families (DAA AR, 1977–78: 24). The conditions applying to housing grants, which had previously been set out in a ‘Statement of Purposes of State Aboriginal Housing Accounts’, were set down in new agreements negotiated with all states except Queensland, and with the Northern Territory. These covered the use of the grants, the administration of the housing
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provided, and the use of all income derived from the housing. From 1979–80, some of the funds provided to the states and the Northern Territory in welfare housing grants were earmarked for Aboriginal rental housing ($21m in 1979–80; $22m in 1980–81). The Commonwealth–State Aboriginal Housing Agreements expired on 30 June 1981. Thereafter, grants for Aboriginal housing were included in the general funds provided under the Commonwealth–State Housing Agreement as specifically earmarked amounts (DAA AR, 1980–81: 23). From 1968 to June 1981, over 5700 houses had been built or bought under the States Grants scheme, at a cost of just under $130 million (DAA AR, 1975–76: 30; 1980–81: 23).
Housing Associations The level of funding for AHAs reached $19 million in 1975–76, but the 1976 review led to a substantial reduction over the next two years, both in the number of AHAs (from 158 in 1976 to 129 in 1978) and in their funding. Advice and help from officers of the Department of Construction and from the AHP reduced spending on consultants and helped to increase the effectiveness of this program (DAA AR, 1977–78: 23). The housing panel (incorporated in 1976 as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel) provided advice and assistance to AHAs at Alice Springs and at Mount Margaret, Western Australia (DAA AR, 1977–78: 25). By 1979–80, Tangentyere Council was coordinating and managing housing and other developments on Alice Springs ‘town camp’ leases. The number of AHAs funded by the DAA was once again allowed to increase from 1978 (to 193 in 1979) and expenditure rose to nearly $17 million in 1978–79. By June 1981, 224 AHAs were in operation and more than $22 million was provided for 1980–81 (DAA AR, 1980–81: 23). Since 1975–76 AHAs had received $105 million and built or bought 2712 dwellings. By then, AHAs were also selling houses to tenants, subject to conditions. AHAs employed and provided training for local Aboriginal people: in 1976–77 some 670 were employed, equivalent to 502 full-time positions (DAA AR, 1976–77: 19). From 1 July 1981 responsibility for grants to AHAs was transferred to the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC), which had begun operations on 1 July 1980, replacing both the Aboriginal Loans Commission and the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission (DAA AR, 1980–81: 22). After the Department of Aboriginal Affairs Since 1981, programs have continued essentially along lines established by that date. Earmarked grants to the states continued and, with the election of a Labor government in early 1983, received a boost from $34.4 million (1982 budget) to $52 million (1983 budget) (DAA AR, 1982–83: 11; 1983–84: 44). By 1988–89, $70 million was being provided under what was by then called the Aboriginal Rental Housing Assistance Program, administered by the Department of Community Services and Health (DAA AR, 1988–89: 135). In 1983–84, the ADC was spending $29.6 million on grants to
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the AHAs and $13.5 million on housing loans. These allocations continued to be increased and, by 1988–89, $46.3 million was going to the housing organisations and $31.2 million was provided for loans. In addition, the previous government had, from July 1981, committed $50 million over five years for an Aboriginal Public Health Improvement Program coordinated by DAA and intended to improve environmental conditions, mainly by ensuring an adequate supply of clean water, adequate sewage disposal, and related services (DAA AR, 1980–81: 26–7). This program supplemented the continuing program of grants for community management and services. The scheme was continued for another two years (to 1989) as an ‘Accelerated Community Infrastructure Program’, costs being shared with the states and the Northern Territory. Aboriginal Hostels Limited received $13.7 million from the DAA in 1983–84. By 1988–89, the allocation was $20.5 million and the company was running directly or indirectly 164 hostels with 2928 beds. Overall, in 1988–89, the Commonwealth government was providing a total of $96.7 million for these special housing programs. A needs survey made jointly by the DAA and ADC in September 1983 indicated that 14,400 houses and flats were needed, along with eighteen ‘town camper complexes’ and 1640 hostel beds at a total estimated cost of $820 million (DAA AR, 1983–84: 44). A 1987 survey ‘showed that 16,179 additional dwellings were needed’ and the DAA also cited the 1986 census which ‘recorded 12 957 Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders living in caravans or improvised shelters’ (DAA AR, 1988–89: 135). It appeared that ‘the current programs and funding arrangements were not meeting the needs’. Was it possible that the growth of the eligible population was outpacing even these expanded programs? Early in 1990 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was established and assumed the remaining administrative functions of both the ADC and the DAA, including the housing programs.
Assessment There is no element in social policy for Aborigines the results of which have been so disappointing and so confusing as that related to housing. (Coombs 1978: 239)
The disappointment that Coombs expressed related essentially to ‘central and northern regions’ and reflected his dismay that, in effect, ten years of generous spending seemed only to demonstrate that ‘housing’ was incompatible with the relatively traditional Aboriginal lifestyles of those regions. Coombs may have understated and underrated the achievement of the Commonwealth and state programs in the housing of urban families when he qualified his summary of the ‘frequent failures and disappointment’ in remote communities with no more than a passing reference to the ‘substantial number of successfully housed Aboriginal families in urban and country town contexts’.
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If the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey results are even approximately reliable, then the thirty years since 1967 have seen a radical change in the housing status of Aboriginal Australians, even if the goal of having all properly housed was not achieved in the ten years proposed by Labor in 1972 (ABS 1994). For example, some 95–96 per cent of the dwellings occupied by Indigenous people were reported to have running water, toilets, showers or baths, and electricity and gas services. Only 2 per cent of the sample were in ‘improvised’ dwellings (4 per cent in the Northern Territory). One-quarter of ‘Indigenous households’ were recorded as either owners or purchasers (only 10 per cent in the Northern Territory), and it seems likely that the number of owners and purchasers must have increased considerably since 1967, primarily as a result of the loans program which has been effective in expanding home ownership at relatively low cost. The number of Australians identified as Aboriginal has increased greatly in the intervening years, from fewer than 100,000 at the 1966 census (the number actually enumerated was 79,620, not including Torres Strait Islanders) to 352,970 Indigenous people in 1996. Certainly, many people who did not identify in the 1966 census, and the descendants of such people, are now identifying. Many more Indigenous households now include one or more non-Indigenous persons. But, even allowing for the effect of these changes, it is clear that the housing standards of the population as a whole, and most certainly of the urban-dwelling majority, have improved markedly. And this despite the continuing high general levels of unemployment since 1974 and the markedly higher rates of Aboriginal unemployment. This overall change must be substantially attributable to the success of state housing commissions in sensibly and effectively administering the massive additional funds provided by the Commonwealth. These authorities were the main providers of housing in metropolitan and other urban areas and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey showed that, in those areas, 70 per cent of householders considered their dwellings satisfactory. It seems likely that the Commonwealth grants have ensured not only that many families have obtained rental housing long before they otherwise would have done, but also that the state housing authorities have taken a much keener interest in shaping their programs to meet the needs of Aboriginal families. More people expressed dissatisfaction with their houses in rural areas where ‘community organisations’ were the main providers; those renting from those organisations were more likely to be affected by breakdowns in household utilities. Housing associations were never likely to be as efficient and effective as the state housing commissions and one might argue that it is asking too much of many small and relatively poor communities in remote areas to expect them to organise to provide their own housing. But the housing associations have made a massive contribution to the overall improvement in the standard of housing and, as Alan Gray (1989) has pointed out, these houses are community owned and controlled assets and represent a significant transfer of wealth to Indigenous people. Furthermore, the housing associations allow
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communities to make the decisions about their housing—what kinds of houses they want, and when and where they are built. The fact that governments make generous funds available for housing programs must, however, at least to some extent, force the pace of change and acculturation. As long as photographs can be taken of Aboriginal families living in makeshift shelters, voters will feel ashamed and politicians vulnerable; Aboriginal spokespersons will urge more spending on housing; and it will remain relatively easy for the administering authorities to secure further increases in the amounts provided for Aboriginal housing programs.
CHAPTER 9
The House and the Yupukarra, Yuendumu, 1946–96 Cathy Keys
First, in this chapter, I consider the historical context of housing in Yuendumu,1 examining the different styles of housing built for Aboriginal residents over the last forty years. Then, in the second part, I analyse housing allocation, especially to genderspecific domiciliary units.
The Warlpiri-speaking Peoples Warlpiri-speaking Aboriginal people travelled over and occupied a large area of arid country north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Their lands were explored by Europeans in the first half of the twentieth century. With the settlement of miners and pastoralists in the 1930s and 1940s, access and movement through their country became increasingly restricted and many Warlpiri people gathered at European centres. Yuendumu was established in 1946 as a government ration station and is located 300 km north-west of Alice Springs. The Northern Territory administration moved Aboriginal people from the Granites, Tanami, Mt Doreen Station and Thompson’s Rock Hole to a rations depot near the government-drilled Rock Hill Bore (Yuedumu, later called Yuendumu). Here, there were already at least 200 Aboriginal people, increasing the population to between 350 and 400 people (O’Grady 1977: 111). The first living environments were created using Warlpiri ethno-architecture made from building materials drawn from the surrounding vegetation.2 The large numbers of Warlpiri people residing in semi-permanent camps taxed the supply of fire-wood or building materials in the surrounding vegetation (Kettle 1967: 4). Soon non-Aboriginal building materials were incorporated into ethno-architecture3 and a green belt was established in a one-mile radius from the central park in an effort to ‘keep down the dust’ (Ted Egan, pers. comm.). Residents created their own living environments some distance from the European service centre. From this point, Aboriginal residents experienced a great deal of cultural change (including the introduction of housing) but continued to maintain three very distinct domiciliary groups: the yupukarra (a residential unit of husband, wife or wives, children 118
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and visiting relatives), jilimi (single women’s camps) and jangkayi (single men’s camps). In the new social and physical contexts of settlement, the house came to be associated with yupukarra. People living in the culturally defined gender-specific residential units of jilimi and jangkayi continued to live in Warlpiri ethno-architecture. In the late 1990s, Aboriginal households based around married adults continued to be one of the three types found in many Aboriginal settlements of Central Australia. Yet it was only in 1994 that two houses were constructed for single women in Yuendumu. Prior to this, all housing had been intended for ‘households’ most closely matching a Western model, that is, the yupukarra. The housing needs of gender-specific households have only recently been recognised and addressed by housing funding bodies. Significantly, in Yuendumu, only single women have been considered and only because of innovative ‘special’ projects. Households of young single men continue to be ignored. Funding, construction and allocation of housing based on a Western model of ‘household’ can be conceptualised as perpetuating the assimilationist policies of the 1940s and 1950s.
Varieties of Housing Amoonguna Houses It was not until some time between 1950 and 1953 that the first ‘Aboriginal housing’ was built.4 Three concrete-block work huts were located 400 metres north-west of the central space of Yuendumu, the park. The designs were imported from Amoonguna Aboriginal settlement, with a single room, three sides of verandah and no power, water or amenities. These houses were very popular but it was nearly ten years before housing was more generally available to Aboriginal people in the settlement. In the 1990s, older women recalled the early years of Yuendumu. As young girls they moved between the settlement and the surrounding country, experiencing little change in their traditional living environments and domiciliary activities (Uni Nampijinpa, Rosie Nangala and Ruth Napaljarri, pers. comm.).
Transitional Housing The federal government first announced a policy of assimilation aimed at Aboriginal people in 1939. However, it was not until 1951, when Paul Hasluck became Minister for the Territories and the existing Aboriginals Ordinance was replaced by the Welfare Ordinance, that the policy was acted upon (Tatz 1964: 12). Aboriginal domiciliary environments became a public and governmental concern and, by the late 1950s, the provision of Aboriginal housing had became an urgent priority. Tatz, who studied the administration in some detail, noted:
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The type of housing required needed to be transportable, easily and rapidly constructed and resemble a ‘house’. The type of house chosen had also to have a ‘transitional’ quality, because settlements were to be temporary institutions, training centres for people in a transitional stage between primitive nomadism and western urbanism (and its concomitant culture and values). (Tatz 1964: 142)
The solution seemed to be the ‘transitional house’. The idea was to start with a very basic plan which increased over time in complexity and size. ‘Stage I’ transitional houses were widely introduced into Central Australian Aboriginal settlements in the late 1950s (Fleming n.d.: 20). ‘Stage I’ transitional houses had earthen floors and usually one room, with single-skin metal walls and roof, possibly with verandah, but no services. The addition of more rooms, a floor material, and a limited number of services marked the architectural development to stage II and III types (Memmott 1988: 35).
Sandstone Architecture In Yuendumu, transitional housing was not built until the early 1960s. Prior to this, a masonry building technology was developed, beginning with the construction of a sandstone guest house in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s, a number of structures made with Yuendumu sandstone were built by Aboriginal building teams utilising Indigenous building materials, Western stone masonry techniques and Aboriginal labour. Aboriginal men quarried sandstone from a nearby hill and Aboriginal women collected limestone from the surrounding country which was then baked in a lime kiln to make mortar. The guest house had flagstone floors and the walls were sandstone and mortar. The roof was created from the aluminium structural frame and sheet cladding of three stage I transitional houses.5 In 1961, two sandstone houses were built at Penhall’s Bore by Aboriginal building teams. The houses were intended for, and occupied by, Aboriginal residents. They had two rooms and reticulated water and showers (Tatz 1964: 143). Unlike the guest house which had been created using imported aluminium framing and sheeting, the roofing structure was made from local desert oak and the roof was clad in spinifex. The use of imported building materials was minimal; wire to tie down the roofing members, chicken-wire mesh to hold down the spinifex roof cladding, timber fascia boards, and some copper piping for the plumbing (Ted Egan, pers. comm.). This regional architecture did not prevail but was replaced with government-supplied stage I transitional housing.
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Kingstrand Huts While initially resisting and then sanctioning the Yuendumu sandstone housing project, government pressure to provide mass housing resulted in the arrival (in 1962) of a truckload of prefabricated transitional houses called ‘Kingstrands’. Approximately twenty-five Kingstrand huts were built between 1962 and 1963 (Fleming n.d.: 20). They were planned in two large arcs, north-west of the Amoonguna houses. However, the environmental suitability of the Kingstrand hut was poor. Tatz (1964: 142) wrote: Kingstrand aluminium is meant to reflect heat. While the writer’s experiments are not put forward as scientific evidence, his conclusions, on attempting to live in an unceilinged, uninsulated Kingstrand in Central Australia, is that they are uninhabitable. The concrete floor was hot at 11p.m.; the measured temperature was 18°F [10°C] higher than the outside temperature and 23°F [13°C] higher than the interior of a spinifex humpy at the same hour.
A Kingstrand hut had a single room containing a fireplace assembled on a concrete slab with verandahs on three sides. The only services accompanying these twenty-five huts were five water taps for communal use (Middleton & Francis 1976: 11). European descriptions of Aboriginal occupation of these huts stressed overcrowding and the continuing use of ethno-architecture: The occupants of the iron huts usually prefer to live outdoors. They build boughshades outside the huts and use the latter chiefly as storerooms for food, clothing and other gear. In wet or very cold weather, however, they welcome the protection of these huts, in which as many as nine or ten people and a dozen dogs may sleep huddled around a small fire. (Meggitt 1962: 77)
Igloo Houses The Aboriginal population of Yuendumu increased and in 1965 was recorded as 758 (Long 1970: 200). The Aboriginal residential area of Yuendumu grew with the construction of the Kingstrand huts, but it was not until nearly 100 ‘igloo houses’ were located there that the settlement was actually ‘occupied’ by Aboriginal people. In the mid 1960s most Aboriginal people lived in self-constructed camps of Warlpiri ethnoarchitecture. The one-mile exclusion zone was no longer enforced and Aboriginal camps moved progressively closer to the settlement centre. A program of mass housing was initiated and nearly 100 igloo houses’ were built by the Sitzler Brothers Builders between 1966 and 1969 (Fleming n.d.: 21; Middleton & Francis 1976: 12; B. Priestley, pers. comm.).6 Stage I igloo houses were one-room concrete-block buildings, with a pitched corrugated iron roof (later replaced by a barrel vault corrugated iron roof ) (Figure 9.1). The roof was guttered and each house had a rainwater tank. Rows of five or six igloo houses
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Figure 9.1
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Igloo house, stage I, Yuendumu. (Courtesy Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, Photographic Archive.) The line drawings in this chapter were done by the author from the photographic originals.
were planned alongside each other in grid formation on three sides of Yuendumu (to the north, south and west). Seven ablution/laundry blocks accompanied the igloo houses, complete with solar heaters for hot water. Transitional houses were simple single-room huts with no services, and the Kingstrand hut and the igloo house were the two dominant forms of transitional housing built in Yuendumu. Running water was carted from centralised points. In the later 1960s more services became available to Aboriginal people but they were centralised and often controlled: cooking occurred in a community kitchen and meals were eaten in a supervised dining room, and ablution facilities were similarly centralised. From 1966 to 1969 a large kitchen–dining hall, an infant welfare clinic and a home management centre were built around the park. Warlpiri women attended a ‘Home Management Course’ for six months, where they were taught to ‘sweep, wash, scrub and polish, to maintain a normal home environment’ (Fleming n.d.: 21; Wells 1991: 9–15). In 1969, the provision of free meals and rations ceased, government services were decentralised and residents were paid in cash. As a result, the tasks of washing, purchase of food, cooking and eating were decentralised. House plans reflected this change and began to include kitchens, bathrooms and laundries. Plans began to include two or three bedrooms in recognition of the size of Aboriginal households. The original three ‘Amoonguna’ houses were refitted in 1969–70. A tank stand, reticulated water, laundry, living room and a verandah were added to the existing shell (B. Priestley, pers. comm.).
Koehne Design Houses Between 1974 and 1975, seven Koehne design houses were built with slight plan variations and two variations of roof form. Koehne houses were constructed using
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locally made concrete blocks and located beside the Amoonguna houses. On one side of a breezeway were between one and three bedrooms, a store, and bathroom. On the other side, an open plan kitchen/living room. The breezeway was included in response to a perceived Aboriginal preference for externally oriented living environments (Figure 9.2).7 The 1970s was a period of experimentation in Aboriginal housing solutions in Yuendumu and much of this activity was stimulated by a federally funded government initiative, the Aboriginal Housing Panel.8 The panel trialled several types of housing solutions in the settlement with the intention of carrying out post-occupancy evaluations (Heppell 1977). These were the Aputula house, the Geodom and the James wiltja.
Aputula Mark III Space Frame Houses Existing housing with fixed floor plans neither addressed the flexible nature of domiciliary groups nor the seasonal and daily use of space. What if the walls of a house could be moved by the resident in direct response to needs? Western domestic building technology traditionally utilises internal and external walls for the support of a trussed roof structure made up of a series of spanning members. A space frame roof is created quite differently, utilising a network of small light-weight members jointed in a threedimensional lattice. The geometry of this frame creates a self-supporting structure, resting on posts. Walls can be positioned and moved into any configuration desired below this self-supporting roof structure. In 1976, two space frame houses were built in Yuendumu by builders Bland and Wright (Gole & McAra 1975: 23). The external wall panels were fixed, but the internal wall panels were intended to be movable, creating flexible internal living space. There were problems with the detailing of these internal walls and when assembled they could not be moved as intended. The Geodom and the James Wiltja The Geodom was a propriety form of the geodesic dome which the Western Australian Department of Aboriginal Affairs had been using for Aboriginal housing. The dome was based on a 5 m diameter sphere built of 500 mm galvanised pipe members and covered with a spherical canvas cover over a dirt floor. Only two Geodoms were built in Yuendumu and were reported to be unsuccessful alternatives to existing housing (Heppell 1977: 143). The James wiltja was a tent-like canvas structure, devised by Bill James of the South Australian Housing Trust. The cover over the light steel pipe frame was a canvas material (Kordux) and a newer Nylex material. Seventeen James wiltjas were brought to Yuendumu and were very popular.9 These three projects re-examined the ‘Aboriginal house’ in terms of materials, forms, construction methods and designs from the position of making housing more ‘appropriate’ for Aboriginal occupants.
Figure 9.2
Koehne design houses. (Courtesy Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, Photographic Archive.)
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Figure 9.3
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Aputula Mark III space frame houses. (Courtesy Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, Photographic Archive, May 1987.)
Renovated Igloos During the 1970s Aboriginal participation in the construction of housing was also trialled and since this time an Aboriginal building team has been operating at Yuendumu (Memmott 1988: 43). The Yuendumu Housing Association was incorporated in July 1973 and Aboriginal men started renovating the stage I igloo houses in the 1975–76 financial year.10 Stage II houses were created by adding a new wing on the western side of the existing structure. This wing included a laundry/toilet/shower room, another bedroom and a semi-enclosed space. Stage III was achieved by placing a sink in the second bedroom and making it a kitchen with a small electric stove. Full-height solid walls were built on the southern perimeter of the original floor slab. This wall continued around the eastern side of the slab and included honeycombed blocks. A half-height block-work wall was added to the northern perimeter of the original floor slab, semi-enclosing the verandah space. The renovation of igloo houses ceased in the 1980s; igloo houses were associated with the ‘early days’ and were considered (especially by younger people) as substandard, ‘only fit for donkeys’ or ‘donkey houses’.11 Nomad Houses The 1980s saw experimentation with and construction of several types of house designs, the growth of the outstation movement (Cane & Stanley 1985; Coombs et al. 1980; Young 1981) and the return to favour of the prefabricated kit home but in the new form called the ‘Nomad’ house. Nomad houses built in Yuendumu were two-room singleskin steel dwellings. Ten were built just under a kilometre west of the central park in 1987. In addition, a row of five Nomads was built on both the southern and northern sides of Yuendumu.
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The 1990s Despite re-examining the house in terms of the size of Warlpiri households, none of the housing projects of the 1970s and 1980s addressed household composition in terms of gender. Fully serviced, concrete block-work houses were built in the 1990s. Some housing was allocated for aged Warlpiri people but, as has been the case since the 1950s, all other housing was occupied by households of married people. In 1991 three Telcos houses were built for aged people in Yuendumu, and were called the ‘Hostels’. In the forty-year history of Aboriginal housing in Yuendumu, this was the only time housing was specifically set aside for frail, aged people. The houses were a prefabricated kit, with a steel frame over a concrete slab with roof and walls clad in unlined sheet metal. They contained two toilets, a shower, a kitchen and a small semi-enclosed verandah.12 Throughout the 1990s, mass-produced kit homes were replaced by block-work houses with bathrooms, kitchen and two or three bedrooms.13 These house designs moved away from the 1970s focus on designing for a Warlpiri lifestyle. Block-work houses of the 1990s were described by Aboriginal occupants as ‘proper white fella houses’. They were in high demand but expensive, dependent on government funding and slow to build.
Domiciliary Space and the Life Cycle Despite experiencing over forty years of cultural change in the physical setting of Yuendumu, Warlpiri people continue to maintain Indigenous domiciliary beliefs and behaviours. Warlpiri mourning beliefs and practices were perhaps the most obvious example of this continuity. Traditionally, Warlpiri people destroyed the dwellings of the deceased and avoided those surrounding the place of death. When living in houses under settlement conditions, destruction of the deceased’s living environment stopped. Instead, the house most closely associated with the deceased was deserted indefinitely and close relatives were required to move. Houses were initially avoided, then swept and cleaned, and finally reallocated to an appropriate person.14 Another example of culturally specific behaviour is the maintenance of the three distinct domiciliary units. As I outlined at the outset of the chapter, Warlpiri people organised themselves spatially and socially into three culturally distinct domiciliary groups: the yupukarra (married people’s camps), jilimi (single women’s camps) and jangkayi (single men’s camps). In the past, jilimi and jangkayi were located as far apart as practically possible and access was gender-restricted.15 Significant turning points in an individual’s life were marked socially and spatially through their occupation of yupukarra, jilimi and jangkayi. Young children lived between the yupukarra of their parents and the jilimi of close female relatives. Following initiation, young men were restricted in their access to their parents’ yupukarra and to jilimi in general. Young men travelled extensively and lived in jangkayi until they
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married and established their own yupukarra. Married men periodically visited and resided in jangkayi.16 Warlpiri people married individuals from two generations above or below their own. Most young women were married to men many years their senior and lived with co-wives and their children.17 Older girls moved from their parents’ yupukarra into a jilimi, establishing their own yupukarra when they married. Married women periodically visited and resided in the jilimi of related women. Women were often widowed in their middle age and, unless they remarried, spent the rest of their lives in jilimi. Their populations ranged from two to twelve adults, and might be greater for they included children and grandchildren. In summary, extended families, polygamous marriages and three distinct domiciliary units were defined by Warlpiri law, religion and social organisation. Living outside this law brought punishment, ill health and even death. The design of transitional houses physically discouraged large residential groups by providing very small covered floor areas. Warlpiri people living in yupukarra most closely fitted the size and composition of the Western ‘house-hold’ and could be considered (by proponents of ‘Aboriginal advancement’) as the most suitable candidates for ‘transitional housing’ and the social processes of ‘assimilation’. Warlpiri people living in jilimi and jangkayi fell outside the Western model and, as a consequence, housing for these groups was a low government priority. Housing for gender-specific domiciliary groups in Yuendumu continued to remain a low priority until the early 1990s.
Women’s Houses Following requests by single women in Yuendumu, the Yuendumu Women’s Centre applied to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission for funding to build women’s houses (Joan O’Reilly, pers. comm.). In 1995–96 two block-work houses were built specifically for single women and their children. Each house had six bedrooms, large living/dining rooms, a kitchen and two bathrooms. One house had courtyard areas and was built on the north-eastern side of Yuendumu;18 the other was long, had verandahs on four sides and was located close to the Yuendumu Women’s Centre. These houses marked a dramatic change of housing policy in the settlement, first by addressing the size of Warlpiri households (both houses had six bedrooms and two bathrooms), but more significantly by acknowledging Indigenous domiciliary organisation into gender-specific households (in this case, single women). Although very popular, more have not followed, despite the significant numbers of single women without access to housing.19 Advocacy groups fitting within government funding structures have had limited success at attracting assistance and recognition of the housing and resource needs of the aged and single women.20 Single young men did not come under any organisational or advocacy umbrellas and continued to experience a chronic shortage of access to basic amenities (such as reticulated water and shower/toilet facilities). There has never been sufficient housing for all Aboriginal residents of
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Yuendumu, and Warlpiri people continued to make self-constructed living environments on the outskirts of Yuendumu (where most jilimi were found) but also established camps in the yards and on verandahs of relatives’ houses. Some jilimi and most jangkayi existed close to houses of married relatives. When this occurred, the services of the house were shared but the house itself remained the primary domain of the yupukarra. Significantly, with the exception of the women’s houses and the three hostels,21 all other new housing in Yuendumu was allocated to and occupied by households of married people (or yupukarra). Gender-specific households were ‘passed on’ housing only after services had failed and the dwelling was generally considered uninhabitable by others. The housing stock of Yuendumu has not been systematically maintained and much of the housing from the 1970s has been partially or completely demolished.22 Despite their state of disrepair, unpopularity, lack of water, power and amenities, the igloo houses (built in the 1960s and renovated in the 1970s) have become primary locations of jilimi, jangkayi and yupukarra of frail, aged people. There was simply nowhere else to shelter in poor weather, but at least their renovation drew on the collective knowledge of Aboriginal residents who know how the houses ‘work’ in a range of conditions and have experience meeting their domiciliary needs in and around them. In recent years, damaged igloo houses have been removed rather than renovated to make way for new concrete block-work houses. If this process continues and alternative living environments are not set aside for gender-specific households and the aged, the living conditions of these domiciliary groups will deteriorate.
Conclusion Considering the range of housing types built in Yuendumu, it is tempting to draw conclusions on the success and failure of each housing ‘experiment’. However, the danger in doing so lies in determining criteria for this assessment. With the exception of the early housing period of Yuendumu sandstone architecture, Aboriginal people’s involvement with housing procurement has largely been as recipients and very little effort has been made to either acknowledge and address culturally specific domiciliary needs or to draw on the first-hand experience of Aboriginal housing users. Housing of the 1960s can be understood as an instrument of assimilation, aimed at changing Aboriginal domiciliary behaviour. Considering the continuing use of Warlpiri ethno-architecture, the maintenance of large households and house desertion practices following a death, it could be said that houses have failed to destroy significant Indigenous domiciliary beliefs and practices. However, the Amoonguna huts, Kingstrand huts and igloo houses did provide shelter and access to basic services for a large number of Aboriginal residents. Retrospectively, the concept of staging incremental development of these huts can be seen to have some merit, because additions could be fine-tuned to improve specific social and environmental conditions
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found in Yuendumu, based on the lived experience of residents. The last fifty years of housing in Yuendumu can be understood as a series of seemingly unrelated ‘experiments’ which have never been evaluated. House designs do not appear to have benefited from the experiences of the past. Aboriginal clients, while continuing to maintain Indigenous domiciliary beliefs and practices, have largely shouldered the changes required to occupy these houses. This lack of fit between the realities of people’s lives and house plans can be seen to be partially responsible for the systematic exclusion of gender-specific domiciliary groups from housing allocation. Houses, as we have seen, were first allocated to those living in yupukarra (married people’s camps). The creation of two women’s houses in Yuendumu in the 1990s has had little effect on the relationship between yupukarra and the house except to highlight the chronic housing shortage experienced by residential units of single women and single men. Despite fifty years of Aboriginal people in Yuendumu organising themselves into yupukarra, jilimi and jangkayi, the house continues to be associated with the yupukarra.
CHAPTER 10
Savagery and Urbanity: Struggles over Aboriginal Housing, Redfern, 1970–73 Kay Anderson
Introduction Among the numerous oversimplified judgments of Aboriginals in White Australian history and culture have been those designating their ‘proper place’ as the open spaces of country. Out there, in the ‘back of beyond’, Aboriginals have been seen as coming into their authentic own, tribal and natural. When set against the proud monument of ‘the city’, they have signified the embodiment of either (or both) pre-modern backwardness or primal innocence. Such judgments have been all the more invidious in representing Aboriginals not only as inferior peoples, somehow ill-qualified for the (high and low) culture that ‘the city’ came to signify in the long and uneven Western experience of urbanity; they were also construed by early Anglo settlers and scientists to Australia as bearers of an anterior stage of human development. That is, aboriginality (with a lower case ‘a’) became conceived as a condition, one synonymous with a nether-world of ‘deep time’ back ‘then’ when humanity lived in what was called ‘a state of nature’. Certain things followed from this evolutionary thinking for the ‘urban’ Aboriginal whose displacements and regroupings are of interest to this volume. The notion of an infantilised Aboriginality had implications for a diverse set of people, including the socalled fringe dwellers who lived on the margins of Australia’s town centres from at least the 1930s; those brought into White homes as children from the 1920s; those scattered throughout public housing in the metropolitan centres; or those inhabiting ‘city missions’, as the Sydney suburb of Redfern came to be defined by Aboriginals from the 1970s (Gale 1972; Keen 1988; Rowley 1972). These people—‘returning’ to the city without, in a sense, ever having left it, or at least the lands that came to support urban centres—presented a rupture to some of the cherished spatialised imaginings of nonAboriginal Australians. They signalled a disturbance to the progressivist myths and means through which White Australians registered their presence in the Great South Land.
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The conceits that lay buried in judgments about aboriginality account in no small measure for the profoundly conflictual encounters throughout colonial Australia, about which so much has been written (e.g. Reynolds 1989, 1998; Rowse 1998). And yet, as I wish to suggest in framing an account of a recent struggle over Aboriginal entitlement to the sacred spaces of central Sydney in the 1970s,1 more still can be said about the cultural character of colonialism when that foundational construct of ‘the city’ is itself interrogated more closely and critically.2 This is the challenge I have set myself in this chapter. In substantive terms, the chapter records the conflict over an Aboriginal housing scheme at the site known as ‘the Block’ in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. Located at the heart of metropolitan, capitalist Australia, the struggle of Aboriginals to (re)claim the Block from middle class redevelopment was intensely contested. But, as suggested, my interest is not only in charting the details and players in that heated battle, but also in contextualising the conflict over Aboriginal claims on central city space in the light of tensions between urbanity and Aboriginality. More specifically I wish to make sense of the intensity of that struggle, less within the (by now) extensively critiqued discursive field of ‘race’ and racism, and less still, within the paradigm of prejudice and discrimination employed by writers on urban Aboriginality in the 1970s (e.g. Stevens 1972). As post-colonial and other scholars have recently argued, such perspectives risk reinscribing the very racialised identities and stories of otherness that they seek to displace (e.g. Chambers & Curti 1996). I thus wish to explore, in an extended preliminary section of this chapter, the rhetorical oppositions of ‘savagery’ and ‘civility’ that informed colonialism in Australia and which I will be using to transcend (without discrediting) an earlier ‘race’ account of Redfern (Anderson 1993).3 These languages, operating in a broader discursive field of ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, rendered acutely troubling a politicised Aboriginal presence in central Sydney at a heightened moment in Australian political life.
Savagery, Civility and the City To return, as I wish to in what follows—to the remote locales of ancient Greece and Rome, the courtly nobility of early modern France, and beyond in time to the inchoate ethnography of Europe’s Renaissance—in a story about a tiny city block in just one of the White hinterlands of European imperialisms, might seem unnecessarily ambitious if not wholly improbable. Certainly there are risks of over-generalisation, of distilling too cavalier a characterisation of complex genealogies of ideas surrounding ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ and their mythologised counterparts, ‘city’ and ‘country’. My intention is not, however, to chart a trajectory of such ideas as if to imply they possessed some linear, transhistorical and global continuity. Such an evolution of ideas might be possible, but neither does my learning permit it nor my aim require it. My concern is rather to supply some alternative discursive materials for driving plots about colonial encounters with
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‘difference’ other than the customary scripting of race and racism (e.g. Anderson 1991; Cowlishaw 1988; Trigger 1992). The body of thought that motivated British and other European extensions into the so-called ‘New World’ was animated by more than eighteenth and nineteenth century notions of racial/biological difference about which we now know a great deal. Nor is the ideological debt for this extension of power exhausted by the complex of beliefs that constituted Christianity, the faith that grew in influence in Europe from the fifteenth century and which provided the justification for many European empires to seek to reclaim the souls of New World Indigenous people. Additionally fundamental, I wish to argue, were early modern notions of ‘unaccommodated humanity’—forms of human existence deemed to be ‘unlearned’ or ‘pre-cultural’—and which were in circulation during the late Middle Ages and beyond to Europe’s Renaissance from the 1490s to the 1620s. Even a broad-brush distillation of such notions enlarges the field of our imagining about cross-cultural encounters with the unknown. Other authors have already assisted this task. Raymond Williams (1973) and William Cronon (1991) have, in different ways and for different settings, shown how the distinctions of ‘city’ and ‘country’ built on powerful moral dichotomies of civility and savagery that endured well beyond their ancient beginnings. This work can be enlarged upon to explore how notions of savage peoples came to figure in a field of oppositions surrounding culture/nature, and out of which racialised models of humanity emerged.
The Inter-species Border: Delimiting the ‘Human’ The central concerns of Europe’s Middle Ages were articulated in discourses and attributions of savagery, civility, divinity, bestiality and demonism (Axtell 1981). A central axis of this symbolising world was the human–animal contrast and, while in the eleventh century the influence of the early Church was apparent in the premise of a sharp contrast between Human and Animal, confidence in so strict a boundary collapsed over subsequent centuries. By the thirteenth century in France and England, there existed a lively discourse about the inter-species border, one that was fully capable of registering ambivalence, confusion and curiosity. Ambiguous entities such as centurions, mermaids and other figures of sexual transgression entered medieval myth and fable (Davidson 1991). Local ‘freaks’ and ‘monsters’ were those part-human/partbeasts deemed to lack a ‘cultural’ overlay on their ‘natural’ selves. In other words, they were thought to have escaped the cloak of learning that, since ancient conceptions of the Human, was assumed to rest on the animal part of the self. There were also those ‘Wild Men’ of the medieval woods who, as ‘unaccommodated humanity’, led isolated, wandering lives (Dudley & Novak 1972). The ethnography of the early modern period was shaped by powerful curiosity indeed about such hybrid beings (Friedman 1981;
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Salisbury 1997). Taxonomies were highly speculative, and informed by attraction as well as repulsion. Animality, savagery and civility were concepts whose character cannot be separated from efforts to configure the ‘human’ in European thought. In Greek philosophical writings, especially of Aristotle, the Human had stood in rigid contrast to Animal because He [sic] possessed the attribute and agency of Mind. This was the tool through which human potential was presumed to be realised (Blundell 1986; Sorabji 1993) and, by extension, the instrument through which the abject animal state was transcended. Such a state connoted a site within the human self of bodily instincts, while the moral or cultural self was the oppositional self, able to regulate such impulses. The moral self was thus also the advanced self in this bi-polar model of human identity (Ingold 1994). This idea of the divided self—‘split’ into biological animal and cultural human— persisted into medieval thought, less through the confident speciesism and boundarymarking of the ancients, than through fearful and fanciful invocations of species transgression and hybridity. In this discursive context, notions of bestiality and wildness flourished (Friedman 1981). In early modern usage, ‘savagery’ and ‘civility’ were nouns employed to characterise modes of human existence. They tended to be understood in time–space relation to each other. On the one hand, savagery connoted a rude and uncultivated condition that obtained in human existence before the formation of the ‘civis’ and stable social order (Hamlin 1995). As such, savagery comprehended ‘ignoble’ and ‘noble’ forms. The former, being close to the so-called animal state, connoted fierceness, promiscuity, and idleness. It also implied infantility: so just as the child was to the adult, so was the savage human to the civil. Ignoble savagery was also linked by tradition to views maintaining that remote parts of the world were places where the forces of nature reigned unchecked and the wild growth of plants and animals was matched by that of humans. By contrast, noble savagery inverted the Judaeo-Christian value structure and equated life in a state of nature with innate goodness, sharing, simplicity, and innocence. Civil society, rather than nature, was understood as the source of corruption on earth. In emphasising positive human attributes, noble savagery approached the idea of civility (see below). But it was fundamentally different in stressing the unlearned character of these traits. To be savage was to be untaught. In either form, noble and ignoble, savagery was thought to apply to modes of existence in which there were no social restraints upon instinctual behaviour. Savagery thus prevailed in the absence, for example, of law, commerce, marriage, private property and other cooperative institutions that required settled habits of life. It followed that city living was the ultimate counterpoint of the savage state. ‘Civility’ by contrast to savagery stressed breeding, refinement and, above all, discipline over the instinctual self. In ancient and pre-modern thought, it was a fundamentally acquired attribute implying ‘improvement’ over brute existence through arts and learning. By the end of the seventeenth century, the concept had weakened considerably into a class-based notion of manners and affectation fine-tuned among
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nobles in courtly France (Elias 1982). Such a notion of civility mutated into the idea of ‘high culture’ that is alive to today. But in the earlier, strong sense of the term, civility was assumed not only to entail capacities for rational thought and written verbal expression, but the practice of living in complex social formations. ‘Civility’ obtained where the forces of wildness were overcome. For example, the arts of animal husbandry and farming served to ‘cultivate’ otherwise wild natures and provide the basis for settlement. Civility thus came to imply ‘freedom’; the more learned, the more free from the threatening forces of nature, and the more civilised the condition. By extension, and especially with the growth through-out Europe of Protestantism, the more regulation that one could mount over the Human’s animal self—the so-called ‘beast within’ that represented sex and violence—the more ‘civilised’ the human (Midgley 1979). Laws and forms of political authority were in place in ‘civilised’ societies that enabled and protected social order, systems of exchange, and private property. In that regard, one might note the paradox that in erecting such elaborate social institutions and moralities around themselves, civilised people thought themselves ‘free’.
The City: Freedom and Civility Surrounded by cultivated land and a zone of ‘wilderness’ beyond, the city was conceived in Greek and Roman times as the space in which human potential found its supreme realisation (Owens 1991). Walls around the perimeter of city spaces clearly demarcated the ‘urban’ from the non-urban. ‘Savagery’ and ‘civility’ were evaluative attributions that relied on culturally bounded margins, and ‘city’ and ‘country’ were their primary referents. At the height of the ancient city’s glory, the city was the proudest achievement of (Athenian) democracy where a community of diverse individuals had come to coexist (Kitto 1951). Later on, Roman cities took on an imperial character as centres of military and political power (Pirenne 1925). Henceforth from Roman times, cultures of European urbanism evolved through complex and differentiated fits and starts that need not be detailed here (see LeGates & Stout 1996; Mumford 1961). But by the eighteenth century, the city was typically read as the embodiment of civilisation itself. The standard categories of Darwinian and colonial anthropology proclaimed that humanity arose from nomadic savagery through village-based barbarism to true civilisation, only when the first cities were established (e.g. see Morgan 1877). Not that Western discourses of ‘the urban’ have been immutably triumphal. Under modernity and industrialisation, the city came to be figured less confidently and more complexly at the intersection of two symbolic axes: as the site not only of freedom and desire, but of alienation and decay. It was the space where liberation modulated into depravity; where, far from being realised, human needs could as easily be frustrated (see Smith 1980). The premise of cities as incubators of an advanced human condition persisted (including to today), but the city came to be depicted as a site of contradictory tensions.
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The figuring of such tensions (between freedom and savagery) as somehow ‘heightened’ in the space of the city replay precisely the contradictions and repressions contained within the Western model of the human self described earlier. Recall this is a model in which the bestial self is latent within the civilised (now urbane) self. This ‘divided self ’ is one that has animated increasingly popular psychoanalytic theorisations of the White oppressor’s anxieties and desires in contexts of cross-cultural encounter (e.g. McLean 1993; Sibley 1995). Such tensions might, however, be productively understood without following Freud and the tools of psychoanalysis which trace repression of fear and desire back to the frozen chambers of the unconscious. Rather than explore the psychological roots of self–other tensions, the point of departure for this chapter’s account is, after Ingold (1994), the idea of the divided human self. The characterisation of human identity as ‘split’ into cultural human and biological animal, with the cultural/moral self in command of the bodily self, can itself be set within Western culture and history. The model owes a debt to the ancient contrasts between mind and body, human and animal, over which became layered the oppositions I have been tracking, of civility and savagery. These networks of ideas require considerably more attention than is possible to devote in the space of a chapter. But my intention here has been to provide a fresh glimpse of a narrative infrastructure that conditioned cross-cultural encounters of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, savagery and civility, remote and urban, in Europe’s so-called New World.
Aboriginality and the City In the preceding sections of this chapter, I have been trying to enlarge the web of ideas that underpinned cultures of colonialism in Australia, by focusing on attributions of savagery and civility that figured in early modern understandings of forms of human existence in ancient and Christian Europe. The diverse encounters of European empires with the New World served to impinge on, and elaborate, these ideas and categories. In that sense, Aboriginality assuredly affected Anglo settlers to Australia; the relation was by no means one way. My intention is not, however, to suggest that classical and medieval traditions of thought flowed smoothly and evenly into all European colonial models of racialised humanity. It is rather to take the narrative resources offered by such discourses to shape new accounts of cross-cultural encounters. The peculiar tensions presented, for example, by the savage in the city lend themselves to such fresh scripting. European understandings of the culturally unfamiliar relied on discursive systems other than ‘race’. Alternative symbolic force fields turn a spotlight not only onto racialised rhetorics, but also provinces of meaning that opposed the ‘cultural’ and the ‘natural’, the civil and the savage, the city and the country. These fields were understood in non-Aboriginal thought as occupying a specific set of time–space positionings; that is, they were conceived not only spatially, but developmentally. Non-Aboriginal responses to those ‘savages’ seeking to assert a collective
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metropolitan presence must also be understood against the back-drop of the contradictory figurings of the civilised face and degenerate underbelly of the city under modernity. In what follows, I frame an account of a specific conflict over Aboriginal housing in an Australian city in the early 1970s around the cultural residues of savagery (noble and ignoble) and civility. For some non-Aboriginal allies, we shall see, the urban Aborigine offered to individualistic Australia an image of the noble face of propertyless existence. As for the vocal non-Aboriginal critics of the housing scheme, part of the intensity of their response can be explained in terms of the loss of hermetic distinctiveness of nature/culture, city/country oppositions for people who had themselves never been entirely convinced of their place in Australia. Unlike the zoos and parks that from the nineteenth century brought aestheticised nature to colonial metropolitan audiences, the urban Aborigine did not signify domesticated savagery (Anderson 1995). Such untutored city-dwellers entailed a most incongruous presence. Not only did they dislodge wildness from its linear scripting as a relic of pre-modern space, they ruptured the everyday conventions of domesticity and conduct (read civility) that had long been assumed as mundane to urban existence. Ultimately, I will be suggesting that the urban Aborigine triggered tensions that resided not in the collective settler unconscious, nor only in the discourse of race, but also within the model of the divided human self, one which can itself be confronted and changed. I wish to demonstrate these arguments by now turning from the broad-brush treatment of framing ideas, to the details of one conflict at the heart of Australia’s premier city.
Aboriginal People in Central Sydney, c.1930–70 During the 1930s, as the myth of White Australia flourished and rural recession in New South Wales deepened, Aboriginal people in a number of reserves throughout the state migrated to Sydney in search of job opportunities and fresh beginnings (Parbury 1986). The movement set in train a flow of migrants from diverse backgrounds who were attracted to the cheap housing, unskilled employment, and transport opportunities afforded by central, working class neighbourhoods such as Redfern. By 1971, there were between four and nine thousand Aboriginals living in inner Sydney, the large majority of whom were ‘living in the worst housing conditions’, according to an officer from the local welfare organisation, South Sydney Community Aid.4 A Commonwealth Office of Aboriginal Affairs survey in 1971 discovered problems as serious as malnutrition among the city’s Aboriginal population, attributing it less to discrimination in the housing market than to unsanitary living conditions.5 The attention of the first federal agency concerned with Aboriginal affairs was focused by these investigations but, as we shall see, no formal action was taken until a new government was elected late in 1972. Not that South Sydney’s Aboriginals were inclined to wait for bureaucratic interventions on their behalf. In 1971 the first Aboriginal community-based services to
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be established in Australia were opened in Redfern by activists who sought to address through their own efforts the plight of inner Sydney’s Aboriginals. Most notably, the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Medical Service were set up—in the face of much opposition from the Council of the City of South Sydney (about which more later)—to manage the urgent problems of police harassment and poor health of their clientele. These agencies provided the impetus for Aboriginal assertiveness and for a collective identification with the suburb of Redfern, such that, by 1972 Aboriginal activist Gary Williams could say: ‘Redfern is the heart and Redfern is the community ... At the moment, Redfern is where it is happening’.6 It was the lack of access to shelter that was the primary source of vulnerability for inner Sydney’s Aboriginals, however, as a group of concerned locals were to find late in 1972.
Violating Conventions of Civility: Savagery in the City The practice of squatting in vacant premises was a popular mode of existence for many inner Sydney Aboriginals in the 1950s and 1960s. This precarious lifestyle brought them into frequent contact not only with land-interested groups, but also with law enforcement agencies including police and the courts. One encounter in late October 1972 saw police arrest and charge with trespassing a group of some fifteen Aboriginal squatters who had taken refuge in derelict premises awaiting redevelopment in Redfern’s Louis Street. A bitter trial ensued, and a verdict eventually returned that would have, if unchallenged, confined the squatters to an extended period of shelter in the Redfern jail. At the nearby Redfern Presbytery two non-Aboriginal priests known to the squatters’ lawyer saw an opportunity to politicise the Aboriginals’ plight in the context of rising concern, from some quarters of Australian society, about the status of Aboriginals. Aboriginal demands for land rights, employment, and access to education and health were also beginning to filter into media and government circles. The priests sought to connect themselves with critiques emerging in new Left politics in the late 1960s (Docker 1988), though their immediate concern was Sydney’s Catholic Church establishment, an institution which in the priests’ eyes had become insulated from human rights concerns. The convicted Aboriginals became the priests’ cause célèbre, and on hearing the guilty verdict at the Redfern courthouse they offered to make available the church’s school hall for the temporary shelter of the homeless men. An emergency refuge supplying food, medicine, shelter and acceptance was soon opened at the hall, funded by the proceeds of a bottle collection operation that the Aboriginals themselves undertook. Before long the presbytery’s unconventional hostel attracted the notice of other Aboriginals, and within weeks over fifty had made a new home of the church hall. The refuge also caught the attention of local non-Aboriginal residents, some of whom included members of the Council of the City of South Sydney. Vocal among them were
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Aldermen Terry Murphy and Keith Challenger, who set out to break the alliances being forged at the church hall. Their strategies included scrutiny of the hostel for compliance with council by-laws, and within weeks council declared the hall a ‘danger to children and community health’ and had found a pretext in the lodging house by-law to serve an eviction notice on the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney.7 Consistent with White conventions of civility/savagery, there were charges of promiscuous behaviour and nudity; the hall was deemed a violation of privacy, self-respect, acceptable living arrangements, and ‘proper standards of cleanliness and conduct’. The trustees of the church were given seven days to cease residential use of the school hall. In so doing, they provoked a campaign for Black housing that would defiantly bypass local (and state) government agencies and seek to attract to its cause more powerful allies in the national capital.
Noble Savagery in Redfern: Aboriginal Activists and Non-Aboriginal Allies The priests and Aboriginal activists who ran the hostel operation at the Redfern presbytery knew well that they were plunged into a micro conflict with an entrenched social order. When South Sydney councillors refused to entertain a proposal for housing for the homeless Aborigines somewhere in their constituency on the grounds that ‘encouragement of this nature would bring others into the municipality’,8 a few members of the presbytery team sought to pressure the elected officials of South Sydney. Father John Butcher met with the mayor on 15 November 1972 to ask: ‘What is this council going to do about this? What are politicians going to do? Rich developers are buying up land and forcing these people out ... What is anybody going to do about the Aboriginals?’.9 Mayor Hartup insisted the matter was one for the State Housing Commission, but two weeks later, following a visit by the priests to the housing commissioner, Father Ted Kennedy told council in committee: ‘The Aboriginal group regards itself as one family ... They do not want to be broken up but want communal housing’.10 Enquiries in the latter part of 1972 by the presbytery intelligence revealed that a single developer had bought a row of terraces in nearby Louis Street with a view to upgrading them for middle income residential use. The possibility the vacant terraces presented was quickly absorbed by the squatters and priests. Father Ted Kennedy saw the potential for an alternative model of housing for people ‘not fully acquainted with city living’ (echoes of untutored savagery) (Ted Kennedy, pers. comm., June 1991). The terraces also afforded the possibility of a territorial base from which to launch an agitation. Furthermore, the terraces were located, Kennedy observed, in full view of passing White passengers to Sydney’s Central Station. The political significance of an Aboriginal settlement at the heart of Australia’s premier city was not lost on the presbytery activists. In the ferment of the early 1970s, when communitarian thinking
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infused many quarters (e.g. see Head & Walter 1988), the priests anticipated that a ‘Black commune’ (in the priests’ words) would send a pointed message to individualistic White Australia. In Kennedy’s view, the Aboriginal stood as a reminder (if not remnant) of a propertyless simplicity from which other cultures had departed to their detriment. The view fuelled the sense of purpose of the activists who quickly set about making strategic contacts to Commonwealth officials and to the New South Wales trade union movement. The newly formed Aboriginal Housing Committee (AHC), consisting at this stage exclusively of Aboriginals, found a receptive ear in H.C. Coombs, Chair of the Commonwealth Office of Aboriginal Affairs, in an otherwise uninterested bureaucracy. Coombs’ office had been formed in 1967 under the Liberal administration of Harold Holt and it had begun the task of compiling information, for the first time, on the status and conditions of Australia’s Indigenous population. However, following Holt’s death in 1967, there had been little support for the activities of the office from Holt’s successor, John Gorton, nor his Minister-in-charge of Aboriginal Affairs, William Wentworth (Coombs 1978: ch. 1). Thus, by late 1972, when a mood swing was beginning to infiltrate Canberra’s political circles, the frustrated members of the office were fully primed for action. A delegation from Redfern met with Coombs in December 1972, and there soon followed a written submission from the AHC calling for ‘extended housing’ in Redfern.11 Just as Redfern’s destitute Aboriginals were a cause célèbre for priests seeking to critique settler individualism and materialism, so did elements in the New South Wales trade union movement see an opportunity to etch their mark in the labour movement by supporting the Aboriginal oppressed. The class-based alliance was to prove particularly effective for the ‘Black commune’ initiative. Like the priests’ projections, it connected with ideas within the persistent tradition of European thought described earlier as ‘noble savagery’. Bob Pringle, president of the radical Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), was especially well versed in socialist critiques of capitalism that were increasingly influential in new Left movements. In the Aboriginal squatters, Pringle saw an opportunity to support a project that afforded a ‘socialist alternative’ to the proposed ‘capitalist development’ for Louis Street (cited in Bellear 1976: 23). Armed with this construct, Pringle placed pressure on Ian Kiernan, owner/developer of the terraces in Louis Street, to offer his houses for the temporary occupation of the presbytery evacuees (Ian Kiernan, pers. comm., June 1991). Indeed, Pringle went further, threatening Kiernan with a work ban on his future terrace redevelopment project—and all the developer’s other Sydney projects—in exchange for some of his Louis Street terraces. The developer eventually capitulated to pressure, and signed documents freeing two of his houses for the squatters who now possessed rights to occupy the terraces and deflect police harassment. The significance of this intervention in the trajectory of modern urban transformation was not lost on the AHC whose sense of defiance appeared to swell by the day. Bob Bellear, president of the committee, announced Kiernan’s offerings were
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‘uninhabitable’, and the squatters’ own ‘mop and bucket brigade’ showed themselves quite capable of adhering to prevailing living conventions by bringing two of Kiernan’s better terraces up to by-law standard. ‘We are making a stand for Aboriginal land rights’, announced Bellear to the press. ‘This will be Sydney’s Aboriginal Embassy.’ Other houses would be ‘taken over’, Bellear threatened, ‘until the Labor government gives Aborigines better homes’ (Sydney Daily Telegraph, 30 December 1972). The oppositional appeals from Redfern were not only heard but enthusiastically embraced in Canberra where a new Labor government under Gough Whitlam swept to federal office in December 1972. At the seat of federal parliament, the grassroots agitation registered with the emerging slogan of ‘self-determination’ that was creeping into official parlance and discrediting the older management philosophy of ‘assimilation’. A new Ministry of Urban and Regional Affairs could also find merit in a project based on ‘rehabilitation’ of existing housing in Australia’s cities. This was the language with which that ministry sought to distance itself from the discourse of ‘slum clearance’ prevailing in Australian planning circles since the 1950s. The Redfern agitation could thus be drawn into more inclusive political agendas, and by January 1973, Gordon Bryant, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, saw fit to view for himself the efforts of the local mop and bucket brigade. By the time of Bryant’s visit, some forty-five Aboriginal members of the clean-up campaign were occupying three of the developer’s houses (Sydney Daily Telegraph, 2 January 1973). The minister gave the activists a favourable hearing, and before leaving the site encouraged the housing committee to lodge a formal application for Commonwealth funding for a ‘cooperative housing scheme’ in the block bound by Louis, Caroline, Eveleigh and Vine Streets. This it did, as well as recruiting an architect who, like other actors we have seen, sought to legitimise his involvement in language consistent with a remote and idealised aboriginality. Colin James, a graduate of Harvard University, appealed to the rhetoric of communalism in extending his support to the AHC. ‘It is very natural for Aborigines to share their resources’, said James, whose design proposed, despite the diverse regional and ethnic origins of Redfern’s Aborigines, to combine all the backyards of the terraces in the block into a communal area.12 Thus inscribed within the proposal were notions of pre-modern aboriginality that equated it with sharing and tradition, notions to which the Black activists in Redfern keenly appealed. (By 1980, when tenant complaints about violence and vandalism in the area were increasing, tall corrugated iron fences were restored to each backyard.)
Ignoble Savagery in Redfern: Non-Aboriginal Critics What might have been a mark of pre-modern virtue in the eyes of the visiting federal minister was more ominous for other government officials. The unannounced ministerial visit from Canberra bristled the vigilant aldermen at the Council of the City of South Sydney, and within weeks they were rallying their own campaign of resistance that
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invoked quite different constructs of savagery. The critics’ interpretation of aboriginality departed widely from the resurgent Aboriginality being invoked by the activists, but it was one no less strenuously called up and wielded. For the Labor aldermen who formed a majority on the South Sydney council, and in particular Terry Murphy and Keith Challenger (whom we met earlier in the story), the proposal to house Aboriginal squatters foreshadowed an unruly ‘ghetto’ which would ‘encourage Aboriginal people who are disadvantaged to come into South Sydney which lacks suitable accommodation for such people’.13 The council set about obstructing the project as follows. First, it required Ian Kiernan (the owner/developer) to ‘clean up’ all the buildings then in use by the refugees from the church hall. Second, Kiernan’s application for renovations to the Louis Street properties was approved on the one condition that—echoes of Eurocentric definitions of civility and domesticity—each of the premises provide for single family housing. The major effort of the aldermen, however, was directed at rallying the opposition of local non-Aboriginal ratepayers. At least two of the councillors did not merely react to local public sentiment, they actively sponsored it. A field officer of the New South Wales Department of Aboriginal Welfare noted the council’s proactive role, observing that ‘the council has as its images of Aborigines, age old stereotypes such as drunkedness [sic], immorality, lack of self discipline and community pride ... [T]he greatest amount of opposition toward the project stems from the aldermen themselves’.14 Note less the crude racism here (about which much Australian scholarship exists) than the more specific presumptions about Aborigines’ lack of self-control, their base drives and absence of civilised manners. By March 1973, the South Sydney Residents’ Protection Movement had formed to fight, in its words, the ‘festering sore’ at Louis Street. A petition to the prime minister traded boldly in the historically established discourses of ignoble savagery that were circulating in Australian society in the 1970s. Aborigines were dirty, undisciplined, unable to overcome temptations to drink, promiscuous, and generally unlearned in ‘proper’ ways of living. These images were appropriated to support the movement’s position as follows: We the undersigned [226] residents of South Sydney vociferously protest, object and condemn the establishment of the ghetto in Louis and Caroline Streets by the Aboriginals who have squatted in these properties ... We want the Aboriginal ghetto stopped now—for if allowed to continue it will spread like the plague throughout the entire South Sydney area.15
If the non-Aboriginal ratepayers of South Sydney were the Labor aldermen’s hold on local power, a mutually strategic arrangement was certainly being struck in these negative portrayals of Aboriginality. One group of residents assured Mayor Hartup in April 1973, in words that were richly resonant not only of racism but also, more precisely, of animality allusions within discourses of ignoble savagery: ‘We fully support you, sir, and
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the South Sydney Municipal Council that a ... human zoo should not be allowed in this area’.16 Yet as we have seen, Aboriginal Redfern was being constructed out of federally empowered discourses as well as locally generated ones. Minister Bryant simply deflected criticism about the project from South Sydney with appeals to his government’s self-determination platform, an agenda which took as one of its cues ‘the reawakening in Redfern of Aboriginal confidence’.17 A bureaucrat in Bryant’s office went further and informed Mayor Hartup that the federal government was committed to the project ‘whether Council liked it or not’.18 Not that local opinion was without effect. When South Sydney councillors learned that the owner/developer of the Louis Street holdings had held negotiations with Commonwealth officials over their sale, council invoked the image of mob rule in its locality. It recommended that ‘the situation in the Louis and Caroline Street area be referred to the Commissioner of Police with a recommendation that the area be regularly and frequently patrolled to ensure that the local ratepayers are free from molestation and the impact of anti-social behaviour’.19 Police scrutiny of the occupied terraces was intense from late 1972 into 1973, with many violent confrontations and arrests (Kaye and Bob Bellear, Dick Blair, Colin James, Dick Hall, pers. comm., June 1991). Council also used its powers to full extent by refusing building applications for further renovations to houses in the area—a move designed to prohibit the occupation and upgrading by Aboriginals of extra terraces in Louis Street. It also spoke out against the spectre of Commonwealth intervention in local affairs, as did branches of the Australian Labor Party in constituencies close to Redfern. Pat Hills, state representative for Redfern in the New South Wales parliament, also condemned the exercise of federal muscle in the area. So did the federal member for Redfern, Jim Cope, who refused to recognise Aboriginals as his constituents. Claiming that they could neither be expected to understand the virtues of city life nor cope with urban vices, he saw no future in a pocket of Aboriginal housing in central Sydney (Cope, pers. comm., 1991). ‘I believe’, said Cope, ‘it is entirely wrong for any government to imagine that they can benefit the Aboriginal cause by creating ghettos which would, in my opinion, defeat the ultimate goal of true assimilation between Aboriginals and White people’.20 Most ruptures to homogeneity could be absorbed (and neutralised) in the freedom of the city, but blocks of Aboriginal residence would only thrive on the city’s degenerate underbelly. The utopian projections cast upon the commune project continued to acquire support in circles with the ultimate authority to empower them until, eventually, on 14 April 1973, Minister Bryant triumphantly announced he would approve a Commonwealth grant for the purchase of forty-one houses in Louis and Caroline Streets. ‘The project will become a showplace of racial harmony’, stated the new president of the AHC, Dick Blair (Daily Mirror, 29 March 1973), while Bryant, in a press release long on polemic, declared: ‘It [the scheme] will be a model for inner city communities who wish to preserve their homes and the identity of their area ... Small groups like this give strength to one another without developing a totally separate existence’ (Sydney
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Morning Herald, 16 April 1973). Strength in numbers was certainly what the new residents of Sydney’s Redfern needed in the months following the Commonwealth decision. Between March and May 1973, there were some 410 arrests in the Louis Street area, most being Aboriginals on minor charges.21 Relations with the media grew equally sour, with numerous invocations to the ‘human zoo’ appearing in the press22 about a district that has long since continued to attract negative publicity (Cunneen 1990). A test of self-determination, Aboriginal Redfern has, in another sense, been deemed beyond the cultivation of ‘human’ self-government. By 1999 it was said to be a place imploding in its own decay and decline.
Conclusion In this chapter I have sought to understand the specific tensions surrounding urban Aboriginals in central Sydney in the early 1970s by placing them in a semiotic field different from the conventional frame of racism. In an attempt to further unsettle cultures of the settler Self, I have enlarged the narrative field of ideas through which the urban Aboriginal was conceived and treated. By drawing into my critique that hierarchy in European thought between non-human life forms and assemblages that carried the title of ‘nature’ and those adaptations assumed to signify ‘culture’, I have sought to show how the ‘urban savage’ came to occupy a wholly ambiguous position. In both noble and ignoble characterisations, ‘he’ was deemed to lack the necessary ‘learning’ that qualified citizens for that pinnacle of civility enshrined in the City. Although I have found the narrative tools for my account in classical and early modern conceptions of the culturally other, I have not wished to imply there is some unbroken transhistorical lineage of ideas that connects ancient Greece and 1970s Sydney! My interest is less in chronological ‘origins’; rather I have used the attributions of savagery and civility to tell the story of Aboriginal struggles over entitlement to the metropolitan heartlands of White colonialism through a lens that turns a more vivid spotlight on settler conceits of civility, privacy and domesticity. Redfern’s squatters were defined and managed through these conventions, as much as those emanating from race discourses and impulses. That Redfern’s Aboriginal citizens managed to resist their ‘natural’ positioning outside the city, and to this day cling to the rapidly gentrifying spaces of the Olympic city (Anderson 1999), attests not only to their agency in the struggles of (post) colonialism; Aboriginal space at the heart of the city also holds the potential to be conceived more flexibly by settler Australians. Breaking with the model of the divided self, there is scope for less rigidity in the spatialised imaginings that mark out culture and nature, city and country, self and other. That which is ‘not’ self—the uncultivated other, ‘the beast within’—can become less anxiously accommodated within a self that moves more freely across its various states of being, de-domesticated and unbound.
CHAPTER 11
Towards Aboriginal Management of Aboriginal Rental Housing, Melbourne, 1960–89 Penny Tripcony
The three decades from 1960 to the end of the 1980s were a period of immense growth of the Australian population’s social and political consciousness. During this time, legislation and policies were developed in response to movements for and by Aboriginal people towards formal recognition, self-determination and self-management. Most Aboriginals received federal voting rights through the 1962 Commonwealth Electoral Act and, in 1967, a federal referendum to include Aboriginals in the national census and to empower the Commonwealth to legislate for Aboriginal affairs was overwhelmingly supported by Australian voters. Aboriginal people embraced the government policy of self-determination, and celebrated the potential for it to become reality, particularly with the support of funds set aside in Commonwealth budgets of the 1970s for the establishment and operation of Aboriginal community-based health, legal, housing and welfare organisations. The Aboriginal population of Melbourne grew during this period, not only in number, but in awareness of government systems and their operations. This chapter examines the pursuit by Aboriginal groups of the goals of self-determination and selfmanagement within a framework of urban housing. To some extent goals have been elusive: community plans and strategies have been impeded continually by imposed systems based on Western values. Given the values, social organisation, socio-economic status and lifestyles of Aboriginal people recently arrived from reserves, missions and fringe camps, available accommodation in the city was both inadequate and inappropriate. Living predominantly in the low socio-economic areas of the inner city, the small Aboriginal community of Melbourne rapidly adapted to the environment and became part of the very active political movement for the abolition of ‘the slums’ and the development of better housing. Through this process, Aboriginals gained an awareness of the structure of urban society and where they were positioned within it. They noted the social and economic status that accompanied home ownership; and they learned, from the unemployed and unskilled workers who lived nearby, about lobbying for change, the importance of gaining support from political and church groups, and the power of public opinion.
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People, Housing and Politics: The Aboriginal Population of Melbourne Prior to 1960 Alick Jackomos recounts that, ‘prior to World War Two, there were few Aboriginal families in Melbourne’, but that ‘during the early years of World War Two, the Aboriginal population of Melbourne grew’ (Jackomos 1991: 32). Edna Brown also provides some background to the shift to Melbourne: I was 15 when we came to Melbourne from Framlingham Mission in 1932. As far as I know, we were the first Aboriginal family to move into Fitzroy ... It was the Depression and times were pretty bad. Many people had to go to St Marks for a penny dinner and when we didn’t have anything to eat, we used to get food orders from the Catholic church. (Brown 1991: 86)
By the late 1930s an estimated 200 Aboriginal people were already living in Melbourne and other Victorian towns. Another 200 people were camped in small family clusters on former station sites in the central and western parts of the state, where small reserves remained and were supervised by local police (Barwick 1964: 22). The war brought Aboriginal people to Melbourne and many were employed in the glass works at Spotswood and in the munitions factory. Alick Jackomos recalled that, in 1940, ‘20 Aboriginal men from Lake Tyers joined up ... Their families moved to Fitzroy and Collingwood’ (Jackomos 1991: 34). Several years later, more Aboriginals arrived from western Victoria, where stations had been closed between 1889 and 1922; and from southern New South Wales where some station residents had crossed the Murray River in 1939 as a protest about conditions at Cummeragunja. They also settled in inner industrial suburbs, such as Collingwood and Fitzroy, to seek and take up well-paid factory work available in the years following the end of the Second World War. Many were seasonal workers who, when harvesting was finished and jobs and housing in rural areas were scarce, shared accommodation and living costs with relatives in Melbourne during the winter, often returning to the country after three or four months (Barwick 1964: 26). For several decades, Melbourne’s inner suburbs had been the focus of political activity which had accelerated through the work of the Slum Abolition Movement in Victoria (during the 1930s) and an extensive campaign described by Oswald Barnett as developing ‘a new awareness that in the inner suburbs of the city there were thousands of people leading a life of poverty, unemployment, unsanitary living conditions, and even malnutrition’ (Russell 1972: 9). Political and church organisations such as the ALP Slums Abolition Committee and the Brotherhood of St Lawrence gained public support for the growth of action against inner city living conditions. The growing political activity was the cause of concern by authorities about the spread of communism amongst those living in ‘the slums’. There were reports that ‘two thousand unemployed gather every week in Collingwood and listen to the Communists’. In an
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address to the World Council of Churches, Barnett stressed the ‘need to take people out of the slums or Communism would urge them to do it themselves’ (Russell 1972: 9). The Victorian government responded to this threat first in 1936, by appointing the Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board, followed in 1938 by the establishment—at the instigation of Barnett—of the Victorian Housing Commission, the initial role of which was to redevelop inner city ‘slum’ areas. During the late 1930s, ‘some 866 decrepit wooden cottages were demolished in inner city Collingwood to make way for factories’ (Australian Economic History Review, 1970: 127). However, the onset of the war delayed realisation of long-term plans to reclaim and develop inner city residential areas until the 1950s and 1960s. Aboriginals who, because of their economic and social status, had moved into the inner city areas, found themselves thrust into a very public political environment. At the time, Alick Jackomos recalls, ‘except for the Australian Aboriginal League, created by William Cooper from Cummeragunja Mission there were no Aboriginal organisations’ (Jackomos 1991: 12). They adopted political strategies similar to those of other groups: ‘On Sundays, Doug Nicholls, Marg Tucker and William Cooper gathered at Melbourne’s Yarra Bank, a one-acre reserve where anyone with a cause could speak. Doug would tell people about the Aboriginal situation … [that] Aborigines weren’t even citizens in their own country. They needed permission to leave reserves. They were totally under the control of state governments’ (Jackomos 1991: 12). Combining political and church activities, in 1942 Doug Nicholls approached the Church of Christ Council to rent one of their disused buildings in Gore Street, Fitzroy (Clark 1979: 125). This, with Doug Nicholls as its pastor, became the Aboriginal Church of Christ, later referred to as ‘the Gore Street Mission’, a centre for social events and meetings of the growing Aboriginal population of Melbourne. ‘From this humble beginning, Doug was to start the Aborigines Advancement League, a movement that would win Aboriginal people many rights. More was to happen in the next 20 years than had happened in the previous hundred years’ (Jackomos 1991: 34). In addition to church and political responsibilities, Doug Nicholls and his family had for some years made their home available as ‘... the only haven for the destitute and homeless’. He ‘had more calls for shelter than he had space’, and believed that ‘what we need are hostels right around Australia. A place where these people who are lost in the white community, especially the young ones, can feel safe. Get their breath a bit’ (Nicholls in Clark 1979: 130–1).
The Late 1950s and 1960s: The Growth of an Urban Aboriginal Community By 1960, Melbourne’s Aboriginal population had grown to around 500 to 600 people. The shift to the city by Aboriginals in the late 1950s and early 1960s was facilitated by the Victorian Aborigines Act of 1957 which ended the legal restrictions imposed under
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the 1928 Aborigines Protection Act. Aboriginals had hitherto been prohibited from unauthorised travel about the state, removal from Victoria, or harbouring by Whites unless employed under contracts approved by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines. The 1957 Act was also significant in that it replaced the all-White Board for the Protection of Aborigines with the Aborigines Welfare Board comprising ten members, two of whom were to be Aboriginal. Although a minority membership of the Board, the purpose of which was to promote the ‘moral intellectual and physical welfare [of Aborigines] with a view to their assimilation into the general community’ (McCorquodale 1987: 85, his emphasis), Aboriginals were for the first time formally included in decision-making. The 1957 Act thus accelerated movement to the city by Aboriginals not only from western Victoria and New South Wales but also from Lake Tyers in Gippsland, which until that time had been the location of the only settlement remaining under government control. Most Aboriginal people who chose to move to Melbourne either joined or lived near other Aboriginal families already residing in the inner city areas, particularly Fitzroy, Collingwood and nearby Northcote. The Aborigines Advancement League of Victoria had been formally registered as a charitable organisation in 1957, and, to accommodate those arriving from country areas, it established a hostel for young Aboriginal women with the financial support of organisations like the Country Women’s Association, Apex and Rotary Clubs, and Save the Children Fund (Clark 1979: 149). The hostel, in Cunningham Street, Northcote, opened in 1957. The city environment in which Aboriginal people found themselves had become more diversely populated than it had been in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1961, when the Melbourne metropolitan area was redefined by the Commonwealth Statistician, the population of Fitzroy was estimated to be 29,400, with a density of 37.9 per cent (Turner 1966: 41). The Victorian government’s emphasis during the 1960s and 1970s was on urban renewal (including slum reclamation) (Long, this volume). In the inner city in particular, large areas of terrace and free-standing cottages were cleared to make way for blocks of high-rise and ‘walk-up’ flats, thus contributing to the dispersal of social groups and the disruption to family life. To demonstrate the extent of the urban renewal program, in the suburb of Carlton alone, in 1966 it was reported that ‘approximately 217.38 acres have been declared to be slum reclamation areas of which 190.14 acres have been acquired ... The current rate of building in reclamation areas is approximately 800 dwellings per year’ (Shaw 1966: 57). For the most part, Aboriginal families experienced overcrowded living conditions, particularly when family and kin arrived for employment, health or other purposes. A study undertaken by Diane Barwick in 1961 reported that few Aboriginal households in the city contained only a nuclear family of parents and children. All of the ninety or so households boarded relatives and friends for some part of 1961: During August 1961, 237 persons were living in the twenty-five households which had the highest standard of living. Of these, 105 were children under the age of
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Barwick noted that, although most of the Aboriginal residents of Melbourne had been migratory rural workers and were seeking an urban standard of housing and regular employment, few desired ‘the other characteristics of urbanization; the breakdown of extended family and kinship bonds, and the achievement of material success on an individual or nuclear family basis’ (Barwick 1964: 20–1). These characteristics are described by Barwick as common to all migratory rural workers who ‘everywhere develop patterns of reciprocal sharing’, at the same time alluding to what today might be viewed as evidence of specific Aboriginal values, lifestyles and attitudes: ‘group ties among part-aborigines [sic] are reinforced by strongly developed sentiments of loyalty and duty to kin, and ... a common resentment of past treatment and control by whites’. These traits were evident in the struggle to achieve adequate, appropriate and affordable accommodation for Aboriginal people throughout ensuing years. The 1960s were a time of much social and political activity. Movements that had begun decades earlier strengthened calls for Aboriginal rights in relation to formal recognition, land, education, employment, health and housing. By 1967, 49 per cent of Victoria’s Aboriginal population had moved to Melbourne, but the day-to-day concerns of living in the cities, while important, were only one element of overall Aboriginal rights sought by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people throughout the country. The culmination of the work of so many during the decades of bringing Aboriginal issues to public notice came in the form of constitutional changes supported by Australian voters in the Commonwealth referendum of 1967. Aboriginals interpreted the referendum outcome as the way in which, as equals with other Australians, they could determine their future.
The 1970s: Learning about Self-determination and Self-management By 1973, in accordance with publicly endorsed constitutional changes, the Commonwealth government was finalising the many complex arrangements for the transfer of Aboriginal affairs to federal jurisdiction. Following the announcement that year by the federal Labor government of a substantial budget allocation for direct grants to Aboriginal community associations, Aboriginal people in Victoria set about forming Melbourne-based organisations that would provide services to their communities in Victoria. The stated government policy was self-determination and self-management for Aboriginal affairs, and the community perceived this as an opportunity to appropriately respond to the needs of families. After a series of general meetings, three major organisations were established in Melbourne that year to provide legal, health and housing services.
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The Victorian Aboriginal Cooperative Limited was formally incorporated in October 1973 under the state Cooperation Act of 1958, with an all-Aboriginal membership of over three hundred. Office premises readily accessible to most of Melbourne’s Aboriginal community were rented at 108 Smith Street, Collingwood, on the third floor of a structurally sound, but rather dilapidated, four-storey building. The cooperative’s principal purpose was ‘to enable Aboriginal people to satisfy their need for adequate housing’. Members had voiced their ‘concern to enforce the right of Aboriginal people to decent housing by giving the people access to the resources which they have been denied in the past’. It was generally considered that Government departments like the Housing Commission are not equipped to give the necessary special treatment to Aboriginals … The type of housing provided by the Housing Commission is inappropriate … Conventional design of HCV [Housing Commission, Victoria] houses does not cater for the fluctuating number of residents as occurs when Aboriginal people welcome their relatives to stay. (Johnstone 1977: 9)
In the belief that through the government’s self-management policy and with the support of funds aimed at meeting the Labor Party’s election statement,1 the cooperative’s membership envisaged an organisation with ‘the flexibility to design appropriate houses which reflect the lifestyles of the people they are intended to house’ (Johnstone 1977: 9). In reality, however, the aspirations of members and the activities of the cooperative were confined by the amount of annual grants, accountability requirements of the funding body (the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs), the rules of incorporation under Victorian legislation, and the lack of opportunities for staff to gain relevant administrative and housing experience. Staff, membership and tenants soon realised that, given such circumstances, the cooperative was no more than a ‘band-aid’ service, which could neither adequately meet community needs nor compete with services offered by both public and private housing sectors. The ‘band-aid’ view was confirmed when housing responsibilities and functions of the Victorian Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs were vested in the HCV, with the passing through the Victorian parliament of the Aboriginal Affairs (Transfer of Functions) Act, 1974. Aboriginal communities in Victoria were enraged that, despite the existence of Aboriginalcontrolled housing associations, ownership and management of 216 properties were transferred to the HCV. A further realisation of the ‘band-aid’ or tokenistic nature of the cooperative occurred in 1975. The board of directors and staff had worked closely that year with a team of final-year architecture students to design an innovative community housing complex for a specific vacant site in Collingwood, which included areas for social gatherings and other recreational activities. The plan, known as the Mia-Mia Project, aimed to provide accommodation for Aboriginal extended families by grouping units into three blocks to correspond with the major areas (western district, Murray River and
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Gippsland) from which they had moved into Melbourne (see Anderson, this volume). Residential blocks surrounded a central recreational area with outdoor and covered communal facilities. Aboriginal community members generally were excited about the concept of a complex which demonstrated an understanding of the composition and lifestyles of families as these relate to accommodation needs. However, numerous discussions, negotiations and funding submissions could not persuade governments to support the project financially. Cooperative members and staff who had participated in discussions and negotiations concerning the Mia-Mia Project were left with the view that although political directions for Aboriginal affairs had recently changed, senior bureaucrats had the same paternalistic attitudes as their counterparts in earlier regimes. While there was some evidence to support this view, in hindsight many of those involved in Aboriginal affairs since the early 1970s have seen that plans were developed and actions taken on the basis of misinformed notions of government policies of self-determination and selfmanagement. During the period 1973 to 1976, Commonwealth direct grants channelled through the Victorian regional office of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs had permitted the cooperative to acquire seven houses—five in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, one in Geelong and one in Wodonga. The houses were rented to Aboriginal families selected in accordance with criteria determined by the board of directors, whereby preference was given to large families and to those currently occupying substandard accommodation or sharing with other families in overcrowded conditions. Decent private rental accommodation was often out of reach for many Aboriginal families, mainly because large houses were few, and when available were either seriously in need of repair or too expensive for families on low incomes. There were also many instances when Aboriginal applicants were refused accommodation. After the federal Racial Discrimination Act was passed in 1975, the refusals of some real estate agents became a little more subtle: prospective Aboriginal tenants were often advised that another applicant had paid a holding deposit or had ‘just signed up’, or that the owner had decided to withdraw the house/flat from the rental market (see also Little, this volume). Because of such refusals, Aboriginal applicants would sometimes send a white friend or a fair-skinned family member to inspect available accommodation and to complete the necessary application forms (see Little, this volume). These measures might be considered deceitful, but were used only in desperation after several attempts to find reasonable accommodation had met with refusal. With a full-time staff consisting of a field officer, an administrator and a receptionist/typist, the cooperative also provided a range of services to the Aboriginal community, such as referrals to other Aboriginal organisations and relevant government departments; liaison with a range of accommodation and related agencies; a loan scheme for bond payments on private rental accommodation; and related advice. Many issues had arisen that impeded operations and plans for an expanded service to effectively meet the accommodation needs of Melbourne’s Aboriginal community.
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Broadly, they included the following. Available funds from direct grants were insufficient to acquire land and construct houses, or to demolish and replace houses on existing blocks; but the allocation of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs for individual purchases permitted only the acquisition of existing houses (usually with only three bedrooms) being sold on the market in relatively low-income areas. The term ‘normal wear and tear’ took on another dimension in these circumstances, requiring continual attention to fixtures and fittings such as doors, taps, electricity outlets, stoves and hot water systems. Funding on an annual basis did not permit long-term planning. Furthermore, the cooperative was permitted neither to invest funds on a short-term basis to increase capital nor to mortgage existing properties to borrow for additional properties. Changes of governments and/or policies also led to differing directions and funding levels. In such a small-scale operation, income from rents was insufficient to cover rates, general maintenance costs, improvements and/or other over-heads. In addition, rent arrears escalated, not least because the cooperative allocated houses to those ‘in greatest need’. Sometimes these were families who, because of rents owed to the HCV, were ineligible to re-apply to the commission. Others were ineligible to apply to the HCV because of previous evictions for ‘anti-social behaviour’. Despite these issues, by the end of 1989 the cooperative had disposed of the Wodonga property, and owned twelve houses—one in Geelong and the remainder in the Melbourne suburbs of Northcote, Preston and Reservoir. The cooperative also performed many functions to support Melbourne’s Aboriginal community, on the understanding that accommodation issues could not be addressed in isolation from other factors impacting on urban Aboriginals. Thus, in addition to providing an accommodation service, it had ‘given birth to’, sponsored and/or briefly accommodated: the Camp Jungai Aboriginal Cooperative Limited, the Victorian Aboriginal Sports and Recreation Cooperative Limited, the Eric McGuinness Study Centre, the Victorian Aboriginal Education Consultative Group, the Victorian branch of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students Union, the Melbourne Aboriginal Community Youth Support Scheme, Yappera Children’s Services Cooperative Limited, the Aboriginal History Program, and the Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria. It is doubtful that small urban housing associations, the aims of which are primarily to accommodate large low-income families, can survive without sacrificing either their underlying principles or their effectiveness. There is a view that such associations duplicate the services of state government housing departments, and duplication in an economic-rationalist climate is dangerous for small organisations with administrative limitations and few resources.2 The cooperative argued that its services were provided from a basis of experience, knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal people, cultures and lifestyles—something that state housing authorities neither offered, nor were capable of offering at that time. ‘Only by funding Aboriginal organisations rather than government departments can any government be truly responsive to the needs of
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Aboriginal people and find the solutions to the problems experienced by the Aboriginal community’ (Johnstone 1977: 10). Although Commonwealth government directions had changed during the 1970s, the bulk of funds for Aboriginal housing was consistently allocated to the HCV. Those who had been involved with the cooperative and similar organisations had learned that in housing issues and administration, for governments and their departments, the policies of ‘self-determination’ and ‘self-management’ were in fact directed towards the assimilation of Aboriginal people into the wider community. Similar conclusions had been reached by Aboriginal groups in remote communities, which defined self-management as ‘a delegated function whereby a group or some type of formal authority carries out tasks with funds and program design determined by others outside the group or region’. Self-determination, by contrast, was perceived to be ‘the right of a culture, society or region to decide for itself whether its future will be as an independent sovereign entity in the world, or whether ... its people accept association with or integration in an existing national constitutional order’ (Jull 1994: 54). In 1970s Melbourne, if there were no such clear definitions, those in housing associations used their experience of what could not be done, in establishing an efficient selfmanaged housing organisation.
Developing a Model for Self-management: The Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria As the 1970s progressed, a matter of increasing concern was the lack of communication between Victoria’s Aboriginal communities and the HCV. A growing number of Aboriginal families were being accommodated through HCV processes, and an even greater number were registered on the commission’s waiting lists. In June 1978, in response to a recommendation from a state meeting of Aboriginal groups in Swan Hill, National Aboriginal Conference member Jim Berg organised a meeting in Collingwood of representatives of Aboriginal groups and the HCV. At that meeting it was decided to establish an Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria (AHBV) which would advise the HCV in relation to ‘management of its approximately 300 Aboriginal-funded houses’ (AHBV Annual Report (AR) 1983: 6). It was agreed that the ultimate aim of the board was to assume ownership and management responsibility for ‘Aboriginal-funded’ properties, but that specific knowledge and skills were needed to achieve this aim. An Aboriginal Housing Board Steering Committee was formed, which explored the effectiveness of the South Australian Housing Board and its relationship with the South Australian Housing Trust, and assisted in drafting a constitution and format for a similar organisation in Victoria. At the same time, the steering committee provided advice to the HCV on day-to-day housing matters. Houses being purchased from the HCV by Aboriginal occupants were not included in this arrangement.3 During the life of the steering committee, a major issue arose which provided an opportunity for Aboriginal community organisations to work closely with the HCV,
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thus reinforcing the need for a formal Aboriginal management advisory mechanism. In 1979–80, representatives of the commission informed the steering committee that many Aboriginal tenants were in serious arrears and that eviction procedures would be commencing. Because of alleged mismanagement by the state Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, all arrears by Aboriginal tenants of state housing had been written off when Aboriginal housing was transferred from the ministry to the HCV in 1974–75.4 Since that time, rental arrears had accumulated again, but on this occasion the housing commission was not prepared to cancel debts. To prevent Aboriginal tenants from being evicted, field officers of the Melbourne-based Aboriginal organisations (the cooperative, the legal service and the Aborigines Advancement League) visited all tenants with arrears and explained rental, rebate and arrears payment procedures to them. The combined effort and teamwork successfully avoided an extremely embarrassing situation for the HCV and a stressful one for Aboriginal tenants and community organisations. The steering committee worked closely with the Minister for Housing, who successfully presented the Articles of Association and Memorandum of Association of the Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria to the Victorian cabinet for ratification in October 1980. Working within the rules, the steering committee organised elections to be conducted through the State Electoral Office for nine Aboriginal honorary AHBV members—one for each of the seven country regions and two for the metropolitan area—corresponding with HCV regions. A nominee of the Minister for Housing completed the board’s membership of ten, all of whom were to hold office for a period of three years, in accordance with the Articles of Association.5 The first elections occurred on 14 February 1981, and the inaugural meeting of the AHBV took place on 9 April. After fourteen months’ operation, described as ‘largely a settling-in period of learning aspects of Ministry of Housing procedures, defining policies and establishing future directions’, it was considered that ‘a firm foundation has now been laid on which to base future developments in Aboriginal housing’ (AHBV AR 1982: 7). The board had already become an important link between Aboriginal communities and the Ministry of Housing, performing a major role by allocating houses throughout the state—on the basis of need—to families on the waiting list. While funding levels allowed for the purchase of 45 to 50 houses per year, a waiting list comprising over 400 applications meant any reduction was slow. On 30 June 1982, the AHBV, through the Ministry of Housing, assumed management responsibility for 434 rental properties, comprising those transferred from the state Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs in 1974, and the remainder acquired from specific grants under the Commonwealth–State Housing Agreement (CSHA).6 By September 1982, the board had also formulated Victoria’s first Aboriginal housing policies, developed procedures of operation between the board and the ministry covering purchase of properties, allocations, maintenance and rental matters, drafted Aboriginal housing accommodation standards (setting out physical requirements such
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as heating, fencing, floor coverings, blinds) and provided for four houses to be used by the Department of Community Welfare Services as family group homes. It was also in 1982 that a Labor government took office in Victoria, with a preelection policy objective of transferring existing state-owned Aboriginal housing stock to an Aboriginal body. Through this policy, it seemed that the aim of Victoria’s Aboriginal communities to own and manage their own housing could become a reality. This did not eventuate and, despite this policy and activities since the early 1970s, there was—and continues to be—little public awareness or acknowledgment of either Aboriginal housing issues or the innovative, positive strategies to address them.7 The AHBV’s activities, knowledge and skills expanded rapidly during the following years. In 1983, because of the limitations of Aboriginal cooperatives and associations, the board registered as a public company which permitted a degree of flexibility in terms of staffing, property ownership, and a range of activities. By the end of the year, four Aboriginal Housing Liaison Officers were employed by the Ministry of Housing (two in country and two in metropolitan areas), but reported to the AHBV. By the end of 1984 the board was effectively providing advice in relation to acquisition and construction of houses and units, allocations, rental rates and payments, maintenance matters and overall management of 116 metropolitan and 443 country Aboriginal rental properties. Board members advised on the annual purchase or construction of a range of rental properties, for example, some larger houses to accommodate unsuitably housed families, as well as those on the waiting list, and smaller units for single applicants and small families. At Bairnsdale, the AHBV recommended the use of concrete-reinforced mud-bricks, manufactured by the Lake Tyers Aboriginal community, for the construction of a four-bedroom house and some units. To ensure long-term rental of properties, purchases were recommended in areas where there was a stable Aboriginal community, and where the White community did not object to Aboriginal neighbours.8 From experience gained since the AHBV’s inception, members and staff saw the need for a forum where overall housing and accommodation issues might be discussed by representatives of community housing associations, Aboriginal communities, tenants, and federal, state and local governments, and at the same time develop a position on the state government’s proposal to transfer properties to an Aboriginal body. Thus, Victoria’s first state-wide Aboriginal housing conference was convened at Camp Jungai in 1985. Now a public company soon to move into its own premises, and with some experience of rental properties management as well as knowledge of broad housing issues across the state, the AHBV was well positioned to express interest as a likely recipient body for existing state-owned Aboriginal housing stock. With additional CSHA-funded acquisitions during 1985, Melbourne’s rental stock had increased to 133 houses and 7 flats; and by June 1986, the total number of rented properties in Victoria was 642; but the waiting list had increased to 614 applications. That year also, in various parts of the state, teams of Aboriginal workers were employed
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Figure 11.1 Winnie Quagliotti, Chairperson, Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria; Frank Wilkes, State Housing Minister: Opening of AHBV office, 79 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, 19 November 1987. (Courtesy Penny Tripcony.)
to do maintenance tasks, such as fitting fly-screens to the windows of the many houses without such fixtures, preparation of houses and flats for painting, clearing and tidying yards, and so on. Unfortunately, the maintenance teams had been formed as Commonwealth-funded short-term Community Development Employment Projects, but in their wake Koori Constructions Limited was formed and contracted for similar work. The state housing authority (now the Department of Housing and Construction) was beginning to rely upon the AHBV’s responsible and responsive recommendations for the management of Aboriginal housing. This became even more evident when, in 1988, eviction action was proposed for tenants whose arrears were increasing. Unlike the previous occasion, this time some Aboriginal organisations advised their members to boycott any form of remedial action, and the board was precariously balanced between the state government and Aboriginal communities. The AHBV, however, reaffirmed both its responsibility for individual tenants, and its management commitment to the state government, by seeking and receiving from the Minister for Housing and Construction a two-month moratorium on evictions, directing its six housing officers to negotiate payment agreements with the tenants concerned, and convening a state-wide arrears strategy meeting at Echuca.
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To demonstrate the development of AHBV expertise in rental accommodation management, the 1989 annual report refers to monthly skills development programs conducted for Aboriginal housing officers, the creation of a position responsible for developing an Aboriginal housing video, an Aboriginal housing resource library, an Aboriginal Housing Board newsletter, tenant information booklet, computer system and information manual, the creation of an understudy manager position in the Aboriginal Housing Section, Ministry of Housing and Construction, and the continuation of Aboriginal-controlled building, maintenance and painting enterprises in the Aboriginal Housing Program.9 In the report, the retiring member for metropolitan Melbourne wrote: The achievements during the eleven years since the initial meeting of the steering committee have been many, the stalemates few, and the failures even fewer ... Remaining Board members have responsibility for approximately four times the housing stock that existed at the time of the Board’s inception. When the number of houses and units is taken into consideration, there have been very few questionable decisions by the Board.10
Conclusion The story of Aboriginal housing in Melbourne is one of the many aspects of Aboriginal struggle, adaptation and survival. It is about working to achieve adequate, appropriate and affordable accommodation for Aboriginal families, which cannot be divorced from the broader struggle by Aboriginal people for recognition and rights as equals within Australian society, including the right to manage their own affairs. In so doing, Aboriginal people adapted both to life in the city, and to working within the rules determined by governments and implemented by systems. The process was a learning one: learning about self-determination and self-management and what could and could not be done; learning to manage many of the facets of a large rental housing program; learning how to change the rules to be more responsive to the needs of Aboriginal families and communities; and learning about planning strategically for future operations. Shortly after the federalisation of Aboriginal affairs and the introduction of a policy of self-determination and self-government, Aboriginals in Victoria aimed to achieve ownership and management, by a representative Aboriginal body, of Aboriginal housing held by the state government. Throughout the process of adaptation and learning, Aboriginals in Victoria survived as a people, maintaining their dignity and core cultural elements of their lifestyles, including their shared concern for and obligations to their communities, families and kin. The underlying principle for Aboriginal management of Aboriginal rental housing is the maintenance of Aboriginal lifestyles and values. Victorian Aboriginal communities have never lost sight of that aim.
CHAPTER 12
A View of Tasmanian Aboriginal Housing, Launceston and Hobart, 1970–79 Kaye Price
Since I started work at the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre I think Aborigines have been made to feel they are somebody. They didn’t feel that before, because they were called half-castes. You might as well just say ‘outcast’. I would like to thank Mr Mick Mansell for he called us Aborigines instead of those words ‘half-caste’, and ‘quartercaste’. Terrible words. We know that we are people of Aboriginal descent. It makes us feel a lot better, makes us feel that we’re all someone. (West 1984)
Tasmania really has the most remarkable history. While I have lived through a small part of it, fought the battles and participated in survival and celebration, the incongruities and inconsistencies have always been a part of daily life, something to be taken in one’s stride. It wasn’t until I began writing this account, partly from memory, but also with reference to documents and papers of the time, that the nature of the treatment, in Tasmania, of ‘things Aboriginal’ appeared ludicrous. It was particularly ludicrous that while Tasmanian Aboriginal people themselves were lobbying state and federal governments for improved conditions, a seminar was held in August 1976 to ‘discuss recent research on several aspects of the life of the extinct Tasmanian aborigines [sic]’ (Plomley 1966, my emphasis).1 In reading the report, I gave the editor the benefit of the doubt, as I felt he may be referring to Tasmanian Aboriginal people who had died, but on page one were the words ‘The Tasmanian aborigines are an extinct people’ (Plomley 1966: 1). Following the 1967 referendum, when voters were asked whether they wanted the Commonwealth to have powers to make special laws for Aboriginal people living in the states and for Aboriginal people to be counted in census figures for Australia’s population, many ‘advancement’ organisations were established. Ryan notes that the results of the referendum ‘had an immediate impact on Tasmania, where the Commonwealth provided funds for Aboriginal housing in Launceston in 1968’ (Ryan 1996: xxiii). Where were Plomley and others living that they failed to notice that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were not extinct?
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Background The late 1960s and 1970s were exciting times in Aboriginal affairs, and probably never more so than in Tasmania. For me, growing up in an Aboriginal community was an unforgettable experience. While, to the casual observer, I and other members of my family did not fit the entrenched stereotype of Aboriginal people, the traumas and dayto-day experiences live on as miserable memories of cruelty and lack of respect. My earliest memories are of a dwelling, situated near a creek, that consisted of three rooms in a weatherboard construction. There were no neighbours, except for Granny Blackall. I don’t know if I remember, or have been told so often, that my sister and I would stand in an old tank, while our mother carried water from the creek and washed our clothes. Just after I was born, a building collapsed and trapped my father beneath it breaking many bones, which necessitated his spending the best part of my first five years in hospital. Somehow, my mother was able to rent a bigger place and we moved to a small house not as far from, but not much closer to, the hospital. Eventually, she actually managed to purchase a house, the asking price for which was £900 ($1800). I was about five years old at this time and started school. I have several vivid memories of primary school that time will not let me forget. One needs to understand the situation in Tasmania. On the one hand, Tasmanian Aboriginal people no longer existed, but on the other, I ‘had holes in my socks because I was an “Abo”’; ‘I shouldn’t have a bicycle because I was an “Abo”’; and ‘half-caste bitches shouldn’t be allowed to shop with decent people’. There were other incidents where the perpetrators carried physical evidence of my anger and frustration, but these three phrases aren’t ever really out of my thoughts. At this time, many adults within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community preferred not to identify as Aboriginal. Because of past events, people felt it was something shameful, and would claim any other heritage. During my younger years, Aboriginality was something that was rarely discussed and I was taught to walk on the other side of the street if I saw my grandmother. My dad would never discuss the issue and the aunties would pretend to be anything but Aboriginal. They had been taught that it was shameful to be Black, but our experiences would never let us be anything else. When you live in a small town, and there are adults there who know your history, they tell their kids and so it goes on. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t deny your Aboriginality. In addition, Tasmanian Aboriginal people were scattered throughout the ‘mainland’, with a concentration of people on Flinders and Cape Barren Islands. It seemed to me that there were more Aboriginal people in the north of the state, but perhaps that was because people lived closer together. When I was fifteen, I moved to Hobart to start paid employment and it was then I met Auntie Ida, Lenna and Darrell West, who became my family away from home. After I was married, my husband forbade me to see Lenna as he didn’t want me mixing with Aboriginal people. And I let him do it! But we did keep in touch and it was
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through Lenna that I learned about the formation of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Information Service (AIS). The AIS was established in Hobart in 1972. Rosalind Langford, the first secretary, played an enormous part in publicising the AIS and bringing discrimination against Tasmania’s Aboriginal people to the notice of the general population. ‘Its purpose was to help fight the prejudice ... especially as far as social, employment and housing discrimination were concerned.’2 Although I moved to the city and met many more Aboriginal people who identified, it was not until many years later that I actually became active in Aboriginal affairs. My second daughter was to go on a camp to Maria Island and a comment was made by the teacher, in front of the whole class, that ‘her “boong” money would pay for the excursion’. I saw this particular daughter cry for the third time in her life (the other times were at the deaths of her Nan and Pop). We made an appointment with the field officer at the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC), who at this time was Pat Torres, as we were outraged, angry and hurt that a teacher could do this to a student. We had no Aboriginal home/school liaison officers or Aboriginal education assistants at this time, as the movement was so new, that lobbying had not reached this point. Pat made an appointment with the principal and the teacher, after which an apology was received. This didn’t make it any easier, as my other children then became a target for this teacher’s animosity. But it did introduce me and my kids to the world of Aboriginal affairs. In what seemed no time at all, I was a member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, then the treasurer and a member of the housing subcommittee. All my spare time out of school hours and in school holidays was spent at the centre. It also led to my helping Auntie Ida West with the research for her book Pride against Prejudice (1984).
Abschol ‘Abschol’ was formed in Tasmania in the 1960s but was ‘mostly concerned with distant affairs’ (Mollison & Everitt 1978).3 At this time, a Liberal government came to power after twenty-six years of Labor rule. It can be inferred that most of the Tasmanian population saw Aboriginal people as non-existent but thought, if any remained at all, it was only on Cape Barren Island. Interestingly enough, Abschol conducted a census of Cape Barren Island and found that seventy people remained, but the new premier of the time denied the existence of any separate community. Nevertheless, Abschol began to search for people of ‘Tasmanian descent’ and to develop cottage industries and services on the island. By 1970, it was estimated by Abschol that there were more than 1000 Aboriginal people living in Tasmania. The population on Cape Barren Island had dropped dramatically and there was no aid available from the state government. The premier, Angus Bethune, stated that ‘there are some [Aboriginal] people who are unemployable and
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unhouseable. Ordinary houses are too good for such people. We can’t treat them differently to others in need’ (Mollison & Everitt 1978). In 1971, the first Tasmanian State Aboriginal Conference was held at the Trades Hall in Launceston, northern Tasmania. This was funded by Abschol, with some financial aid and delegates from the Commonwealth. The state had refused to aid the conference, on the grounds that ‘they should be able to find money themselves. Why should we help aboriginals [sic], they have not demonstrated to us any real need?’ Approximately 180 people attended this conference, where it was moved that ‘we do not wish the Tasmanian Government to attempt to dilute and breed out our people and our cultural heritage’ (Mollison & Everitt 1978). By 1973, when an all-Aboriginal meeting was called at the AIS centre, estimates of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population numbered in the vicinity of 3000.4 The centre was handed over to Aboriginal people, and Abschol was abolished in Tasmania. This was replaced by a broader-based race relations group of the Australian Union of Students (AUS).
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, as it came to be known, with offices in Hobart, Burnie and Launceston, gave many Aboriginal people a centralised point of contact, a sense of cohesion and later a focus for community activity. Henry Reynolds (1995: 5) wrote: ‘Identifying themselves as Aborigines, community members provided the springboard for the modern Aboriginal rights movement which emerged in the 1970s—a development which surprised many Tasmanians of European descent, who had been taught to believe that the Island Aborigines had disappeared a hundred years earlier’. The potential for Aboriginal involvement in housing concerns emerged through the establishment of the TAC, although at first, with a very small budget, the centre set about demanding a better deal for Aboriginal people in housing, employment and education and to lobby the government to inter Truganini’s skeleton, which had been on display in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. According to Heather Sculthorpe, there were families living in cars, bus shelters and garages and, even amongst those who had been housed under Australian government programs, there were four or five family units sharing the same three-bedroom house (Sculthorpe 1980: 80). Some families were in desperate circumstances and a conference at the Launceston Hotel in July 1973 called for ‘deliverance from rat-infested, overcrowded and inadequate housing, and unsympathetic housing authorities’. Aborigines claimed that the Commonwealth–State agreement on housing for Aboriginal people was being broken and that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were living in substandard accommodation. Ros Langford, secretary of the TAC, told the conference:
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One [house] was rat-infested and officers of the State Housing Department simply told us to get some rat poison. We are living in bad housing. Most are only secondrate and still we cannot buy them. People say that good homes are too good for these people.5
The state minister for housing agreed that Aboriginal people had grounds for complaint, as the state could not sell houses that were provided under the Aboriginal Housing Advances Trust. Aboriginal people were permitted to rent these houses, which were built by the state from Commonwealth funds, but not purchase them.6 At this time, two federal programs were funding Aboriginal housing: the Grant-inAid Program provided funds directly to Aboriginal cooperatives for the construction and purchase of houses; and the Grants to the States Program allocated funds to state housing authorities for the provision of rental accommodation to Aboriginal people. Between 1970–71 and 1979–80 the Tasmanian government received $1.4 million from the Commonwealth for Aboriginal housing (Table 12.1). Table 12.1 Commonwealth–State grants to Tasmania for Aboriginal housing, 1970–80 ($) 1970–71 1971–72 1972–73 1973–74 1974–75 1975–76 1976–77 1977–78 1978–79 1979–80 TOTAL
41,000 35,000 35,000 136,000 204,450 227,000 200,000 175,000 149,000 254,000 1,456,450
Note: Figures for earlier years are difficult to ascertain. Source: Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Melbourne, cited in Sculthorpe (1980: 80).
Aboriginal activist Gary Foley was Monash University’s race relations officer at this time. His aim, he stated, was to give Aboriginal people back their identity. Foley visited Tasmania at this time and was reported as saying: As most Tasmanians know, the last of them died almost 100 years ago, after what must have been the closest thing to total genocide in modern history. And they are proud of it.7
In August 1973, the federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gordon Bryant, approved an allocation of $60,000 to Tasmania, $15,000 of which was allocated to housing. (At this time, a new three-bedroom house with ensuite was costed at $14,220.) In November 1973, Bill Mollison, representing the Aboriginal Information Service,
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stated that Aboriginal people in Tasmania needed education, spiritual guidance and the security of having their own homes. He said that he would not like to see the housing commission provide the homes, but that a cooperative building society would more adequately cater for requirements: I admit some of the housing commission houses given to aboriginals [sic] have not been well looked after, but they were below sub-standard houses anyway. It was as if the commission gave aboriginals the worst houses—and I have seen some of these houses myself, and they’re disgusting. It is only a matter of time before local aboriginals start their own building society and build their own homes—both to alleviate the pressure on the housing department—and to provide them with the designs they want. (Saturday Evening Mercury, 9 November 1973)
The federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) opened an office in Hobart and, not long after, the office bought a hostel in Glebe, not far from the TAC, to provide short-term accommodation.
Launceston Visit In early November, following reports of inadequate inappropriate housing, the TAC organisers of a two-day conference in Launceston arranged a bus tour to three Aboriginal homes. Accompanied by reporters, DAA officials (including Charles Perkins, the high-profile Aboriginal bureaucrat) visited two homes at West Tamar Road and Maitland Street that had been bought by the state housing department with funds provided by the federal government, and another at Gleadow Street. State Housing had paid $8800 for the upstairs-downstairs house in West Tamar Road, which could only be accessed by a steep and slippery path from a busy road. Members of the group were unable to see inside the peeling, weatherboard house, as it would not be occupied until repairs costing more than $2000 were completed. Those visiting the site felt that the purchase had been impractical and uneconomical; although the repairs would make it into a large, comfortable home, it was considered a dangerous location for children. The cost to convert the house into flats for adults would have been astronomical. The group travelled on to Maitland Street, where a small Victorian weatherboard house acquired by State Housing for $12,000 was located. State Housing had paid $400 to paint the outside, but a closer inspection revealed that approximately $2000 was needed to make the bathroom, laundry and guttering effective. Two families, consisting of five adults, one of whom was a grandmother, and six children, lived in the cottage, which was felt to be over-priced and too small to accommodate a family comfortably. The privately rented house in Gleadow Street proved to be a condemned brick terrace house, with no stove, hot water (a tap in the back yard was the only water
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supply), no inside doors, electric power points, laundry or bath. This edifice, through which rain leaked and wind blew, was home to a woman and four of her six children. She had arranged for one son, who had recently had an operation on his hip, to stay in Melbourne with his grandmother, as it was not possible to care for him properly in that house; another teenage son lived with friends in another town. His mother felt that her home was not a fit place for a teenage boy. Perkins, shocked by the depressing conditions under which this family was living, immediately arranged for alternative accommodation. A representative of the DAA’s program section told the Tasmanian Mercury (6 November 1974) that 150 Aboriginal families were on the waiting list for housing, yet the Tasmanian government had not spent its full allowance in 1973. The Tasmanian Minister for Housing, Mr Lowe, responded that ‘many of the problems of Aboriginal housing were brought about by the tenants themselves ... Many difficulties referred to regarding Aboriginal housing and the appalling conditions have been self inflicted by the tenants’ (Launceston Examiner, 7 November 1974).
The Department of Housing Ultimately, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre negotiated with the Department of Housing to establish an Aboriginal Housing Policy Committee with a majority Aboriginal representation. This group, often referred to as the ‘allocation committee’, comprised two TAC members and a department official. I was a member of this committee for a short time; it only seemed to meet when a house was to be allocated to an Aboriginal family. We would meet, look at the waiting list and decide on the priority, but if the director didn’t agree, then that family would not get the house. There was no-one within the department who had any idea about Aboriginal issues. No-one could understand why there could be any number of family members living in an allocated house at any one time. It was also extremely difficult to get the department to carry out repairs on houses in which Aboriginal people were living. It was often the case, prior to the allocation committee, that Aboriginal people were allocated sub-standard dwellings, and should repairs need to be made, the department blamed the ‘excessive number’ of people living in the house for the blocked plumbing, which was probably inadequate in the first place. I remember that the department insisted on the allocation committee participating in inspections of dwellings rented to Aboriginal people. Though I didn’t live in much of a house myself at the time, my only inspection made me so angry and embarrassed that I never wanted to do it again. The occupants were a mother and her five children—four girls and a boy. The three-bedroom, weatherboard house was situated on a main road, not far from the centre of Hobart. The house didn’t even have a sink in what passed for a kitchen, and there was no laundry. (Even new houses built by the housing department at this time had a washing machine and laundry tub in the kitchen.) It was totally inadequate for a family of this
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Figure 12.1 ‘Dream home hunt turns into nightmare’, Examiner, 6 November 1974. (Courtesy Examiner Newspaper Pty Ltd.)
size and gender composition, and there was no backyard to speak of. I could not come to grips with the fact that this family had been allocated an old house that must have been designed in the last century, when a new house could have been purchased in one
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of the suburbs that would at least have given the children somewhere to play away from traffic. The (female) member of the housing department team made derisive comments about the lack of ‘tidiness’ of the house and the number of children and complained that there were often many visitors living in the house. She could not understand that, if relations came to town, you put them up. I felt that by participating in this inspection, I too would be seen as some kind of judge of the mother’s housekeeping skills and did not want to be seen in that light. We were supposed to be inspecting the house, not the people. ‘Ms Housing Department’ was also concerned about the way Aboriginal tenants paid their rent. She could not cope with Michael Mansell’s explanation that ‘Aborigines generally will pay their rent for whatever the period is, but it isn’t always on the due date. They don’t see the need to pay rent today when they can pay it tomorrow and do’ (Mansell in Shelter, May 1977). She kept talking about the department having to balance its books, but I wonder if there ever was any real two-way communication. Despite the formation of the ‘allocation committee’, the process didn’t always work. Not all department employees even knew of its existence. Often houses were designated without reference to the committee, and some members felt that the department did not take kindly to Aboriginal people themselves having a greater say in their own affairs. Another anomaly, from an Aboriginal viewpoint, was the departmental guideline that stated rental agreements had to be signed on a particular date. The question always arose: ‘What difference does a day make?’
Private Rental As has been the case elsewhere in Australia, private rental for Tasmanian Aboriginal people has always been a problem. Mansell (in Shelter) explained: They don’t want Aborigines in their flats or houses because they believe our people will lower the value or destroy that property. On many occasions they put the Aboriginal off by saying that the flat or house has already been let. The Aboriginal doesn’t kick up because although he knows it hasn’t been let, he does understand that because he’s Aboriginal he isn’t wanted.
In a survey of ninety-three Aboriginal households conducted by Heather Sculthorpe in 1979, 14 per cent of respondents reported discrimination against them. She concluded that this relatively high rate may explain why only 1 per cent had found their accommodation through a real estate agent and why more rented households were owned by public authorities than by private owners.
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Conclusion As I gave up the housing subcommittee in favour of education, I am not in possession of the answers to these questions but am aware that, despite the injection of funds, an acute shortage of housing for Aboriginal people in Tasmania persisted. During a 1996 visit to Tasmania undertaking consultations for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, I talked with many people who had complaints about the waiting list for Aboriginal housing, and the way in which the houses were allocated. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre marked its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1998. It now has a staff of more than seventy people, working in the areas of administration, health, substance abuse, land (including the Risdon Cove Concept Plan), language, children’s services, alternatives to prison program, Link-Up, family support, dental services, legal services, sexual health, elderly support, crisis, and an Aboriginal Community School (Puggana News, September 1997: 44). As well as addressing such a large number of issues, the TAC also has a priority aimed at acquiring land ‘where small communities could become established with housing and a base for economic development’.
CHAPTER 13
Two Generations of Housing in the South and Mid-west, Western Australia, 1960–95 Rod Little
Housing has undoubtedly been, and still is, one of the most important social necessities that we Aboriginal people have been deprived of. I am a Yamaji person from the midwest of Western Australia, the third eldest of a family of eleven children, five males and six females. The events described in this chapter reflect the experiences of family, friends and relatives with regard to housing conditions, including access, in Western Australia. I will describe personal circumstances similar to those which many other Aboriginal people experienced from around 1960 until I left Geraldton in 1995. As true as these events are, these very same problems of discrimination and prejudice are still being experienced by Indigenous people daily in 1999.
My Parents: Keeping Ahead of Welfare My proud and very dear parents, Mum, a Nyoongah woman, and Dad, a Yamaji man, spent much of their adult lives travelling extensively through a small area of Western Australia with a growing family. From Mukinbudin in the central wheat belt district, east of Perth, to Meekatharra, Tuckanurra and Cue in the Murchison goldfields, and finally to settle in Geraldton on the central west coast. Often I had asked, why? It was not until later in life that I pieced together the reasoning behind the mobility of our family. It became evident that they evaded the clutches of the police and the Native Welfare by continually moving. I am sure many other families did similar clever things to evade the clutches of the ‘Protector of Aboriginals’. I sadly acknowledge that my parents, the victims of policies of past governments, were both separated from their families. My father had been separated from his sister as an infant and did not see or hear from her for many years. They eventually came together and shortly after that, sadly she passed away. So too was my mother separated from her family. She was institutionalised in St Joseph’s orphanage in Perth, sent to a mission until she was sixteen, then sent to work as a domestic servant on pastoral properties in the Murchison area, where my parents met and married. So, in their desperation, they decided that
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their children were not going to be taken from them as they had been taken from their families. My father was fortunate to obtain work with the Western Australian Government Railways and was able to secure employment on most occasions in the towns we had moved to. Occasionally he would travel ahead of the family to seek employment and housing for us, then Mum and us kids would join him as soon as we could. If he was not able to find suitable housing for us, which was often, we were usually lucky enough to have relatives in the towns to share their humble accommodation until we managed to obtain our own. I remember often sharing single beds with up to three or four cousins toe-to-toe. Many times there would be little arguments or feet jostling to get the most comfortable position to get to sleep. Mostly it was long hours of laughter and chattering about the day’s events, and being told countless times through the night to ‘Go to sleep, you have school in the morning’, or ‘If you don’t go to sleep you can go outside in the dark’. Another experience was that it was always hard joining another school. We were always very shy, but I guess it was good when we had relations going to the school, which helped break the ice. It was kind of ‘their’ school, so to speak, and they felt that they were pretty important knowing the new kids. A sad memory of nearly all of the schools I have attended, particularly in the first few months, is that my brothers and sisters and I were subject to racial taunts and abuse, as were many Aboriginal kids. Words like ‘black bastards’, ‘coons’, ‘niggers’, ‘boongs’, ‘abos’, ‘dirty stinking blacks’ will remain hurtful memories for a long, long time. There were always mixed feelings when joining a new school. There would be one of excitement in the hope that things would be better at this school than the last. Most often it was thinking, ‘It should be good because our cousins and other Aboriginal kids go there and they seem to be happy enough at this one, maybe we will be too’. On the other hand, I often felt depressed and thought, ‘Here we go again, same old taunts and name calling’, asking ourselves—why does this have to happen to us? At each new school I would hope that some of the White kids would treat us better than at the last, but almost always it started out horribly. I would not want to go, or I would get into a fight and get suspended anyway, trying to defend ourselves against the taunts. It was as if we had to earn the respect and the right to attend ‘their’ school. After a while we would be accepted. At other times we would not want to go to school because we felt miserable from not having a comfortable bed or our own accommodation. Many Aboriginal children shared these life experiences in this period. Where living conditions were not good, they were either placed in missions, institutions or in foster homes with upper class White families. This lifestyle was similar to that of many Aboriginal people in the west that I know, be they Nyoongah people from closer to Perth or Yamaji people from out Meekatharra way. Many of the adults lived in reserves on the outer limits of towns, in makeshift shelters, or, if they were lucky, they squatted in prospector shacks, particularly around
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the goldfields. Most housing available for Aboriginal people was on the farm where they worked or crowded in with relatives who had houses or in makeshift constructions made out of timber frames, sheets of tin and hessian bags. There was little, if any, government housing available for Aboriginal people in those days, apart from those fortunate enough to gain employment with the railways, which would also house them.
Railway Housing and Other Varieties of Accommodation The housing provided for railway employees, Black and White, in the 1960s generally consisted of weatherboard, corrugated iron roofing and plaster internal walls. My father gained a reputation as a good worker, so people would seek him out to work for them and he was able to continue working on the railways for long periods. The railways provided housing for its employees including Aboriginals, though generally in the houses furthest from the centre of town. We lived in these railway homes when my father worked for the railways in Mukinbudin, in Tuckanurra and, on a transfer, in Cue. Tuckanurra and Cue are just south of Meekatharra on the Great Northern Highway.
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Meekatharra Tuckanurra Cue
Geraldton
Mukinbudin
Kalgoorlie
Perth
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Figure 13.1 Map of the southern half of Western Australia.
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The weatherboard and plaster-walled houses, with their toilet and laundry some distance from the main building, were quite fashionable in the 1960s. At least they were connected to electricity and running water, unlike the previous places where water had to be carted and there was no electricity. The railway houses had coin-operated meters for electricity, and on many occasions we would spend the night in the darkness because we didn’t have the money to keep the meters going. Even so, the railway houses were much more comfortable than what we were used to. By that, I mean they were in contrast to the makeshift timber-framed shacks made of used corrugated iron walls and roofing, which often leaked, and with hessian bags for windows and doors. Like other Aboriginal people who were not fortunate enough to work for the railways, we too had lived in the shacks at some stage. I remember at least once getting up in the middle of the night to move the bed because water was dripping on me where I slept, but not on the others, and it was difficult getting them to wake up and help me. Also on many occasions, on those cold wintry nights there would be plenty of pulling and tugging of blankets, which were normally thin, to get enough to keep ourselves warm. Eventually we would just fall asleep because we were too cold and tired to fight any more and we would be cuddled up to one another to keep each other warm.
The Wheat Belt I can vividly remember my childhood days in the central wheat belt town of Mukinbudin. My fondest memories are of the happy times living with my cousins for many years in the most beautiful old weather-board farmhouse at ‘Popes Hill’. I think the house was owned by a farmer but had been rented by my uncle and auntie for many years. It had a large open fireplace that kept us warm during the winter months, a verandah around the entire house, and there were plenty of open spaces for us kids to exhaust our energy. Although it was several miles from town, it housed our two families fairly comfortably and the freedom of the wide open spaces was heaven for a child. My parents often spoke of when they lived, as did others, in corrugated shacks on reserve land some miles from the towns. Those makeshift houses were built with timber and sheets of tin collected from rubbish tips, which leaked onto the dirt floors when it rained. Without running water or toilet facilities the conditions were certainly not suitable for long periods especially in winter. When we lived in them, misery would creep into our hearts because the place would be too small and cold, and we would not be able to enjoy ourselves in the surrounding bushlands as we could in fine weather. The farmhouses in the wheat belt in which we also stayed from time to time were similar, mostly very old weatherboard with corrugated iron roofs that also often leaked and were extremely cold in the winter months. Prior to our moving into the railway houses, I often wondered why there weren’t many Aboriginal families living in town like the White families. I’d often ask myself, ‘Why are we not allowed to be close to the shops and live in nice warm houses in
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winter?’; it was a mystery to me. It later became clear that there was no specific housing for Aboriginals in town unless they were employed with the railways or the local shire council. I vaguely remember older people speaking about how Aboriginal people were not allowed to mix with White people and I later understood some of the government policies in place around at that time. My parents did the best they could, like many other Aboriginal families, to house their family. Occasionally Aboriginal people worked for farmers in the area and would be provided with some accommodation but most times it would only be for the duration of their seasonal employment.
The Murchison Goldfields On moving to the goldfields for the first time we lived with relatives on the reserve or with relatives in Meekatharra. The reserve houses were a state-wide standard design of steel frames on a concrete slab with tin roofing, no ceiling, and single-sheet tin partition-like walls that did not touch the floor or reach the roof. Often there were no floor coverings, just the bare concrete particularly in the large living space in the middle. If families could afford it, there would be lino covering. They were mostly three- or twobedroom houses. The houses in town would have a shower, toilets and laundry, but the reserves would have an ablution block where people would go for showers and do their laundry. It wasn’t such a bad life living on the reserve for a short period before we moved into town to our own ‘home’. At the reserve, the Native Welfare would often visit to inspect houses and see who had moved into the area. I will always remember when the health sister would visit the reserve to immunise the children. After receiving our vaccinations, we would line up behind the car for barley-sugar lollies or high-protein ringed biscuits. Yet there, I considered, were bad times for adults. Often we would hear older people say how they had to be out of the town before it got dark or they’d be thrown into jail. I grew up with a certain fear of being put in jail for just being in the town after sunset, and us kids would make sure that we were home way before dark. There were plenty of people with their families living on the reserve, and I thought, as a child, that it was an Aboriginal town. I believed it to be great, but scary at first, mainly because of the cultural differences. Which were a lot stronger than what I had been used to in the wheat belt areas, and people just seemed to be totally different. Aboriginal people of the Murchison and Gascoyne regions are Yamaji people. Most people from the Meekatharra area are Yamaji people. On the reserve there were people from many places, like Wiluna in the east toward the desert and Jigalong to the north. Each had their own language, which we could neither understand nor speak. Altogether they were more traditional and their culture was rich. I found it hard to compare my upbringing, in a moderately modern and developing farming country, to a reserve, with many Aboriginal people living together on the outskirts of town; it was like two completely different worlds. I knew which was the more fascinating for me, and I knew where I belonged because they were my Dad’s people. I remember once a group of
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children around my age not allowing me to play with them and calling me ‘White’. I knew I was Black; my mother was fair-skinned but I knew my Mum and Dad were Aboriginal. Then when I was at school the White kids abusively called me ‘Black’ and all the other names, so I had to be Black. Reserve housing for Aboriginal people was fairly common in the gold-fields. Other alternatives were living in private housing, with relatives if you were lucky, or simply just squatting in whatever was available. Many people squatted in abandoned prospector shacks. One time in Cue, my parents squatted with some relatives in a vacant church built out of canvas with a timber frame. At this time my older brother was taken into the ‘Aboriginal hostel’ to attend school. My father had obtained two jobs whilst we were in Cue, but he still didn’t earn enough to meet the rent for privately owned houses. When work had finally become scarce in Cue, it was back to Meekatharra, once again living at the reserve with relatives in a two-bedroom house. There were four children in their family and I think there were nine of us. Obviously there wasn’t enough room, so we sometimes slept in blankets on the concrete floor of the verandah. Native Welfare always seemed to overcharge for rent for the accommodation in these places. It was always a struggle. After a short while we squatted in a prospector’s humpy about five miles from the town centre and the school was a little further away than that. The humpy was similar to the others, with hessian material for windows and doors, no running water, electricity or proper sewerage system. A few months later we moved closer to the town to again squat, but in a larger house, until we were able to obtain a Native Welfare house in town. The waiting period was about two years before we finally got a welfare home similar to those on the reserve, but we had three bedrooms, a shower, laundry and kitchen for just our family. Now that I think about it, we were still segregated from the rest of the residents, because there were only two houses on the lot—ours and another Aboriginal family’s. In 1969, the Native Welfare placed me and a couple of my brothers and sisters in the Seventh Day Adventist mission just north of Meekatharra, in dormitory-style accommodation and with strict rules. We lived at the mission for a few months until we moved back to Meekatharra and then to Geraldton. About five years ago I visited the mission to inspect a government-funded housing project, and to my astonishment the girls’ dormitory was still standing and still being used for the same purpose. Native Welfare housing, the major source of accommodation in the 1960s for Aboriginal people, was separate from the government’s State Housing Commission. There was, and still is, a long waiting list for housing for Aboriginal people. In 1980 a new State Housing Act was passed to provide housing accommodation to the people of the state of Western Australia, including Aboriginal people, who could not obtain suitable accommodation from other sources. In 1995 the State Housing Commission changed its name to Homeswest to improve services to the general public. Many Native Welfare houses remained on the books as Homeswest houses, still predominantly providing housing specifically for Aboriginal people.
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Geraldton In November 1970 our family moved to the mid-west coastal town of Geraldton, where most of my family still lives, apart from myself now living in Canberra. Our first home in Geraldton was shared with relatives in a private house some ten kilometres from the centre of town. This house was again too small because there were nine of us children and six cousins, plus our parents. My parents, quickly registering for Native Welfare housing for their nine children, which eventually became eleven, found that five-bedroom houses were practically nonexistent. Many Aboriginal families were fairly large and the waiting list was four years for four-bedroom houses. From the over-crowded farmhouse, my parents acquired an asbestos house with galvanised iron roofing owned by an Italian man, about fifteen kilometres east of the town. We had no motor vehicle to get in and out of town, which was a bit of a problem. Eventually we were provided with a three-bedroom house in town. It was extremely hard to get this house and it required doctors’ certificates to entice the authorities to give it to us. Otherwise we would have had to wait for another few years. Whereas the State Housing Commission provided public housing for lower income-earning White families, and in some cases Aboriginal people, Native Welfare houses were, of course, for Aboriginals only. Obviously people who were employed had more of an opportunity to be given a quality home as opposed to families with low income, and the waiting period would be shorter if you were more likely to be a paying customer because you were employed. As my parents grew older and the children grew up and moved on or married, they needed to be closer to facilities like doctors and shopping areas. They requested numerous transfers. Eventually, after living in the same house for well over ten years, they were granted a transfer into a place which I believed to be even fifteen to twenty years older than the house they had moved from. It was apparent that Aboriginal people had and still have extreme difficulty in obtaining adequate and comfortable accommodation full stop, let alone a transfer. Then some ten years later my parents acquired another transfer to a three-bedroom brick and tile home which would have been more suitable when they had children but does not meet their needs as pensioners. The granting of this transfer by the housing authority came about through the painstaking efforts of doctors and other health professionals, who condemned the house they were living in for not meeting environmental living standards. Yet Aboriginal people were again placed in this house and still live there today.
Geraldton Today Homeswest is the major Aboriginal housing provider in Geraldton today. Within the structure of Homeswest there is the Aboriginal Housing Board (AHB) which aims to provide a quality housing service to Aboriginal people. Through the AHB, Aboriginal
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people have access to the home ownership program which provides for loans with affordable interest rates enabling them to purchase their own homes. The AHB is additional to mainstream services and caters for many Aboriginal people who experience difficulty in obtaining suitable accommodation. These difficulties include prejudice and discrimination, and simply not enough accommodation available for specific groups, such as single parents, youth and the unemployed. The types of accommodation available to Aboriginal people in Geraldton today are: •
Private Rental: supposedly available for all members of the public without discrimination or prejudice. Yet Aboriginal people are confronted with the discrimination and prejudice of real estate employees or the agents themselves daily.
•
Pensioner Accommodation: there is an Aboriginal owned and operated pensioner accommodation service in Geraldton, in addition to mainstream services.
•
Aboriginal Hostel: this service caters mostly for single people and the unemployed and is basically short-term emergency accommodation.
•
Homeswest: the largest single provider of housing for Aboriginal people in Western Australia.
•
Regional Aboriginal Housing Organisation: an Aboriginal housing corporation funded through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). This organisation has substantial housing stock for Aboriginal people in the Geraldton and the mid-west region.
•
Aboriginal Home Purchases: Homeswest provides the opportunity for Aboriginal people to purchase their own homes through schemes such as Keystart, Right to Buy and Aboriginal Home Ownership. This includes access to banks.
I have rented from Homeswest, but experienced numerous unsatisfactory maintenance services, which Homeswest was supposed to provide under a tenant’s agreement. Like many Aboriginal people vacating Homeswest housing premises, I too experienced the brunt of an enormous ‘vacating maintenance’ account. Suspect work claims would be submitted by contractors, which on many occasions would be outrageous or seemed false. Unlike many others, I protested profusely, which eventuated in a substantial reduction in the account. Many vacating Aboriginal tenants do not question these accounts, which are almost certainly not affordable on their incomes, thus hindering families and individuals from applying for further accommodation from Homeswest or mainstream providers. My own children and brothers and sisters have experienced this, particularly when they are unemployed or they have rented a Homeswest property and can’t afford the vacating account. They
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cannot get other accommodation because of an outstanding account. This situation is familiar to many Aboriginal people seeking housing today. I purchased a double brick and tile three-bedroom house through the Home Ownership Scheme with the assistance of the AHB in what was considered a developing area, with easy access to schools, shops and other services and near a neighbouring Homeswest housing estate. My house has now been for sale for almost three years and it is common knowledge that real estate agents advise prospective buyers on the areas where it is ‘best’ to buy, where ‘too many Aboriginals live’, where the ‘problem spots are’ and which are the ‘nicer’ areas. This type of discrimination adds to the difficulty of selling my property. The Indigenous population of the Geraldton region (5006) represents 8 per cent of the total population of the region, an increase of 14 per cent (622) since the 1991 census. Half of the Indigenous population is 19 years old or less. In 1996, 322 Indigenous people were unemployed and 983 were employed, giving an unemployment rate of 27 per cent for Indigenous people compared with 5 per cent for non-Indigenous. Forty-eight per cent of Indigenous households earned less than $500 per week compared with 45 per cent of other households. In the Geraldton region 20 per cent of Indigenous people owned or were purchasing their homes compared with 64 per cent of non-Indigenous people. Households with Indigenous occupants averaged 3.9 persons per dwelling compared with 2.7 for dwellings with no Indigenous occupants (Census of Population & Housing 1996). Finding accommodation in the Geraldton area today, like many other areas throughout Western Australia, or even throughout Australia, is extremely hard for Aboriginal people because of the prejudices that businesses and individuals have against us. A common experience is that, when Aboriginal people talk to a representative of the private sector over the phone about availability of rental accommodation and there is an assurance that something is available, as soon as he or she enters the premises, the property is gone or there is some other excuse. This continual rejection and discrimination is typically experienced when many Aboriginal people are seeking employment. I also believe there is an enormous lack of youth accommodation. Youth find it more frustrating to get accommodation because they have to be employed to get their own accommodation, yet it is equally hard to get employment. There is even greater difficulty for single people with young children because they are Aboriginal and unemployed and they cannot secure housing to bring up their families. I have personally experienced all of these problems until I purchased a house. My now-adult children, like many others, are now, in the late 1990s, experiencing the same daily discrimination, unemployment and racism. It is truly an indication that there is a long way to go in obtaining equity and in satisfying the housing needs of Aboriginal people in Western Australia.
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Housing is one of the most important social necessities that we Indigenous people are still being deprived of. The dependency on our extended families and the closeness of our relationships with one another clearly display our culture and the ways of our people. These ways have been condoned and occasionally accepted, and yet still, because of continuing inequitable access to suitable housing, our health and social wellbeing continue to suffer, even today.
PART IV
Unsettlement By 1970 the alternatives to managed institutional housing, town camps and urban living were rapidly disappearing. One which survived was the ‘tin camp’ at Goodooga in New South Wales. Stephanie Smith argues that the ethno-architects who constructed and re-constructed the Goodooga town camp should be recognised as resourceful and inventive architects in their own right. In her analysis of the tin camp we can recognise so many of the living and spatial features which Memmott describes in his chapter on traditional living areas and structures among the Tangkic-speaking peoples. Tin camp ethno-architects utilised a variety of materials drawn from many building styles, histories and cultures. Their dwellings were intended to be for the medium term only, while answering community needs of surveillance, customary domiciliary space, privacy and weather. White town residents often derisively referred to tin camps like Goodooga as ‘humpies’; sadly, so did many Aboriginals trying to escape the implied stigma of ‘backwardness’. The loss both of the selfconstructed town camps and the inventive creativity which made them is a significant and needless loss to Australian domestic design. Smith concludes with the observation that ‘problem after problem has surrounded most attempts to provide houses to Aboriginal communities whereas there are almost only advantages associated with the paradigm of selfconstruction’—not least the occupant ownership which frees the residents from stress and ensures independence. We have seen how, in the major cities, state housing authorities almost invariably blamed the Aboriginal tenants for their perceived shortcomings in rental payments, home maintenance and lifestyle. Yet the Aboriginal co-ops and housing boards showed themselves to be quite capable of effectively managing the housing stock when control was genuine and not tokenistic. Architect Paul Pholeros and his two co-workers argue, in Chapter 15, that the same is true of health and hygiene, for whose deficiencies Aboriginals are also usually blamed. The chapter reinforces the earlier arguments of Briscoe about hookworm: that most Aboriginal health problems are caused by poor planning, bureaucratic bungling, ignorance and prejudice.
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Yet these same health problems, commonly seen to be inextricably linked to Aboriginal community housing, are quietly solvable. Memmott, in Chapter 2, established that in the traditional society of Mornington Island, at certain times of the year and for certain social purposes, the Lardil constructed windbreaks, all oriented in the same direction, situated within several metres of each other, with walls usually low enough to see over and maintain a view of neighbours and entry paths to the camp. This facilitated ease of visual, verbal and auditory communication between domiciliary groups whereby news events and grievances were transmitted from one to the other in the evenings and early mornings. Karl Eckermann uses this typical design structure to begin a discussion of prison design (Chapter 16). Prisons like that of Rottnest Island were totally inappropriate. Aboriginal prisoners were removed from their traditional lands and placed in an environment in which local Indigenous groups had strong mythological association, instilling terror in the prisoners as the stories spread. They suffered more than most from visual and aural deprivation. Current prison design of windowless, solitary cells may actually encourage suicide, especially immediately following arrest, when the emotions of anger, depression, shame and fear are most intense. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommended that prisons be designed to allow for communal living if desired, for flexible custodial arrangements for newly sentenced prisoners, for longdistance link-ups with family, easy familial visits and areas for children’s play. In Chapter 17, another architect, Paul Haar, resumes the discussion of appropriate architecture for Indigenous people. His approach is very much hands-on, encouraging communities to design and build for themselves. Be prepared to take a rugby ball to the construction site.
CHAPTER 14
The Tin Camps: Self-constructed Housing on the Goodooga Reserve, New South Wales, 1970–96 Stephanie Smith
Introduction By the turn of the century there was a variety of Aboriginal settlement types in rural New South Wales. Such settlements included camping places on pastoral properties, on the fringes of towns, official government-managed stations and church missions. Whilst some of these were on Aboriginal reserves, others were on vacant Crown land and private ‘White-owned’ property. This chapter concerns self-constructed housing at Goodooga, in north-western New South Wales. The settlement at Goodooga was located on the fringe of the township, an official Aboriginal reserve without government managers or missionaries. Like many of the other semi-independent Aboriginal settlements in the region, it was composed of self-constructed houses made with bush logs and new and second-hand corrugated iron. The houses were sited and designed by the occupants without adherence to any ‘White’ building regulations. Referred to as ‘tin camps’ by the local Aboriginal people, they were built by the communities’ ‘ethnoarchitects’.
Self-constructed Housing The existence of such ethno-architects within more traditional Aboriginal communities was recorded in 1920 in Horne and Aiston’s 1924 study of the Wankanguru people at Mungeranie just over the New South Wales border in South Australia. Here there were, apparently, a number of specialist hut builders, the most revered being Piltibunna who ‘held that position for many years. He learnt from his father and builds as his father did, but has never worked with any white man’ (Horne & Aiston 1924: 19, 20). To varying degrees, the Goodooga ethno-architects also seem to have retained building techniques passed down from the elders. Using a combination of natural and industrial materials, some of which had been within their communities for little more than one hundred years, the structural design of the tin camps was probably influenced 179
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by traditional shelters, introduced Western models and local fencing techniques. As a result of intense pressure from local authorities and non-Aboriginal communities, most of the self-constructed settlements in rural communities have been demolished over the last twenty-five years. The constant and in many cases well-meaning attack on this type of housing has inevitably resulted in many Aboriginal people becoming ashamed of their housing circumstances. A tendency to reject such housing and replace it with Western-style models has contributed not only to the loss of an Aboriginal vernacular but also a whole lifestyle and interactive sense of community. Such stigma has been associated with the ‘tin camp’ or ‘humpy’ that any serious study of its attributes has been almost completely discouraged.1 The very existence of a contemporary Aboriginal architecture has been consistently overlooked by a society that has made every effort to eliminate all evidence of it. Elder’s (1987: 56) analysis of the contents of the ‘Fringe-dwelling Communities Inquiry’ of the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs (1981–82) highlighted a number of different perceptions of the fringe camp phenomenon. While local government councils depicted fringe camps as a problem, by contrast federal government departments and others, including some Aboriginal organisations, depicted them as having problems (my emphasis). On the other hand, anthropologists depicted fringe camps as a positive form of residential situation for Aboriginal people living in towns. Their characteristics were said to include close kin relationships between inhabitants; the operation of traditional authority structures; autonomy and control of inhabitants over their lives; and a mood of security and harmony. Aboriginal people and organisations at times drew on all of these perspectives but they also introduced distinctive elements. Elder (1987) summarised the Aboriginal people’s views of living on non-managed reserves as follows: they are cheap places to live; there is no pressure put on residents by Whites or other town-dwelling Aboriginals; they are important socialising and drinking venues for visitors and the general Aboriginal community; some are very convenient and close to shops, hospital, seaside and hotel; they serve as short-term camping areas for visitors; residents enjoy general acceptance of changing lifestyles without the burden of a state housing commission home and high rents. Whilst health issues in such settlements are and have been an undeniable problem, these do not necessarily stem from any particular housing types but from inadequate infrastructure. The tin camp structures therefore offer an immeasurable knowledge base for revised design and construction paradigms of future Aboriginal housing.
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Goodooga Though in a rural rather than remote context, the township of Goodooga is fairly isolated from the regional commercial and business centres. About 70 km off the main route north linking Walgett and St George across the New South Wales–Queensland border, Goodooga is at the end of a token stretch of bitumen. The road links to the north and south are impassable in wet weather and the only reliable road out of town links Goodooga with communities to the south-east, such as Lightning Ridge (100 km) and Walgett (200 km). The movement of Aboriginal populations from outlying areas to centralised locations such as Goodooga, which took place especially in the 1930s, corresponded to a reduction in labour requirements on pastoral stations and the consequent reduction of pastoralist pressure on the Aborigines Protection Board to provide services, schooling and housing to more remote Aboriginal populations. From interviews with the residents it became clear that a substantial proportion of those who finally ‘settled’ in Goodooga came from a campsite known as Dennowan, near the Culgoa River, about 40 km west of Goodooga, the last five people leaving Dennowan for Goodooga early in 1939 (Australian Evangel, July 1939: 3). The justification for removing Aboriginal residents from traditional camping places and pastoral stations was promoted in the guise of a need for education and training, rather than a desire to be rid of an outdated labour pool. In spite of efforts by the Board to physically remove whole communities to supervised government stations, many Aboriginal people in the region preferred to continue camping in relative freedom on pastoral stations such as Weilmoringle or move to unsupervised reserves such as that at Goodooga. By the 1990s the contemporary Goodooga Reserve Aboriginal population was a conglomerate of people from at least three of the main language groups, the Muruwari, Yuwaalaraay and Guwamu, which had traditionally intersected in the vicinity of Goodooga. By all accounts, the Aboriginal population associated with the new Goodooga township first camped on the opposite side of the Bokhara River to the ‘White’ settlement. Accommodation consisted of the so-called ‘mission’ homes, tents and ‘gunyahs’.2 Some time later, probably around the late 1930s, the Common Trustees approved 80 acres of land for use as an Aboriginal reserve on the present site on the eastern bank of the Bokhara River (Scott 1982: 57). The corrugated iron ‘mission’ buildings on the original reserve were dismantled prior to the move and all the materials sold.3 These early homes were small, with an entire household generally sharing one unfurnished room (Cohen 1986: 98). Five government houses, or tin sheds, were already erected on the reserve in the late 1920s and remained there until at least 1979. These also comprised single-room accommodation with no services attached. The early self-constructed houses on the new Goodooga Reserve were apparently kerosene-tin huts of a similar genre to those at Dennowan (Ferguson 1939: 3).4
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The Move to Town in the 1970s The change in Aboriginal policy from ‘protection’ to ‘assimilation’ involved, at the local level, a change from trying to keep the Aboriginal populations as far away as possible from the predominantly ‘White’ townships to encouraging integration of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. This new policy of assimilation often resulted in the eradication, by shire bulldozers (Memmott 1991: 7), of the whole fringe settlement concept, community and architecture. During the Whitlam government, housing cooperatives were set up as a mechanism to allow funding to go directly to the Aboriginal communities, bypassing the state government bureaucracy. The Bohda Housing Co-operative in Goodooga, an Aboriginal organisation that was formed in the early 1970s and run predominantly by the Skuthorpe family, probably emerged from these initiatives.5 According to Ernie Skuthorpe, one of the original founders of the housing co-op, it was felt that the reserve residents would be more appropriately served by new housing in town where they could ‘better themselves’, than by formalising the existing reserve settlement and continuing the tradition of ‘apartheid’ which had been the norm for so long. Families were encouraged to accept houses in town despite being separated from kin and no matter where the house was located (Ernie Skuthorpe, pers. comm., November 1992). In an article written for the Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter in 1975 entitled ‘Blacks versus Blacks at Goodooga: a reserve view’, Skuthorpe warned of prejudice against Aboriginal people remaining on the Goodooga Reserve: This is what happened to the Reserve people in the past few weeks. Two white citizens have arrested two Aboriginals from the pub, took them up and locked them in jail: the 2 men got 7 days and spent most of that time locked in cells. Then one day a town Abo. took a Reserve Abo. up to the police station and said to the sergeant, ‘Lock this trouble-making blackfellow up, he is the Dirt from the Reserve.’ This was done and the town Aboriginal walked away all smiles on his face ... so the town whites and blacks are fighting very hard against us ... And plenty more—it seems to get worse all the time. (Skuthorpe 1975)
Larger distances between the various Aboriginal families, often housed according to position on the waiting list rather than proximity to family, and the nature of the extensive orthogonal grid of the town, meant that people were no longer able to monitor developments and changes within their community. Once they were lured away from the reserve they lost the sense of community and social support they had taken for granted. According to Betty Waites, the security and warmth of the reserve settlement had become a thing of the past (Betty Waites, pers. comm., 1993).
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Returning to the Reserve In 1982 most of the Aboriginal families in Goodooga were living in town. Only six houses remained on the reserve. But by 1992 the number of households had increased from six to nine, and the composition of some of the tin camps had also changed. These changes were typical of the pattern of building and rebuilding, leaving and returning that occurred between 1992 and 1995, and probably represent a fairly typical pattern over the life of the reserve. With the building of several new houses on the reserve in 1996, many of the town residents expressed a keen interest to move back to the camp to recapture the sense of community and social support they felt was missing from the township.6 Unlike the reserve where several families actively discouraged the drinking of alcohol, aggression and drunkenness in town seemed to be fairly common. The contemporary Goodooga tin camps were built by five different people: Clem Orcher, Curtis Orcher, Ernie Skuthorpe, Marty Waites and Edward Boney. Each individual built at least one of the remaining houses on the reserve between 1992 and 1995. Despite an overall similarity in the housing typology and a common attribute of flexibility, there was enormous variety in spatial relationships and a diversity of design and construction. Such self-constructed housing reflected the advantages of the use of local technology combined with accessible and affordable materials, facilitating ease of erection and alteration. These characteristics were important to the success of the houses and their architectural match to the lifestyles of the householders. The location of houses (many of which have since been demolished) was usually described with reference to a landmark of some sort, usually a particular tree or bend in the river. Most people still had a very clear recollection of exactly who had lived where. Some even considered certain locations to have great sentimental value, referring to them as though they still belonged to individuals who may have left the spot many years ago. The pepper tree next to house 26 on the Goodooga Reserve, for example, was the site of Dulcie Nean’s place and was often still referred to as Dulcie’s tree. Although the Goodooga Reserve appeared to be on relatively flat ground, some areas were referred to as ‘hills’ and others as ‘hollows’ by the contemporary inhabitants. Although the height difference was minimal (only about half a metre), building a house on a ‘hill’ was generally preferred to reduce the impact of periodic flooding and to improve the drainage of the house site during wet weather. In the early years, the first householders probably selected the prime geographic locations, whilst others who came later may have been faced with the choice of sacrificing the benefits of a ‘hill’ site or a shady location for those of living close to kin. A survey of the area also indicates a ‘ridge’ of higher ground corresponding to the spine along which most of the houses were built. This spine is now the location of the principal road.
Figure 14.1 Clem and Isabel Orcher’s house, site 26, 1993. (All diagrams, maps and photographs courtesy Stephanie Smith, Innovarchi, unless otherwise indicated.)
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THE TIN CAMPS
185
Settlement Planning and Surveillance In a similar arrangement to the Weilmoringle settlement recorded by Savarton & George (1971) and the Mallee Camp in Wilcannia by Memmott (1991), the early Goodooga Reserve settlement of the 1940s was organised in an arc form. In this case, the buildings followed a gradual curve that tended to mimic the bends in the river and looped back on itself along the boundary fence. By the 1960s the settlement showed an even more marked conformity of dwelling locations along this alignment and a further reinforcement of the loop along the eastern boundary. Betty Waites, a past resident of the Goodooga Reserve, recalled that the gradual curve of the settlement plan had enabled everyone to see everyone else, even if from a fair distance. This arc layout exemplified the communal nature of the placement of houses and emphasised the importance of being able to see what everyone else was doing. According to Betty Waites, visiting people at Christmas time was an event to remember, with all one’s friends and relatives within easy access. At night all the fires and lights glowed along the gentle arc of the settlement, giving a sense of security and protection (Betty Waites, pers. comm., July 1993). Communication between and surveillance of the Goodooga Reserve households seems to have been an important factor in the development of a sense of community. Emily Horneville, for example, an early reserve resident who was confined to her bed, had to resort to continually interrogating ‘everyone who came by about the actions and plans of everyone she knew’ (Oates 1985: 119). Just as it seems to have been in the past, ‘knowing what is going on’ was still an important preoccupation in Goodooga, both in town and on the reserve in the 1990s. The combination of views from many of the reserve houses made continuous surveillance of the main access road possible. Observations by most reserve residents of who was coming and going both in and out of the reserve and the township meant they had a fairly complete picture of individual and community activities without needing to leave the house. Kinship Clusters That, with few exceptions, the related households were so obviously camping in proximity to each other comes as no surprise since this phenomenon has been recorded in other Aboriginal communities (Memmott 1979a: 127–31, 1990: 1, 1991: 44, 172; Stoll et al. 1979: 131; O’Connell 1979: 107). Such kinship clusters were clearly evident in the 1940s settlement. The 1960s period also demonstrated a consistent occupation of geographic locations by the major kinship groups though intermarriage; relocation after the 1950s flood, death and migration, amongst other factors, contributed to a more fragmented pattern. Later data, based on first-hand information collected by the author during the period from 1992 to 1995, demonstrated that these kinship groups still existed, albeit in skeletal form. Rather than being based on revised kinship groupings, the contemporary settlement pattern shows that the households had more or less remained in their original locations and that it was the households between them that had disappeared.
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41
to alternative river crossing 40
38
35 34 to the "Sand Hills" 31
River
crossing
33 32
30 29 28
26 23
24 to town
boundary
22
42 fence line
43
21 44
18 17
16 13
15 14
"Sesame Street"
20
"Black Flat"
Bokhara
12 11 49
10 9
1940s
52
7
N
5 6
3
2
1
to town
0
200 metres
Figure 14.2 Plan of tin camp locations on Goodooga Reserve around 1940 (oral histories).
THE TIN CAMPS
187 to alternative river crossing
36 to the "Sand Hills"
crossing
River 29 26 25 to town
boundary fence line
21
Bohda shed
Bokhara
15
"Sesame Street"
20
"Black Flat"
49
1992
N
2 to town
0
200 metres
Figure 14.3 Plan of tin camp locations on Goodooga Reserve around 1992.
Figure 14.4 Cross-section (house 26), Goodooga, 1992. (Ethno-architect Clem Orcher. Line drawing by Ken McBryde.)
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THE TIN CAMPS
189
The Household Structures The compositions of the households changed dramatically even over the four years between 1992 and 1995. The arrival of kin, births, deaths, departure of families for other towns and sickness all contributed to the variable household structures. Over this period household compositions included nuclear families, single men, a single man, a single woman, a single woman and her dependent child, a couple, extended families, and compound families of aunts and uncles with nieces and nephews and related families of the same generations living together. The Tin Camp Construction Despite the reliance on so-called readily available materials, the tin camps were not easy to build. Nearby landowners would often not allow Aboriginal people to ‘trespass’ onto their property, let alone cut the cypress trees (Clem Orcher, pers. comm., December 1992). Suitable materials had to be dragged for several kilometres from the local dump, pilfered from building sites or sourced from a more distant grove of cypress pine and prepared with only basic tools, if any were available. Such a corrugated iron and timber structure was easier to disassemble or alter than a typical brick veneer or fibro home, giving it the advantage of flexibility. The materials and construction system allowed for fast and cost-effective repairs in situations where the level of wear and tear could be very high.7 The main structure of the Goodooga tin camps consisted of a pole frame system using posts, rafters, roof battens and girts.8 Each ethno-architect used slightly different techniques for making the connections between these members, with a twitch of wire being the closest to that recorded in the earlier Dennowan structures, and notching out posts to accommodate girts with nailed or flat galvanised strap connections being the closest to Western carpentry techniques. Cladding consisted almost exclusively of second-hand sheets of corrugated iron, though the nature of the fixings of the cladding to the structure varied. All the roofs had low pitches, though slopes ranged from 1 to 11 degrees. The types and locations of openings varied widely from house to house and room to room. Factors influencing the design, orientation and relative position of the openings included the degree of: breeze, views, inter-household communication, dust, privacy, security, and degree of surveillance required or visual intrusion considered undesirable. Cypress pine is naturally termite-resistant and tends to grow very tall and straight. It was also available locally, growing in an extensive belt in the Goodooga region and extending up to the central Queensland highlands. Unfortunately it cannot be readily recycled since it must be worked whilst unseasoned to prevent severe splitting of the timber. Galvanised fencing wire, commonly used to link the timber members, was also readily available and easy to manipulate. A short length of wire was folded in half, and usually looped through a drilled hole in a post and around a rafter or through a wall
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rail, then the ends were twisted together (four strands), in what was referred to in Goodooga as a ‘Cobb and Co. twitch’.9 Corrugated iron was introduced in the Australian colonies around 1837 (Pearson 1979) and the first records of its use in the Goodooga area date around the 1880s (Scott 1982: 24). Its popularity amongst Aboriginal people as a useful cladding option would probably have developed some time later, since they would have relied on the availability of discarded sheets from older dwellings constructed by the non-Aboriginal population. Hessian sacking and opened-out kerosene tins were being used as cladding materials by the Aboriginal population in Goodooga until at least the end of the 1930s (Ferguson 1939: 3) and until the 1970s in Bourke (Kamien 1976: 189). Being a more versatile and reliable material and far less labour and maintenance intensive than the other available alternatives, the use of galvanised iron sheeting became increasingly prevalent. Once the supply of second-hand corrugated iron was established, it is probable that Aboriginal people around the country chose to use these larger tins for both wall and roof sheeting whenever possible. Earthen floors were apparently common in the earlier Goodooga tin camps (Clem Orcher, pers. comm., December 1992), but by 1992 all the contemporary Goodooga tin camps had thin concrete slabs of about 50 mm (2 inches) thick, many being covered with pieces of carpet. Despite being on flood-prone land there was a definite preference for the floor of the tin camp to be level with the outside ground.
Building and Rebuilding The history of the tin camps demonstrated a fairly constant transformation of the dwellings over time. Structures were continually being added to, regularly being rebuilt, replanned, completed over time or altered. During the period between 1992 and 1995, all the tin camps except two sites (15 and 25) underwent some kind of change to the building form. The layout of furniture was also frequently modified in several dwellings at various times. Clem and Isabel Orcher’s contemporary house was only about ten years old, being the last in a series of houses they had built on the same spot. They estimated that they had built a total of ten houses in that location since 1968. The motivation for this constant process of rebuilding was, amongst other things, linked to the birth of new children and the result of accidental fires (Clem Orcher, pers. comm., December 1992).10 Unlike the Orcher house, the Skuthorpe house was the result of a series of additions made over the preceding forty years. Their previous tin camp had been located on site 16; however, the big 1950s flood had prompted the family to relocate the house to a site on higher ground and further from the river bank. Types of Rooms The number of rooms in the tin camps ranged from one to fourteen. All of those with more than one room had spaces that were referred to as ‘bedrooms’, being furnished with beds for the majority of the time and having a principal function as a sleeping
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room. Several bedrooms were also used for clothes storage (both in free-standing wardrobes and on the floor), playing computer games, watching TV or videos and occasionally for doing school homework. The other spaces in the houses could also be described according to the principal function or combination of functions that they seemed to serve. These rooms were furnished with various combinations of lounge chairs, dining tables and chairs, low-level tables, cooking apparatus, fridges, storage cupboards, shelving and benches. The actual uses of these rooms were various, with even these ‘living rooms’ also often used for sleeping.
Storage The more obvious storage included small chests of drawers and cupboard units, overhead kitchen cupboards, free-standing timber wardrobes (with and without doors), freestanding shelving units, individual and banks of shelves fixed to the walls, tea chests and glass cabinets. Tables, both inside and outside, were used to keep things off the ground. Two households had edibles such as onions and potatoes hung in wire baskets from the branches of a tree (house 15) and from the roof of the verandah (house 20), but others used their fridge, and in some case freezer, for all perishable food storage. More valuable items such as lawnmowers, chainsaws, rifles and ammunition were concealed in the bedrooms away from prying eyes. The roofs of buildings also seemed to be a popular storage area. They were often used to keep objects out-of-sight and out-of-reach of those who were not meant to have access to them. Hearths A number of different hearth types were associated with each household on the Goodooga Reserve and each of these seemed to have a variety of purposes. These hearths ranged from simple stick fires directly on the ground or on a sheet of tin to elaborately constructed internal fireplaces and commercially produced woodchip stoves. Some were used for cooking, some for heating water, others for burning rubbish or for boiling meat for the dogs. Not only did the purpose of many of these hearths change, but also the location of the activity associated with a hearth changed depending on such issues as wind direction, time of day, desire for shade, inclement weather and temperature. Decoration Most of the houses on the Goodooga Reserve did exhibit a marked degree of decoration, both internally and externally. Several of the houses had painted fence posts, boulders, sheep skulls and tyres around the edges of the gardens. Various tubs and drums were also painted and used as flower pots or planter boxes. Other decoration of the exterior of the houses had been limited to the application of paint in the colour scheme of a favoured Sydney rugby league football team.11 House 15 had carried this football theme right through to the colour scheme of eskies, water carriers, bottle and teaspoon collections and even the colour of the residents’ vehicle and seat covers. Many of these objects had been carefully arranged in displays that decorated the kitchen and adjoining
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192
N
0
5
metres
Key
House 26
Bed Chair Lounge Tap Clothes line Fire Wood pile Mound/river bank Post Untended grassland & prickles
Turf Path Shrub Tree 44 gallon drum 5 gallon drum Gas bottle Car Extension cord Fence
Figure 14.5
Plan of Clem and Isabel Orcher’s house, site 26, 1992, and external domiciliary spaces.
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Figure 14.6 Interior, Clem and Isabel Orcher’s house, site 26, 1993.
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Figure 14.7 Clem and Isabel Orcher’s laundry and bough shade, 1993. (Courtesy Stephanie Smith.)
breezeway. The living/dining room of house 26, which was lined with masonite, had been painted a bright turquoise. Mounted posters, laminated photographs in handmade fabric-covered frames and artificial flowers decorated the room and were complemented by several glass cabinets displaying china and glassware.
External Domiciliary Spaces Many Aboriginal people are likely to perform activities such as cooking, sleeping, washing and socialising outside their dwelling, either on the verandah or in the adjoining yard. The verandahs, sleepouts, breezeways and bough shades or externally oriented spaces, either immediately associated with the dwelling or in its near vicinity, seem to form a major part of the basic domiciliary space. A variety of constructed outdoor spaces were evident on the Goodooga Reserve. Apart from any particular cultural or behavioural requirements, simple arguments of thermal comfort probably support the need for alternative gathering spaces outside. Some households had both bough shades and verandahs. One had courtyards and a breezeway and another had a semi-enclosed verandah that was verging more on a wellventilated internal space than an external room. The bough shade structures were not only used as a cooler alternative to the house or verandah in everyday living, but also served as gathering spaces for family reunions at Christmas, birthdays and funerals. They were often rebuilt when the cladding materials began to deteriorate, when a change of location was sought or when a larger structure was required for a particular event. Fenced gardens with lawn and flowering
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shrubs, swept yards and shade trees were also common features in almost all the domiciliary spaces.
Sharing In Goodooga, like many Aboriginal communities, culturally distinct attitudes towards possessions and sharing were evident. Amongst at least some of the families on the reserve, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that relatives had a semi-free reign over the belongings of their kin. Whilst this did not extend across the whole gamut of possessions, it was more likely to include objects that were in full view and therefore fair game. A certain attempt was made by some households to hide things of more personal importance or of some value so that others would not have ready access to them. In most circumstances the houses were locked when the householders were absent, to discourage others from foraging around looking for some of these more prized items. Activities On very windy days in summer with the dust and grit swirling about everywhere, it was almost impossible to be anywhere else but inside the tin camp. At other times most people seemed to move from the house onto the verandah or under a tree as the day began to heat up. By the extreme heat of the middle of the day, they congregated under the bough shade or in the deep shade beside the house. Chairs and beds were often moved around the domiciliary space to wherever the most suitable sitting or sleeping spot might be at the time. The suitability of a chosen location seemed to be determined by the amount of shade, access to or protection from breezes and degree of protection from rain. In light rain, the bough shade provided sufficient protection from the damp, but in a heavy downpour mattresses and blankets would eventually get soaked. On a winter’s day some considered it to be warmer sitting outside in a sunny spot protected from the wind than in the deep shade of the tin house where one was almost obliged to light a fire to keep warm. In the middle of an activity like sweeping the yard, it was not unusual for work to halt temporarily and a small group to form under the shade of a tree for a bit of a breather and a chat. Someone might sit on the grass, another on an old stump, whilst another dragged up an old chair or a five-gallon drum. Deliberate movement of household furniture such as beds, TVs, stereos, cupboards and tables occurred from time to time, often with no obvious motive other than the desire for a change. With changing occupants and numbers of people sharing a room, or living space, the requirements of the spaces were also continually changing. Far from ‘hanging around’ under the shade of a tree all day, keeping a household running on the reserve was a full-time occupation. Even with the addition of a few modern conveniences such as a washing machine and fridge, a large proportion of the day was often spent by some of the households just maintaining the status quo. Socalled spare time may have been spent fixing other people’s cars, keeping up to date with the latest events in the community and region, and embarking on a variety of tasks
Figure 14.8 Arthur ‘Ring’ Orcher, Phillip Orcher and Clem Orcher returning after a ‘roo’ shooting expedition.
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197
including making bullets, ’roo shooting, hunting emu, salting skins, cleaning the truck, collecting firewood, chopping wood, lighting fires, carting sand from the sand hill and spreading it around the yard, mowing the lawn, looking after the garden, sweeping the yard, repairing or building buildings, feeding and raising pigs, feeding chooks and cleaning out the fowl house, burning off rubbish, sweeping, cleaning and tidying in the house, cooking, washing up, and washing clothes, blankets and carpets, hanging them out and putting them away.
Conclusion Despite there being some general settlement and housing characteristics within the Aboriginal communities in the region that appeared to be similar, there was also a range of factors that distinguished the characteristics of these houses and households. The issues of variety and level of individuality have emerged as being significant to the understanding of the design criteria of this phase in the history of Aboriginal housing. Use of the external areas associated with the tin camp provided the householders with a variety of alternative spaces having different climatic/ environmental and social dynamic advantages to those in the interior of the houses. The most recurrent observation was that the pattern of occurrence of these activities in a temporal sense was not consistent nor did they necessarily happen in the same place or at the same time of day. In Goodooga self-constructed housing offered a lifestyle and degree of flexibility that seemed to be highly desired by even many of the town dwellers. The sense of retreat from the public and the ‘authoritarian eye’ possible on the reserve attracted daytime visitors from town and relatives from further afield who were trying to get off ‘the drink’ or distance themselves from other undesirable influences. In its contemporary state, the sense of spaciousness combined with a continued sense of kinship and community were also attractive qualities. The reserve residents also maintained a strong sense of pride in their tin camp houses. The notion of one group of people providing housing to a group from another cultural background per se is always going to be problematic. Consultation and interpretation procedures are not necessarily enough to guarantee a successful match between the designs generated within one cultural perspective and the users from another. Ross (1987: 3–4), for example, noted that housing plays a major role in much of our daily lives yet we seldom are conscious of the extent of its effect on behaviour or personal well-being. White Australians assume that housing of a good standard is essential to the well-being of themselves and others. They are not so aware of the extent to which a house needs to be compatible with its users ... Because housing tends to be created by societies according to their own cultural assumptions, there is great risk of it being incompatible with the needs
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of members of any other culture. Even where designers are conscious that they are designing houses for people with different cultural backgrounds, ethnocentric assumptions intrude.
A convenient and perhaps superficial strategy for dealing with the cultural differences between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals in Australia has been to simply recognise that the major distinction between the two groups is the differences between them. Rapoport (1980: 25) notes, for example, that ‘even in arguing that in any group there is variability, one can argue that this variability is less within a group than among groups’. With the attempt to design ‘appropriate’ yet standard housing solutions for whole Aboriginal communities, this ‘them’ and ‘us’ syndrome, divided on cultural grounds rather than on issues such as the similarities or dissimilarities of lifestyle and use of space, has typified the approach to even semi-enlightened housing provision strategies. Problem after problem has surrounded most attempts to provide houses to Aboriginal communities whereas there seem to be only advantages associated with the self-construct paradigm. These can be summarised to include (a) control over one’s environment, (b) speed of erection, (c) the ability to source materials locally and at extremely low cost, (d) that relatively simple tools and low levels of training are required, (e) the buildings are easily modified, adjusted, relocated and maintained, (f ) replacement parts and components are readily available, (g) construction principles are based on local knowledge and techniques which have been built up over time, and (h) the ownership of housing stock by individuals facilitates low financial stress and independence.
CHAPTER 15
Housing for Health: Principles and Projects, South Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland, 1985–97 Paul Pholeros, Paul Torzillo and Stephan Rainow
Introduction In 1985 Nganampa Health Council (NHC), an Aboriginal-controlled health council, had been providing health services for over 2500 Pitjantjatjara people in the far northwest of South Australia for some two years. Whilst the community-based clinics and medical staff were essential to treat illness, Nganampa Health’s primary health care approach had to extend to treating the cause of illness, particularly when much of the illness suffered, particularly by children under five years of age, was infectious disease often associated with poor environmental and living conditions. The task, framed by the NHC and senior Pitjantjatjara people, was to develop a plan to ‘stop people getting sick’ or, in the Pitjantjatjara language, uwankara palyanku kanyintjaku (UPK).1 With hindsight this initial UPK brief was both simple and profound. Over more than ten years it has provided focus for the efforts of a wide range of people and skills towards improving health. This chapter will outline the basic principles of UPK applied to three separate communities to show how the provision of fully functioning housing, the surrounding living environment and attention to apparently insignificant detail should be essential parts of any process which provides housing that will have health benefits.
Nine Principles of Healthy Living The first task of UPK was to define the environmental improvements that would achieve the maximum health gain, particularly for children aged 0–5, with the minimum change in day-to-day lifestyle. Using international, national, and local research and information, nine Healthy Living Practices and their likely benefits in order of priority were developed and discussed with all Pitjantjatjara communities 199
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across the Anangu Pitjantjatjara (AP) Lands.2 The three highest priority Healthy Living Practices were: • to be able to wash, particularly children, at least once a day • to be able to wash clothes and bedding • to safely remove all waste water from the house and yard area. The combination of these was expected to reduce the known prevalence of diarrhoeal disease, hepatitis, acute respiratory infection, eye disease and skin infection. The next priorities were: • to improve nutrition • to reduce crowding • to try and separate dogs and children or at least reduce the negative impacts of the contact. It was found that particularly eye, skin and gut infections were spread quickly between dogs and children, so that it was essential for the health of the children to break the cycle. (Externally imposed solutions such as the suggestion of shooting all the dogs received no community support.) These changes were expected to improve eye disease, skin infection and the general spread of infectious diseases. The final three priorities were: • dust control • controlling the extremes of temperature in the living environment • reducing trauma or physical injury. It was essential that the nine priorities retained a health, not housing, focus. The first priority was to wash, particularly children, at least once a day, not to provide a bathroom in a house. A well-constructed house with new bathroom will still not guarantee the washing of a child unless all the links in the water supply (from bore, to pipe, to tank, to pipe, to house, to tap, to child) are functioning. The healthy living practice priorities hardly made up a traditional planning or housing design brief. How do you begin to solve the problem of separating dogs and children? For example, in summer, young children would cool off by playing under the yard tap and dogs would come to drink from the remaining water. Dogs would defecate in the same area and children would play in this dangerous muddy mix. An early solution included a half-buried 44-gallon drum with gravel to drain water away from under yard taps, reducing an unhealthy point of contact between dogs and children. Later it was decided that a full dog health program was essential to improve the health of children. Community members had to be able to understand, accept and support the healthy living practice priorities and detailed implications of these nine health goals for the work of UPK to be possible. Having agreed on the healthy living practices, the obvious question was why, in 1986, couldn’t these simple priorities be achieved in these remote Aboriginal communities in the north-west of South Australia? To find out, a complete internal and external inspection of every house was completed during the first UPK
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Figure 15.1
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The nine Healthy Living Practices.
survey of ninety houses across eight communities.3 As every bore, tank, tap, drain, hot water system, power point and light was checked, the answer became clearer. Only about half the population of 2000 people had access to any housing and, if able to access a house, the residents had less than a 50 per cent chance of being able to get any of the basic services such as hot and cold water, toilet or power to work.4 A typical house had two bedrooms and a population of over eight people, unsafe power, leaking taps and a blocked toilet. Raw sewage often drained through the house because of the combination of drains not working and the bathroom being in the centre of the house with floor raised above the surrounding house floor level. On a 45°C summer day, the combination of the previous faults plus no verandahs, eaves or shade trees, windows that could not open to ventilate and no insulation of any type made the house
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uninhabitable. Given these commonly occurring conditions it was difficult to enter the house, let alone carry out any of the nine healthy living practice priorities.
Washing Children Failures occurred at every stage between the bore pump and the tub in which the child was to be washed. Taps and hot water systems would fail within three months of installation because of corrosion by high mineral salts in the water. Cheap tap handles would fall off after little use, waste and toilet drain pipes were blocked by concrete which entered drain lines due to poor building practices; in some cases drains, septic tanks and soakage trenches were simply not installed. History has shown Aboriginal people the value of what is done today rather than what is promised for tomorrow. During the UPK survey, the team, led by local Aboriginal people, always attempted to fix at least some of the simpler faults so as to leave the house in better condition than before the survey. This early work began a methodology that has always involved at least some immediate, simple physical improvement— today—not just the promise of greater change in the future. The late Fred Hollows’ simple statement of ‘no survey without service’ continues to be an important principle. So, unlike so many reports and planning documents, the UPK report (Nganampa Health Council et al. 1987) did not just advocate change or principles, it documented a process of change that had already begun on the AP Lands. Initially it continued to focus the development efforts of many small communities on environmental health targets, with little external government or agency support. The government’s role in the
Figure 15.2 Healthy living practice I: washing children.
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type of work advocated by UPK was minimal as no housing maintenance budgets existed and housing manage-ment consisted of a minor ‘homemakers’ program. Then, slowly, UPK started gaining wider acceptance, money and external support. The state housing authority addressed the health priorities in new housing and upgrades of existing houses, with better taps, drains, showers and kitchens. Broader issues such as the role house yard areas could play in reducing crowding (and therefore improving people’s health), better supervision of construction and the need for continued maintenance began to be discussed and implemented. Towards the late 1980s, housing and the surrounding living environment were being connected with health.
The Pipalyatjara Housing for Health Project, 1992 By 1991 the UPK work formed much of the rhetoric for government and bureaucracy both within South Australia and nationally, but by then the initial review statistics collected in 1986 were over five years old. Living conditions had improved and much had been learned about better taps, drainage systems, hot water systems and the importance of adequate supervision of all building works. It was time to go further and undertake more detailed work to further improve housing and health. In late 1991, Pipalyatjara,5 one of the smaller western Pitjantjatjara communities, required planning work and agreed that the project could be based around the further development of UPK principles. Part of the original UPK team of medical doctor, public health officer and architect obtained research money from the Australian Housing Research Council (AHRC) to survey and maintain all community housing for one year;6 the Pipalyatjara community agreed to participate in a large part of the research and repair work. It cannot be stressed strongly enough that this type of invasive work simply cannot be carried out unless a strong working partnership is agreed by all members of the community, as every house has to be accessed, surveyed and repaired. A partnership was formed to carry out a detailed Housing for Health project during 1992; it would involve surveying and maintaining twelve Aboriginal houses for one year.
Discussion The aims of this project and the more significant findings are addressed in the following questions.
What effect, after four years of better design and construction, was UPK having on how well housing functioned? Houses functioned significantly better in 1992 than in 1986. Even using a more thorough testing process (including newly developed standard, repeatable test protocols for assessment), performance figures for all parts of the house such as hot and cold
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water, electrical systems and waste removal were in the 81–100 per cent working range (compared with a 40–57 per cent range in 1986). Every house now had functioning verandahs and fenced and developed yard areas.
What level of maintenance was needed to keep the better designed and constructed houses providing health benefit and what did it cost? The cost of all maintenance items was recorded in each house over the year. For essential health and safety, as distinct from all maintenance, the cost averaged about $500 per house. The majority of this essential maintenance work (and cost) involved fixing underground drainage works such as pipes initially installed running uphill or installing pipes not installed at all during construction. In one house surveyed, residents were convinced that a constantly blocked drain in the house was due to their inability to manage the house and were ashamed of the situation. It was revealed that no soakage trench had been installed to finally dispose of the septic tank effluent. Waste could not soak into the ground and therefore backed up into the house and yard area. Over 70 per cent of the year’s total essential maintenance cost ($4560 of $6525) was due to poor initial construction. Much of the remaining work was what would be considered normal routine maintenance. By contrast, only one incident of damage caused by vandalism occurred during the year and cost $60 to repair. Will Aboriginal people know how to use the shower and toilet facilities? Since the first UPK work, this question was constantly asked by government departments and support agencies. Whilst the question seemed irrelevant when the performance of houses was so poor, effort was made during the Pipalyatjara work to assess the use of these functioning facilities. Water meters placed on the mains supply line to houses and individual appliances such as WC, shower, hot water systems and washing machines showed clearly that if these services are installed and working, people will use the services constantly, and water wastage (‘kids leave the taps on’) is rare. From this work and subsequent water monitoring in a variety of communities and environments over a six-year period, it seems clear that people need working taps and hot water systems much more than education about how or why to use them. Was health improving? Showing health improvement in any small community is difficult and it would be unfair for any small, remote area Aboriginal community to have to prove health benefits in order to gain access to the basic safe electrical, water and waste facilities available to most Australians. However, results in two of the health targets that may show more immediate change to better environmental conditions—skin and eye infections—were both reduced. These gains remained well after the end of the 1992 survey year.
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Pormpuraaw Housing for Health Project, Cape York, Far North Queensland, 1996
Percentage of total houses working
Following negotiations between the Cape York Land Council, the newly emerging Apunipima Cape York Health Council and various Cape York Aboriginal communities during 1994–95, a Housing for Health project was finally commenced in February 1996 at Pormpuraaw, a community of approximately 600 people. This time a budget of almost $500,000 for the survey and urgent fix work in approximately 100 houses was contributed by state housing and health departments and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), all of which became partners in the trial. Surveys were undertaken to determine the number of houses able to provide safety and basic health benefits at Pormpuraaw during 1996. The first survey indicates conditions before any fix work was commenced and the fourth survey indicates conditions just before the final survey after the majority of fix work had been carried out. Despite the obvious differences in people, culture, language and climate, the poor level of housing performance was depressingly similar to that of Central Australia ten years earlier. Whilst the gains during the survey and fix year in individual categories were encouraging, the cumulative gain (those houses where all of the targets could be achieved) was less optimistic. Only seven (of sixty-five ‘habitable houses’) could achieve all of the targets after a full year of work by the Housing for Health team using $500,000 of survey and fix money. 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Safe electrical system
Ability to shower/ wash
Working toilet
Removal of all waste
Store, prepare and cook food
Critical Healthy Living Practices Pormpuraaw Before
Pormpuraaw After
Figure 15.3 Housing for Health: Pormpuraaw comparison of Survey-Fix 1 (before) and Survey-Fix 4 (after).
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This poor result may be interpreted in different ways. Was the team incompetent and unable to initiate significant improvement works? A comprehensive list of fix work was completed and thoroughly inspected; and associated costs show that the team was in fact very efficient. Were the standards for the assessment too high and unrealistic? It is important to note that the ‘standards’ specifically relate to minimum acceptable function and are determined by testing, not visual inspection. It would be difficult to convince a community meeting of householders of the benefits of reducing these basic healthy living practice standards. For example, should houses have unsafe electric power systems, or not have the facilities for washing? Was the poor housing performance due to vandalism, overuse or the age of housing stock? In the essential areas of safety and health assessed, vandalism or overuse were not factors, and none of the final seven ‘fully functioning’ houses was less than two years old. The results probably best reflect poor construction quality, particularly sub-ground works and lack of routine and targeted maintenance over many years. The Pipalyatjara Housing for Health Project reflected at least five years of constant improvement after the UPK review (better design and specification, construction and some maintenance work). This type of work had not preceded the Pormpuraaw Housing for Health trial.
Principles Learnt from the Projects People often ask why this simple work is not more widely implemented and why the principles have not been more universally accepted and put into practice, particularly by governments and state and federal agencies. The following may provide some of the reasons why the important detailed connections between housing and health are difficult to achieve.
Lack of Attention to Fixing The importance of fixing apparently insignificant items in houses is underrated in the Housing for Health process. The detailed survey and immediate fix work makes total sense to the Aboriginal people who live in these communities. To have a safe house with a working shower and toilet, and a place to cook a meal, are significant things in their lives. The more removed from the community environment, the more these details become dwarfed by larger, more complex policy decisions. We believe both are needed, not one or the other. False Assumptions about Houses The assumption that a house, able to be counted within a community (often by ‘Toyota survey’),7 will provide a basic level of function pervades housing policy, design, construction and management issues. Detailed work on rural and remote area Aboriginal housing over ten years leads to the opposite assumption. The housing process should consider all houses to have poor or no function until tested. This inversion of most
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usual assumptions would then require an immediate increase in the supervision and final testing of houses before handover and, in the longer term, changes to housing design and specification to avoid known problem areas.
False Assumptions as to the Cause of Housing Failure Whilst the causes of housing failure—primarily poor initial construction and, in part, poor design and detailed specification—have been documented in great detail,8 the myths persist that failure is due to vandalism, overuse or misguided use of the house. This enables all the most basic failures in the housing delivery system to be overlooked. The Constant Defining and Redefining of Need and the Lack of Immediate Physical Change Funds are readily found for surveys and research of all sorts, but rarely is money available to fix the very things identified by the survey. The level of need may be important to allocate resources and for future planning, but so too is immediate improvement to the living environment of Aboriginal people. The two can, and should, be combined. The Requirement to Achieve ‘Instant’ Overall Housing and Health Improvements This attitude leads to the promotion of ‘new’, large, quick-fix programs. It is the small, dirty, repetitive, non-heroic work concerning taps, pipes, hot water elements and drains that leads to long-term change. This basic work, of course, does not have the political appeal of a grand national program costing tens of millions of dollars. Health gain will require a long-term partnership between the most skilled and creative members of Aboriginal communities, medical and environmental players at all levels. Historical divisions between government departments, statutory authorities, professions and trades is a poor starting point for this working partnership. For example, the recent Cape York Housing for Health project combined the skills of a large and varied team whose focus was to improve the ability of people to wash. The Aboriginal community council promoted the project and selected many of the field workers who have to gain access into people’s houses: plumbers to repair pipes, taps and drains; electricians to repair hot water systems and make houses electrically safe; builders to repair shower floors and walls; the store manager to order soap and detergent that will be better for drainage; clinic staff to monitor some of the illnesses affected by washing; and finally architects, engineers, the regional health and land councils, state housing and health departments and ATSIC, all attempting to focus decisions about future housing, water and power supply to improve an individual’s chance of having a wash. Each has a contribution to make and the process has to continue. There is a growing belief amongst many government agencies, service providers and even Aboriginal people that the housing (and associated health) problems are simply too hard to fix. Ten years of documented work in remote area communities shows that
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major improvements in both Aboriginal people’s living environment and health are possible often by starting with fixing small, seemingly insignificant details.9
Conclusion Aboriginal people are not the culprits! With better initial housing design, specification of detailed fittings and construction, the ongoing maintenance needed to sustain a healthy living environment is reduced to a point where it can largely be managed by local Aboriginal people. The problem is not too hard or too large or too difficult to fix. Positive change, even if slow and incremental, is possible and it is possible to start the changes today.
CHAPTER 16
Lock Hospitals, Prisons and Indigenous People, Queensland and Western Australia, 1906–98 Karl Eckermann
The prison is perhaps for us [architects] the most interesting case of utopian thinking as it involves the simultaneous invention of the concept of punishment through confinement and the architectural means of doing so. (Macarthur 1984: 20)
Introduction Formal prison environments are not the only coercive architectural forms to which Indigenous people have been subjected since 1788. Indigenous people other than convicted criminals or those locked-up overnight in community watch-houses have experienced enforced detention in built environments. Reserves, missions, dormitories and medical facilities have damaged psychological and physical health. This chapter will focus on two such institutional forms—the lock hospital and the prison. It establishes a context for the provision of culturally specific architecture for the Indigenous community. It suggests that culturally appropriate architectural design is beneficial to the psychological comfort and wellbeing of Indigenous people occupying institutional facilities.
Watching the World Go By Memmott (this volume) has shown that Indigenous people traditionally enjoyed a high quality of life and spent much of their time outside their shelters and huts. The familiarity and importance of outdoor living is a freedom still expressed by Indigenous people in contemporary housing. One significant reason for Indigenous people preferring a flexible living environment is that it allows them to be in touch with all the activities in their community. Seeing and hearing are equally important. Keeping a close watch on daily activity allows people to be aware of and participate in communal matters. They identify visitors in order to make decisions regarding prescribed patterns of behaviour; for example, avoiding certain classes of relatives. ‘Listening’ to the community allows them to detect
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potential emergencies. If an Indigenous person lives in an environment in which such freedom is unnecessarily restricted, stress and social concern will occur.1 While contemporary housing solutions often restrict sight lines and prevent auditory monitoring, institutional architecture can suppress them entirely. The internalised and controlling nature of institutional facilities is thus surely at odds with preferred Indigenous lifestyles.
Everything is Coercive The most common form of institutionalised detention environment experienced by Indigenous people is the reserve or mission (Attwood, Read, Wells, this volume). In fact, all structures designed for more than a single Aboriginal family or social grouping can be thought of as coercive and controlling. [T]he reserve system in the south created a total institution in which all aspects of Aboriginal life were regulated, from the food they ate, the employment permitted, and the money they spent, to the most intimate aspects of their personal lives. The paternalism of the Christian churches ... was mirrored in the attitudes of the secular managers as well. (Saggers & Gray 1991: 70)
While the architecture and design were not overtly intended to be punitive, one purpose of communal spaces such as dining rooms was to force the occupants into strict routines. Whatever the reasons for establishing these institutions, some of the major results of the physical and mental restrictions were widespread dependency and poor health amongst Indigenous people, along with increased social tension.2
Lock Hospitals ‘Lock’ hospitals were established to isolate Indigenous people suffering from introduced diseases. For example, in 1908 the Western Australian government established hospitals on Bernier and Dorre Islands, west of Carnarvon on the central-west coast, for the treatment of Indigenous people afflicted with venereal disease. Saggers and Gray note that these ‘so-called “lock” hospitals received many of their patients in chains, after they had been hunted down by police and forcibly moved to the islands’ (cited in Saggers & Gray 1991: 84). Aborigines suffering from leprosy (Hansen’s disease) in Western Australia were sent to Bezout Island near Cossack (material cited in Biskup 1973: 115–16). From there they were eventually sent to Darwin via a compound established at the Derby Aboriginal Hospital in the north of the state (opened in 1926). Patients spent up to a year in this compound. In one of the rare references to lock hospital architecture, the Derby compound was described to the Moseley Royal Commission of 1934 as ‘consisting of a galvanised iron
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shed, open on one side, and rather less pretentious than the average fowl-house’ and a few humpies about 3 feet high, built of scrap iron and old tins. The Derby Aboriginal Hospital itself was separated from the compound by a two-strand wire fence and consisted of a large wooden hut with a common sleeping room for men at one end, similar accommodation for women at the other end, and a small operating theatre in the middle—‘an excellent place for storing boxes’ (Biskup 1973: 115–16).
Peel Island Lazaret The Peel Island Lazaret operated in Queensland on Peel Island in Moreton Bay. This institution isolated Indigenous people with leprosy.3 Construction began on the site in the north-western corner of the island in 1906 and the lazaret opened in July 1907.4 The lazaret housed Indigenous patients until 1940 and remained in operation for nonIndigenous patients until 1959. I briefly discuss the treatment of Indigenous patients (inmates)5 at the Peel Island Lazaret in order to illustrate the typical institutional conditions endured by Indigenous people. This institution is one of the rare facilities whereby the architectural design of housing provided for Indigenous patients is well documented. Isolation of individuals for supposed health benefits was the strongest principle which informed the general planning and architectural design of the lazaret. However, there were also strong themes of segregation according to race, sex and severity of illness. Such segregation was based on the prevailing ideas of sexual morality and racism present at that time, and resulted in the establishment of three distinct compounds for the patients: male, female and ‘coloured’.6 Initially the ‘coloured’ compound had no enforced segregation of male and female patients; later, the female patients’ compound was surrounded by a 4-metre high wire fence, incorporating a padlocked main gate in order to keep out the men, wallabies and horses at night. In 1926 when new huts were built especially for the Indigenous women at the lazaret, a similar fence was erected around their dwellings and they were padlocked in until morning.7 The huts for the non-Indigenous patients were one-room timber dwellings intended for individual occupation, measuring 10 feet by 12 feet, with 10-foot high ceilings. These structures incorporated windows, french doors, a fanlight, roof ventilator and a verandah. The non-Indigenous women’s huts contained window curtains and a small kitchen. All the huts in the non-Indigenous patients’ compounds came complete with purpose-built furniture—chest of drawers and table. The initial huts were built in 1906 by a Brisbane contractor, for £55 each. Those provided for the Indigenous patients were vastly different. Each of the initial huts in the ‘coloured’ compound cost £3 to construct and measured the same as the non-Indigenous huts, but were to accommodate two patients.8 They were built by Aboriginal workers from Myora (on nearby Stradbroke Island) and Barambah (now Cherbourg). They had an earth floor, a bush timber frame clad with cypress pine slabs and a roof of tea-tree bark (Figure 16.1). Was this an early attempt at culturally specific architecture? Arguments against such a proposal include the huts’ failure to respond to environmental needs or to allow for appropriate socio-spatial planning or to provide for flexibility. Despite being
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Figure 16.1
Huts in the ‘coloured’ compound at the Peel Island Lazaret were erected by Aboriginal workers from Myora and Barambah (Cherbourg). (Source: Blake 1993: 6.)
dispossessed of their lands, Indigenous patients maintained links to their traditional cultural practices through ceremonial practices and artefact making. The fact that some were accustomed to ‘Western’ living environments such as cattle stations was also overlooked. The huts built for the Indigenous patients proved to be inadequate both in durability and protection from the weather. An early design change (1908) to the huts built for the non-Indigenous patients acknowledged the harsh tropical climate, by providing an awning and verandah on each dwelling for sun and rain protection. The huts in the ‘coloured’ compound failed to protect the residents from climatic extremes and to address their preferred lifestyles. There is evidence that they frequently built fires in the centre of their huts: one patient could ‘vividly recall the sight of white smoke pouring out of their doors and windows’ (Ludlow 1987: 35). As the condition of the huts in the ‘coloured’ compound continued to deteriorate, the patients became increasingly despondent. In April 1909, a group of twenty-eight Indigenous patients wrote to the Home Secretary requesting decent housing: The winter season is begun and we are left unprepared to meet the winter how are we to live, we shall most of us perish with the cold for the want of a warm and comfortable place to sleep in.
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Figure 16.2
213
Huts for Indigenous patients at Peel Island were reclad with corrugated galvanised sheeting following complaints from the occupants concerning living standards. (Source: Blake 1993: 16.)
At the present time we are having our meals under a tents fly & it is no use to us, because when it comes on to rain we all have to stand up and eat our meals for everything gets wet. Since we have lived on this island we are dying away fast9 about fifteen have died already here and only one white, the reason why there have been so many deaths amongst us coloured patients it is because we are not looked after as well as the whites & as far as our bodies concerns they have all the comfort they are kept in warm houses away from the cold & wind & rain & us poor sufferers who suffer the most cannot get what we ask for. (cited in Blake 1993: 8–9)
In answer, the government improved conditions in the ‘coloured’ compound, which by no means achieved equality. The existing huts were simply reclad with corrugated galvanised iron sheeting, fixed to new sawn-timber battens which were in turn fixed to the existing bush timber frame. In 1910 the earth floors in the huts were concreted and a dining room was erected in the compound, similar to that provided for the nonIndigenous patients three years earlier (Figure 16.2). Indigenous living environments continued in this state until 1940, when unprecedented numbers of Indigenous people living in north Queensland mission stations were being diagnosed with Hansen’s disease. When the government realised there would be insufficient room on Peel Island, a new facility was constructed on Fantome Island, in the Palm Island group near Townsville. The conditions of this lazaret, merely an extension of the infamous Palm Island, were no better than on Peel Island.
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Prisons The early acknowledgment that imprisonment is anathema to Indigenous culture contributed to the need for governments (and therefore architects) to adapt their designs to the perceived needs of the Indigenous population. The Aboriginal Protector Parry Okeden observed in 1887: In the case of Aboriginal offenders ... the problem of their treatment is complicated by their physical nature. Placed in close confinement for any length of time they dwindle and die, and hence, practically, a sentence which would be light imprisonment to a European would be certain death to a native black. (cited in Reser 1989b)
In response to imprisonment being seen as antithetical to the fundamental needs of Indigenous people, the authorities practised a form of exile of Indigenous prisoners. However, they failed to realise that dispossessing Indigenous persons from their land and forcing them to live in an alien environment (regardless of confinement or ‘freedom’) was itself a severe form of punishment. Such was a purpose of Queensland’s Palm Island. In the 1830s, Indigenous prisoners were sent to Flinders Island in South Australia and also to Rottnest Island in Western Australia.
Rottnest Island Prison The Indigenous prison which was established off the coast of Perth at Rottnest Island in 1837 was a governmental response to an ever-increasing Indigenous prison population in Western Australia,10 and the high rate of escape from other prisons. During discussion on the need for the Rottnest facility, politicians acknowledged that imprisonment was ‘especially unpleasant for Aborigines because it severely curtailed their normal mode of living’ (Kerr 1988: 9). The cold stone prisons at Perth, Albany and Fremantle were deemed unsuitable for Indigenous prisoners, as their health and minds ‘deteriorated’ in such closed cells. The justification for exile to Rottnest was the apparent provision of a greater degree of personal freedom combined with a far greater difficulty of escape. The initial dormitory-style prison accommodation consisted of a rectangular room, 20 metres long by 5 metres wide, with a fireplace located at each end. At one end there were several cells where prisoners were secured each evening. In 1864, new facilities were built, with deep foundations to prevent prisoners from burrowing out. This building was referred to as the ‘Quad’ and accommodated 106 people. Within the compound, the Indigenous prisoners were allowed to construct traditional bush huts which were periodically burnt and replaced in order to maintain cleanliness. By 1882 there were 150 prisoners in the overcrowded facilities. The cells were less than 2 metres by 3 metres, too small and poorly ventilated. Six cells were being used for non-Indigenous prisoners and two others for sick inmates. Some 148 Indigenous prisoners were crammed into the remaining twenty-eight cells, at least four or five
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people in a single cell. The Indigenous prison operated under such conditions until 1903 when it was officially closed. The prison had remained in operation as a failed experiment for sixty-six years. Following the closure, there was an extraordinary decision to re-declare Rottnest Island a penal station. It re-opened in 1904 as an annexe of Fremantle Prison, operating until 1931. Over a period of almost 100 years, at least 3670 Indigenous men went to Rottnest, some as young as 8 years old and others in their seventies. More than 370 of these men never left the island (Green & Moon 1997: 8). The siting of the prison on Rottnest posed several problems for the Indigenous prisoners. They were removed from their traditional lands and placed in an environment with which the local Indigenous groups had strong mythical associations, which instilled terror in the prisoners as the stories spread. This inevitable ‘terror’ was indeed a defining factor for the government’s choice of the island site, as it forced the prisoners into a further state of submission. This aided an administration which, at best, operated in a paternalistic state of presumed cultural superiority. Examples of architectural attempts to provide culturally appropriate detention environments for Indigenous prisoners are recorded in prison designs of the late nineteenth century. At Greenough, Dongara and Busselton in Western Australia, specifically designed cells were used (Figure 16.3). They displayed design features such as larger cells to enable several prisoners to be held together and larger fenestration near the door to reduce the sense of enclosure. The plan and layout of the Roebourne prison indicates an attempt to racially segregate the prisoners (Figure 16.4); at the Fremantle prison, racial segregation officially continued until 1966. Such segregation was probably provided for the perceived benefit of non-Indigenous prisoners as opposed to an attempt at providing culturally appropriate facilities for the Indigenous prisoners. There are no reports on the success or otherwise of such attempts to better accommodate Indigenous inmates.
Indigenous Deaths in Custody Indigenous people, therefore, have been dying in custody ever since such restrictions were imposed on them. It is important to note that Indigenous deaths in custody are certainly not all suicide related. Earlier deaths in custody are attributed primarily to preventable disease killing large numbers of Indigenous prisoners. For example, the influenza epidemic which swept through the facility on Rottnest Island during the late nineteenth century killed at least sixty Indigenous people imprisoned there. The death rates of Indigenous patients at the lock hospitals on Bernier and Dorre Islands was so high that the hospital superintendent felt justified in ordering a bone-crushing machine to the institutions in order to ‘utilise all available organic matter for the object of improving the nutritive value of the soil’ (cited in Biskup 1973: 113). The Aboriginal prison at Wyndham reported several deaths in custody in 1893 to ‘a kind of scurvy’; and in 1895, nine Indigenous prisoners died in a two-month period. Midford (1988: 171) concludes:
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Figure 16.3
Plan and model of the specifically designed cell for Indigenous inmates at the Greenough prison, built between 1866 and 1874. (Source: Kerr 1988: 100.)
Generally the rate of sickness and death was of similar proportion to that experienced at Rottnest, half a century earlier. The reasons were similar: inadequate recognition of the different physical needs of Aborigines; overcrowding of prisoners in unhealthy conditions; and poor immunity on the part of local Aborigines to white introduced diseases.
In 1884, Australia had its first royal commission into Indigenous deaths in custody, pertaining mainly to conditions on Rottnest Island. There were subsequent royal commissions in 1899, 1904, 1935 and 1989, along with periodic inquiries into entire
Figure 16.4 Plan of the Roebourne prison, which illustrates the segregation of inmates. (Source: Kerr 1988: 100.)
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state prison systems. The rhetoric produced from each of these inquiries is frighteningly similar to that of the 1987–91 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCADIC) report.11
Suicide and Self-harm amongst Indigenous People Much contention surrounds the concept of suicide in traditional Indigenous culture and practices. Some reject the suggestion that suicide was ever a traditional form of death, citing the lack of documented proof amongst a culture in which the majority of deaths are widely known about and much discussed. Others explain the lack of evidence by suggesting that suicide may have existed and gone largely unreported, the cause of death being attributed to illicit, external causes such as magic or sorcery. Only in instances where the reporting of a death by suicide is unavoidable, for example a hanging death whilst in custody, are such events widely publicised. Many Indigenous people themselves assert that suicide forms no part of the Indigenous psyche. A Queensland activist stated: Aboriginal suicide in jails? Oh, I don’t believe they’re suicide. I will never be totally convinced that these deaths are suicide. If you wanna think about that, these people wear thongs to jail and then end up getting hung up with football socks. And I know numerous Aboriginal people who’ve been in jail for the night and the police ask what football team do they support. (cited in Reser 1989a: 48)
Regardless of the historical context, suicide has certainly been highly publicised as being endemic in Indigenous communities in the last fifteen years and is increasing rapidly, particularly amongst the younger generations. The likelihood of suicide increases dramatically during times of conflict and, in particular, arrest and confinement: Suicide attempts are often not the product of careful deliberation but appear to be reactive responses to conflict situations, typically when an individual is intoxicated, and are accompanied by intense emotional feelings, particularly anger, depression, shame and fear. This has important implications for custody arrangements ... Aborigines appear to be at greater risk of self-injury and suicide in the first few hours immediately following arrest. This would argue strongly for alternatives to incarceration where possible, particularly with respect to individuals who are intoxicated and/or at risk for other reasons. (Reser 1989b: 23)
Indigenous deaths in custody by hanging are particularly disturbing, as current prison architecture and experience may ‘favour’ such a form of suicide. Hanging is a particularly lethal method of attempting suicide, as it typically precludes changes of mind and there is little time for intervention if the individual is alone, as is often the case in the
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context of detention. Reser (1989b: 39) observes that jail may provide more of an opportunity than a cause for many suicides. Traditionally, self-harm was practised amongst Indigenous people as part of ritual behaviour linked to mourning, initiation or battle. Such instances of self-injury were also often associated with violence and aggression. Contemporary reasons given for self-injury include the continuation of traditional practices, deliberate acts of aggression or stress ‘relief ’, and dramatic calls for attention. Such forms of self-injury are intermittently exhibited amongst imprisoned Indigenous people, often exacerbated by the unfamiliar nature of the closed environment.
Prison Architecture and Contemporary Imprisonment The contemporary context for the imprisonment of Indigenous people seems to have changed little from the past. There are disproportionate rates of imprisonment for Indigenous people and deaths in custody are continuing. While there was a significant level of publicity about the plight of Indigenous people in custody before, during and after the 1989 RCADIC, implementation of the recommendations has been slow and many of the problems continue at the same rates in the final year of the twentieth century. The following extracts from submissions to the inquiry offer some insight into the proposition that inadequate contemporary architecture creates unnecessary trauma for Indigenous people in custody: I visited Berrima Gaol in Darwin (7–11 May 1987)—70% of the gaol’s population are Aboriginal. It was so overcrowded, that a common room set aside for snooker was utilised as a cell with 17 prisoners (Aboriginal) sleeping head to foot on the floor. Alice Springs gaol which I did not visit has 90% Aboriginal prisoners. The conditions there are much worse, with prisoners living in cages ... I suggest that the Committee, as a matter of urgency, look at the Territory gaols in the hope that something can be done to improve the appalling conditions. (Armstrong, cited in Reser 1989b: 11)12 As observed by the coroner these 3.5 by 1.5 [metre] cells are nothing more than fairly primitive dungeons. They are isolated from the community and located near a dump. The cells have no running water or sanitary facilities, apart from a bucket. They have no lighting. As many as 27 males have been locked up at the one time in a single cell. At the same time up to six females were also held in a cage on the back of a van under a house. (Testimony at royal commission hearings at Wujalwujal, Queensland, 19 September 1988: 10)13 During a visit to Halls Creek, Senator Noel Crichton-Browne said conditions were so appalling he could not imagine any circumstances which would justify imprison-
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ing a person there. At times it was crammed with 70 prisoners in an area which allowed sleeping room for no more than 20 he said. On hot days the jail’s iron roof and walls meant temperatures could soar to above 50 degrees. (West Australian, 7 May 1988, cited in Reser 1989b: 11)
And from Royal Commissioner Muirhead: Inquiries to date support the submission that they [Indigenous people] do experience particular and in some cases extremely difficult custodial problems—especially those that come from the outback with traditional Aboriginal ties. Incarceration, impressive to all, is alien to those people, especially if the incarceration is in a high security situation away from their kinsfolk ... But apart from recommending that these special needs be recognised and, as far as practicable, fulfilled, implementation must be left to Governments who, I would hope, will recognise the need to involve Aborigines in the processes ... I take the view that special needs have been established and that there should be liaison with Aboriginal groups in an effort to ensure isolation is minimised. (Muirhead 1989: 94, 95, 99, cited in Reser 1989b: 16)
Note the differentiation between correctional facilities in Indigenous communities, rural towns and cities. Facilities in each region are likely to have disparate objectives, for example, as overnight holding cells of drunken individuals (in the form of police lockups and community watch-houses) or the long-term accommodation of recidivist criminals (large-scale urban prisons). However, architectural commonalities are evident. For example, all function as devices of incarceration and at present all are probably based around a similar notion of a cell ‘unit’. There seems to be little recognition of, or concern for, the differing nature and degree of detainment required or the physical and mental state of the incarcerated person. These commonalities and differences are quite significant, and designers should pay attention to the needs of both the detainees and the community in which the facility operates. In certain areas, deaths in custody since the 1989 RCADIC are actually increasing, especially among young Indigenous males.14 Queensland still has the highest rates of deaths in custody and, significantly, one of the poorest rates of implementation for the RCADIC recommendations. Elsewhere, while Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are dying at similar rates in custody, the Indigenous figures are more prominent due to the grossly disproportionate rates of Indigenous detention and imprisonment.
New Designs Wanted The long history of designs that are culturally inappropriate for Aboriginals, and inhumane for anyone, led the royal commission to some firm conclusions. The design in new detention facilities proposed in areas where the majority of inmates will be Indigenous people should involve extensive consultation with local Indigenous people,
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especially concerning facilities like optional communal cells, levels of individual ‘climatic’ control and degrees of personal freedom. Prisons should include long-distance phones, private visiting and children’s play areas, and be sited to enable family visits. Police watch-house accommodation should have maximum opportunity for visual (though not obtrusive technical) surveillance, and should be able to be entered immediately. An intercom system in cells should provide direct communication between detainees and the police officers. Obviously, single cells should be devoid of all hanging points.15 Non-custodial facilities should specifically cater for flexible accommodation of freshly remanded prisoners, ‘sobering up shelters’ within communities and appropriate care for the behaviourally disturbed. Detention facilities for juveniles must incorporate communal accommodation, and accessible and appropriate alternatives to police custody.
Conclusion The provision of culturally specific and appropriate architecture for Indigenous people is essential, particularly the provision of more supportive detention environments. If the focus is on rehabilitation rather than punishment, then the architecture must change accordingly. Appropriate consultation with the community involved, knowledge and respect of cultural practices and beliefs, and direct Indigenous participation in all stages of design will ensure that cultural specificity is the result of an informed and intelligent design process. Such an architectural approach will ultimately enhance any design project undertaken for Indigenous communities, be it a prison, housing or public facilities.
CHAPTER 17
A Self-help Approach to Remote Area Housing, St Paul’s Village, Moa Island, Torres Strait, 1986–92 Paul Haar
Theoretical Context The opportunity to contribute to this book in my capacity as an architect brings with it a confronting question. How has my profession assisted Indigenous Australians with their remote area housing needs? A project attracting considerable attention in recent years, both in airline magazines (Murray 1999) and on architecture award nights, is the house for Marmburra Marika and Mark Alderton at Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land which was designed by one of Australia’s most eminent architects, Glenn Murcutt.1 I wonder why this house ‘touches the earth lightly’ with the same ‘leaves of iron’, sleek detailing and generous budget that combine to produce the trademark style distinguishing much of Murcutt’s other work serving White middle class families in his home state of New South Wales.2 There is wide appeal for the aesthetic of the Yirrkala house. Yet claims made that such architecture reflects the true Aboriginal voice, and that it serves as a new benchmark for Indigenous housing, are problematic (Brennan 1994: 104–11). Meanwhile, awards are also presented for journal articles which question the legitimacy of ‘Aboriginal architecture’ as produced by Murcutt and another distinguished mainstream practitioner, Greg Burgess of Victoria.3 One of these articles, an acclaimed critique of the Yirrkala house, contributes to a valuable debate on authorship and the ‘authentic Aboriginal voice’. However, this and too many other eminent studies of Indigenous Australia are formulated from afar in the safety of academia, drawing on other studies of the same,4 rather than from direct engagement at source—in this case by visiting the site, and by consultation with the architect, his clients and the Yirrkala community. The effectiveness of such analysis in guiding architects towards the betterment of Indigenous remote area housing is limited. In clear contrast and far from the bright lights, there are the quiet achievers—architects such as Geoffrey Barker, Paul Memmott, Paul Pholeros and Julian Wigley who, 221
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over several decades, have dedicated their careers to developing committed relationships with, and deep understandings of, remote Aboriginal communities. Their insights have equipped them to facilitate carefully considered, often unglamorous but always worthwhile housing processes—designs, constructions and evaluations which are invariably well received by their client communities and which have endured the test of time. Their contributions have been far less visible or attractive to mainstream Australia and its architectural fraternity. There is a further perennial question confronting me and my peers. Why is it that the overwhelming majority of Australians, be they Indigenous or non-Indigenous, choose not to engage architects for their housing processes? Maybe they are unwilling or unable to pay the considerable associated consulting fees. Maybe they hold little value in the prospective design product offered by architects. Maybe. But I think there is another more potent and far less readily acknowledged reason for their hesitation. Architects too often hold their expertise, or the things they know, too close to their chests. They protect, mystify and colonise their domain, in the same way that many doctors colonise our bodies, and priests our souls. With architects in charge, clients can easily come to feel that they’re losing control of a basic instinctive desire that I believe lies deep within all of us regardless of our ethnic or socio-economic background—the desire to do our own nest building, our own home making. Indigenous Australians, together with their lands and waters, have long borne the scars of colonisation and appropriation. Further patronage from an architect in charge adds insult to injury. My experience as an architect has led me to the firm belief that housing delivery is of questionable worth for remote communities whilst external professions, industry, churches and government maintain their controlling role as active providers, and whilst those to be housed remain passive recipients. Regardless of their ethnic or socio-economic background, all real communities should be free to participate centrally in their housing processes, to be allowed the time and space to explore and appropriate for themselves a meaningful architecture. With a focus on participatory process, communities find themselves building people as well as houses. And external agents, including design professionals, tradespeople and administrators, find themselves providing considered educational support and modest financial resources for community selfdevelopment, rather than material services for hand-out. My tertiary education in architecture in the late 1970s encouraged me to explore processes in participatory design and self-help housing, and to recognise the value of such processes for cross-cultural consultancy. My interests were seeded by the work of Hassan Fathy (1973) and John Turner (1972). This academic background inspired me to undertake postgraduate research, which in turn drew me to facilitate a number of small but interesting building projects with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during the 1980s and early 1990s. I worked and lived with communities at Lake Tyers in East Gippsland, Victoria (1983), Mt Catt in Arnhem Land (1984–85), Robinvale in the Riverland, Victoria (1985–86), Moa Island in the Torres Strait region (1986–88),
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and Palm Island, Queensland (1991–92). This chapter will focus on the self-help housing project at Moa Island’s St Paul’s Village in the Torres Strait.
Seeds for Self-help For many years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from remote parts of Australia have been denied the opportunity to provide for their own shelter needs. Too often government agencies have delivered to communities housing which by design is unsuited to local climate and traditional lifestyle, and which adopts expensive and complex construction methods discouraging local labour input. Government funds fall short, both in the production of roofs over heads and in the process of generating good work and a sense of homefulness in what are otherwise socially and culturally rich communities. In the mid 1980s, the Ware, Levi and Pedro families returned from the mainland to their birthplace at St Paul’s Village on Moa Island. Recognising the limitations of existing housing options back home, and loaded with drive and ability to help themselves, these three families decided to design and build their own houses. Ross McDonald of the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC) was stationed on Thursday Island at the time. Aware of my earlier work and approach at Lake Tyers, and conscious of Elia Ware’s housing interests and determination, Ross arranged for me to conduct a number of educational workshops on self-help housing with a number of island communities in the Torres Strait region. This seven-week tour was sponsored by the Commonwealth Department of Education and the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations (DEIR). There were several agreed objectives for these workshops. First, I was to assess what interests and skills in traditional building remained amongst Torres Strait Islanders, and to learn more of these skills. Then, with each of the nine island communities to which I was invited, I looked to establish the level of local enthusiasm and capability for selfhelp housing, and to identify locally available materials which could be utilised for construction. Finally, with a view to establishing a possible pilot project, I hoped to explore with the most promising communities concepts in design and construction which they saw as functionally and aesthetically appropriate and which we agreed were logistically feasible. Interest in self-help housing varied considerably from one community to another, as did the adequacy of existing housing stocks. The fact that the least adequately housed communities tended to express the most interest in self-help, and vice versa, was interesting if predictable. Previous experience had taught me that self-help housing can attract considerable attention and empower those who are active in it. Unfortunately and because of this, it can also challenge and in turn be challenged by the power base and political agenda of onlookers from government as well as from within communities. It was absolutely crucial to me that any pilot project in the region be failsafe in its process and exemplary
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in its outcome. The project therefore needed to contain a number of essential ingredients. Its scale of works needed to be small and achievable, its time frame generous and realistic for self-help. The project required a few truly committed and selfmotivated prospective owner-builder families and a genuinely supportive community council. There needed to be modest financial support made available without time constraints, and secured by one or two ‘fair dinkum’ public servants operating in low profile at the most local level. And finally, I felt I needed to commit myself to live and work with the community through both design and construction phases of a pilot project. Self-help housing was able to commence on Moa Island with most of these ingredients in place. My workshop–study tour clarified that the community at St Paul’s Village was the most enthusiastic and capable of embracing a self-help housing approach. Through Ross McDonald, the ADC granted to St Paul’s Council a revolving loan fund of $60,000 available to owner-builder families for purchase of materials to a limit of $20,000 each. Recognising the education and employment value in the project, Stan Wright (DEIR) arranged to fund my engagement as ‘project facilitator–instructor’. I became a contract employee of the Cairns College of TAFE, with Peter Houghton as my mentor and administrative back-up. Elia Ware’s daughter Grace was the dynamo of Moa Island, for whom no mountain was tall enough. The commitment of Grace, Ross, Stan and Peter began the St Paul’s project. It was their continuing support that made it probably the most successful self-build project with which I have been involved over the years.
Design Approach Torres Strait Islanders have a strong sense of ownership of their land and their waters. Understandably many St Paul’s families also aspire to owning their own homes, yet most have a limited capacity to repay mortgages. With three families keen for an immediate start, it was clear that the ADC material funds would, in the first loan cycle, not stretch far. It was also widely known that conventional building materials and skilled contract labour supplied to the remote outer islands of the Torres Strait region cost roughly twice the price supplied to construction sites in Brisbane. The families’ acknowledgment of these factors, coupled with their re-emerging attraction towards a more local and traditional building culture and aesthetic, encouraged them to explore options for low-cost housing. They decided to use materials found locally in the bush (stone, sand, clay, anthill, bamboo and various forest timbers), and to adopt simple construction methods suited to the available community workforce. By trialling these materials and construction methods, by viewing slides and videos, by discussing local climate and lifestyle aspirations, and by accessing a crude model-making technique,5 the owner-builder families were able to develop skilful if ambitious house plans, in what were effective and enjoyable participatory design processes. The houses designed by the St Paul’s families closely reflected local lifestyle aspirations. Typically
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Figure 17.1 By constructing a rough and ready cardboard model, Hobson Levi and his daughter Anna negotiate a thoughtful design for their new home at St Paul’s Village, 1986. (Courtesy Paul Haar.)
they included a large central space for kai kai (extended family gathering for meals), and extensive verandahs for shady outdoor living and visitor sleeping. The designers desired to keep ablution areas separate from living spaces, and to accommodate ever-expanding households in detached bungalows located around the central house. The attraction towards stone and earth walling was interesting. Whilst it was understood to offer no thermal benefit in a tropical climate, it was chosen not only for its free availability but because ‘it looked solid’. Traditional building materials such as bamboo and woven palm were still in favour for home decoration and temporary structures, but the European penchant for ‘proper solid’ housing had clearly been embraced by St Paul’s people both functionally and aesthetically. As building materials, bamboo and palm frond were perceived to provide inadequate storm shelter, pose fire risk and harbour vermin. In this way my romantic vision for utopia tropicana (a blissful beer under the shade of an exquisitely crafted timber, bamboo and palm frond home) was challenged. I needed to accept the reality of community aspirations, and allow an architectural style to emerge from the people themselves as they designed and built their homes—as they explored what was meaningful to them.
Figure 17.2 Ned Ware frames up a large roof vent which allows hot air to escape from inside his family’s stone-walled house. When Ned saw me coming, he’d often self-assess his workmanship of the moment by announcing, ‘Quick, call Home Beautiful!’ or ‘Well, it’s only a bush house’. (Courtesy Paul Haar, 1987).
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The Construction Process It took the community some three years of determination and hard work to complete three large and beautiful homes for extended families at St Paul’s Village. Progress on each building site fluctuated enormously from day to day, depending at least as much on the family head’s talent in maintaining a strong and enthusiastic workforce as on my effectiveness in skill sharing and technical supervision. Nonetheless our workforce comprised some fifty men and women of vastly different skill and energy levels. My challenge was to support them to function as a close-knit and good-spirited team through good and bad. This required careful observation, quiet listening, political diplomacy, social counselling and immense patience—a great challenge for me. I tried with mixed success to apply on-site some important strategies. I was aware, from previous experience, of the value of encouraging good workmanship whilst accepting the less-than-perfect. It was important to minimise the amount of heavy construction processes which excluded all but very strong male workers. I needed to reappraise my own role to render the building site a fun place to be, to view footballs and ghetto blasters as essential tools of the trade. Finally I had to accept that sometimes fishing lines were more attractive than deadlines. I needed to learn to relax with and join the flow of things. Construction of these large ‘proper solid’ houses at minimal capital cost meant sourcing, processing and erecting huge quantities of very heavy building materials. This
Figure 17.3 The house designed by Grace Ware and her brother Ned at St Paul’s Village, 1986. (Courtesy Paul Haar.)
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Figure 17.4 Hobson Levi shows the chairman of neighbouring Boigu Island how to lay mud bricks, 1987. (Courtesy Paul Haar.)
necessitated much hard work, which the owner-builder families insisted they were ready for and which (amazingly) they remained happy to repeat, for the sake of the result, on subsequent projects after my time there. Yet this hard work made site progress, at times, agonisingly and demoralisingly slow. I had seen similar commitments, constraints and hard labour previously in the residents of Mt Catt Homeland Centre in south-central Arnhem Land. There, all campers decided to band together, despite difficult heat and divisive internal politics, to construct a substantial communal wet-season house (unserviced) using local sandstone and bushpole timbers at a cost of around $8000.
Volunteers The Moa Island project also benefited from youth volunteers. Sponsored by corporate business and Prince Charles, Operation Raleigh was a program of the 1980s which gathered young people from many countries to sites where they were needed. At each destination three parties of about ten young people with two leaders would, by rotation, carry out assignments in adventure, scientific field research and community service. Moa Island was one such destination and the expanded workforce and moral support provided to our project by Operation Raleigh was unexpected and most appreciated by all. The energetic assistance of these delightful young people on community service assignment came at a time when the hard work in bushpole collection, earth brick production and stone wall laying was at its peak.
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By mid 1988, funds for my employment as a TAFE instructor were exhausted, and I needed to return home to Victoria. Meanwhile the council’s list of aspiring ownerbuilder families was growing daily. The community resolved that whilst much had been achieved in trade skill development, the project would continue to rely on some external facilitation, at least in the short term. With no reserve for such support, Grace Ware and I decided to reinvent the Operation Raleigh experience by placing an invitation in the Australian Owner Builder magazine. Following an introduction to the St Paul community and project, the article continued: Current and prospective owner-builder families at St Paul’s eagerly extend an open invitation to anyone experienced in building who is willing to assist them with their ongoing work. In appreciation of the new knowledge and skills they receive from a guest worker, these families will turn on their warm island hospitality. Guest workers will be completely cared for by their hosts. They will also be welcome to join in on feasts and dances, pig hunts, cray diving and fishing trips, visits to neighbouring islands and any other community events as they occur. (Ware & Haar 1988)
The response to this invitation was overwhelming, and the calibre of creative talent, trade skill and good will, staggering. Over the next two years, in visits of between eight and sixteen weeks, eleven volunteers provided invaluable assistance to owner-builders at St Paul’s. All volunteers, some accompanied by their own families, returned home glowing with fond memories of a priceless experience. Though successful, the volunteer program eventually died due to a lack of money in the council’s revolving loan fund for imported building materials. The understandably gradual repayment of the $20,000 borrowed by each of the three original owner-builder families was unable to cover the rapid demand for further borrowing from the fund by other prospective owner-builders.
Community Response The self-help housing approach at St Paul’s attracted widespread interest from other communities and government agencies of north Queensland. The project brought home ownership within the reach of families who were prepared to work hard. This in turn released community councils from the costs of maintenance and problems with rent collection that were so significant with council-owned housing. The low capital cost of self-help allowed many more houses to be built with limited government funds. The first three self-built homes at St Paul’s averaged five bedrooms each, a fully enclosed covered area (FECA) of 157 square metres and an unenclosed covered area (UCA) of 145 square metres. They cost each family roughly $25,000 for materials and government roughly $14,000 for construction training input. Meanwhile four-bedroom cement-sheet kit homes, with FECA of 92 square metres and UCA of 49 square metres, were being erected on neighbouring islands by external contract labour to repetitive design at a cost of around $140,000 each. These figures trivialise the liquidity shortfall in our revolving loan fund, particularly since the end of the low-cost self-help
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Figure 17.5 Suzi Wigness with her son in a beautifully carved doorway of the home which her family designed and built. Mud bricks, pole timbers and bamboo were all sourced from the local bush. (Courtesy Paul Haar, 1992.)
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housing project saw the community resume its reliance on high-cost hand-out housing. Fundamentally the self-help housing approach provided St Paul’s people with opportunities for skill development in building design and construction, thereby enabling them to become more independent of government agencies in providing for their own housing needs.
People and Politics As I had found working with other communities in the past, much of the outcome of self-help housing at St Paul’s Village was expressed in people and politics. Whilst my own intention was to share appropriate technical strategies, I indirectly and unintentionally also contributed to significant change in the social and political order of the community. During the course of the project, owner-builder Grace Ware became the newly elected chairperson for St Paul’s. Owner-builder Wilhelm Pedro subsequently became chairperson. And the community frequently spoke of Hobson Levi as ‘a changed man’, with new self-esteem and improved physical health after he and his family successfully completed their home. On a less positive note, because a few normally inconspicuous families drew attention to themselves through their success in self-help housing, they (and I as their accomplice) fell out of favour with other traditionally prominent families in the village. Our ‘fair dinkum’ ADC officer was chastised by his superiors for granting to St Paul’s Council government funds that would be lent to individual families for capital development on land for which legal title was unclear. In 1992, I was commissioned by Queensland’s Department of Family Services and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs (DFSAIA) to propose strategies for continued self-help housing in the Torres Strait region—strategies that refined and expanded on the St Paul’s experience (Haar 1992). My task amounted to several months of research, documentation and raising of hopes, both at St Paul’s and at other island communities. It culminated in a phone call from DFSAIA, advising that until the Mabo ruling succeeded in securing freehold titled land for Torres Strait Islander communities, further financial support for self-help housing, however modest, would not be forthcoming. Six years have passed since then.
Reflections Visiting St Paul’s Village again in 1992, I was in awe of the artistry with which the owner-builders, and in particular those from the Levi family, had decorated their new homes. Pole timbers had been superbly crafted with relief depictions of tropical flowers, shark, dugong, and crocodile chasing wild pig in the mangroves. Lacquered split bamboo provided visual screening. Colourful cotton print curtains billowed gently as the cool sea breeze passed freely through internal space, and shell-tasselled doorways rustled in reply. These families had really made homes for themselves through faith,
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perseverance and hard work. Clearly their level of commitment cannot be expected from every family in a remote community, and so I often reflect on how the task of selfhelp housing at St Paul’s could be made easier if it were to be remobilised. It would be sensible at the earliest opportunity to encourage the council and community to start small and extend later. This would significantly reduce the labour and time required to complete each house and allow more families to make a start. The revolving loan fund would need to be managed, not as a one-off fixed grant, but as a modest financial resource for a good number of prospective owner-builder families. Released by government via the community council, the fund would be accessible for borrowing to an agreed upper limit of, say, $30,0006 per family and repayable to the council in lieu of rent over, say, ten years. A smaller scale of works and a slightly increased but still modest limit for borrowing would allow families more choice. Responding to needs and resources, owner-builders could strike their own balance between mortgage minimisation (through collection and processing of locally available building materials) and reduction of workload (through purchase of imported materials). Inspiration for this commonsense approach lies with the self-constructed shelters and settlements that emerge throughout rural Australia without external assistance, as symbols of independence and resistance. Characteristically these camps are erected at minimal capital cost, using lightweight and often recycled materials. They start modestly, then grow and change to reflect the needs and resources of the household. I have seen wonderful examples of this, not only in Torres Strait, but also in the Katherine region of the Northern Territory, at Dareton and Wilcannia in New South Wales, and on Palm Island, Queensland. Stephanie Smith’s account of Aboriginal housing at Goodooga (this volume) captures the inimitable richness of this architecture. And whilst often lacking in structural integrity and health amenity, these are places of resourcefulness, selfexpression and good humour. They are not the hapless hovels so readily depicted by our mass media. Yet, because they attract the ire of governments and their middle class constituencies, they are almost always doomed for early demolition.7 The self-built homes at St Paul’s were also threatened by demolition, because our construction systems did not strictly follow the prescriptive requirements of the Queensland Building Code of the time. It was only after the structural integrity of our buildings was certified with computations prepared by project volunteer and structural engineer Kevin Lodge that the building inspectors finally decided to visit St Paul’s and discovered to their amazement the quality of our work. At that point the official status of our project was elevated from ‘construction of experimental huts’.8 Clearly a ‘Book of Practice’ for self-help housing would be useful. Communicating ideas directly using attractive graphic presentations supported by video film, the book could detail methods of construction which community people, funding agencies and building authorities together agreed were worthy of adoption for low-cost self-help housing in remote areas. My report of 1992 to the DFSAIA could serve as a starting point for development of this book of practice.
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Finding a way forward through technical obstacles is never too difficult. Whilst my contact with the community at St Paul’s has waned in recent years, Grace Ware has recently informed me that many local people remain keen to remobilise a self-help housing program in the Torres Strait region. Rarely a week passes without contact from a tradesperson responding to our small magazine article of ten years ago, or from a young architecture, engineering, environmental science or health promotion graduate who remembers the St Paul’s story from a lecture of several years ago. They all ask for opportunities to contribute to the self-build program, paid or voluntary. I have little to offer or suggest: our inability to remobilise self-help housing at St Paul’s is not due to lack of good will on the ground. The obstacle is maintained by those who preside over our colonial laws of land tenure, and those who fear challenge to their roles as providers for the needy. This chapter illustrates the value in allowing remote communities to appropriate their own dwelling experience—to design, construct and take pride in their own homes—to again embrace housing (the verb) as a symbol of the self (see Ross, this volume). By no means is the self-help housing approach suited to everyone, but successful outcomes breed new aspirations. I think architects, engineers and administrators are taught to be clever with materials and technology, to make statements on art and society, and to solve and colonise the unknown. Whilst I like to think this preoccupation at times has its place, it has less relevance when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Here we must have faith in and make real space for the creativity and lifestyle aspirations of dynamic communities of Indigenous Australians. They are not needy subjects of White benevolence but equal partners in the challenging times we have ahead.9
PART V
Future Settlement
CHAPTER 18
Understanding the Past, Looking to the Future: The Unfinished History of Australian Indigenous Housing Will Sanders
Unlike the history of the British empire or the history of American independence, the history of Australian Indigenous housing has no identifiable endpoint remote from the present. It is a history which continues to the present. It is a history which feeds, quite directly, into current policy debates. This is not an arena in which historians debate interpretations of the past with little regard to the present or the future. Rather, it is an arena in which understanding the past almost always also involves looking to the future. How we understand what went on in the past in Indigenous housing affects what we understand to be going on now, and what will, can and should go on in the future. In this sense, the history of Australian Indigenous housing is very much engaged, unfinished, social and political business. It is not merely academic, and it is not merely historical. It is history with a current social relevance. The history of Australian Indigenous housing is also not a history which has developed in isolation. Reflecting the fact that Australian Indigenous society has developed over the last 210 years through interaction with non-Indigenous society, so too has Indigenous housing so developed. The relationship begotten of this interaction has not been an easy one. It has perhaps been characterised more by conflict than cooperation, and more by differences of perspective than like-mindedness. The history of Indigenous housing that is tied up in this interaction of societies is, therefore, not an easy or uncontested one. The preceding chapters in this collection suggest a number of interrelated themes in Indigenous housing. These themes are evident historically, but also very much alive in the present. This final chapter attempts to identify a number of these interrelated themes and show their relevance to the present and the future, as well as to the past.
Different Traditions Paul Memmott’s discussion of the camps of the Tangkic people in the period from 1880 to 1915 provides an illustrative account of the Indigenous tradition in Australian housing prior to non-Indigenous incursion into Aboriginal domains. Shelters are small 237
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and fairly quickly built by their occupants from readily available local materials. They are occupied seasonally, lived out of and around as much as in, and moved on from regularly, though sometimes returned to and renovated with later seasonal movements. These shelters are also linked to a sociality that is based on community groups, though these groups are fairly small in number. Public and private spheres, and different spheres for different genders, are apparent but they are not strongly divided from each other, either materially or visually. Such a tradition could not be more different from the European tradition of housing, with its larger, more permanent structures, built for year-round and life-long occupation. Although some people in the European tradition have built their own houses, increasingly housing is provided through a specialised production process and exchanged as a commodity in the market. The European tradition of housing is linked to a sociality which tends to be individualised to the level of nuclear families and makes fairly strong material and visual distinctions between public and private spaces. These spaces are also (and this is contested) sometimes constructed as male and female spheres. That the relationship between these two very different housing traditions, and the societies they represent, should be characterised by a large degree of conflict and little like-mindedness is hardly surprising. Nor is the fact that the more industrialised European tradition would, in many ways, come to dominate and transform the Indigenous tradition. Once non-Indigenous society had intruded into the land areas and resource bases on which the Indigenous societies and their housing tradition were built, many aspects of the Indigenous tradition of housing were inevitably going to change. New materials would be introduced, production processes would become more specialised and industrialised, and settlement patterns would become more sedentary. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the Indigenous tradition of housing in Australia is not still alive and of great relevance to the present. Indigenous people’s lifestyles and shelters have, to a very significant degree, become Europeanised, but there are still important differences in the way Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians value, use and relate to housing. The Indigenous tradition is alive and well, even if substantially changed. It has not been totally subsumed or overrun by the nonIndigenous tradition and this needs to be constantly recalled.
Housing as a Site of Non-Indigenous Intervention A second theme which emerges from the preceding chapters is that of housing and living environments as a major site of non-Indigenous intervention in the lives of Indigenous people. Bain Attwood tells of early mission attempts to mould the lives of Indigenous people through housing arrangements and daily routines at Ramahyuck, while Gordon Briscoe and Karl Eckermann tell of the attempts of state-run Aboriginal protection, health, welfare and prison authorities to do likewise. Both Helen Ross and Jeremy Long point out that, in the recent era of nationwide, Commonwealth govern-
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ment involvement in Indigenous affairs, housing and infrastructure have been the big expenditure items. Housing and living environments seem to be a prime site where non-Indigenous people who see ‘problems’ in Indigenous people’s circumstances think they can make a difference. The motivations behind non-Indigenous intervention in Indigenous housing and living environments have been understood in many different ways over the last 210 years. Early on, such intervention was seen as ‘civilising’ Indigenous people and, for missionaries, also as part of conversion to a new religion. Later, the motivation for intervention was articulated in terms of ‘protection’ from less scrupulous or less sympathetic non-Indigenous settlers, or from the ravages of introduced epidemic diseases, as Gordon Briscoe makes clear. Later still, intervention was understood in terms of ‘assimilating’ Indigenous people into the non-Indigenous society, and giving them an opportunity to be like non-Indigenous Australians. At the end of the twentieth century, with assimilation discredited, intervention is generally seen in terms of giving Indigenous people their due. This can be couched in terms of rights and justice, equality of access to resources and opportunities, or overcoming Indigenous people’s ‘disadvantage’. Disadvantage is sometimes constructed in terms of socio-economic indicators and sometimes in terms of health indicators, as the essay by Paul Pholeros, Paul Torzillo and Stephan Rainow shows. Whatever the motivation or stated purpose, the common theme is intervention by non-Indigenous people in the lives and living environments of Indigenous people in order to effect some change. Housing and living environments are among the sites where non-Indigenous people see the greatest potential for change, and hence where they direct their efforts. For Indigenous Australians, however, ‘improving’ housing and living environments has not necessarily been such a high priority. Land, conceived more broadly, rather than housing, has been the focus of Indigenous political activism, and the symbolic centre of the quest for recognition as Indigenous peoples. Housing seems far more a non-Indigenous priority—as Helen Ross suggests in her concluding remarks, doing something about Indigenous housing seems important to non-Indigenous Australians as a symbol of the national self. It is supposed to demonstrate to the world and to ourselves that the nation cares about its Indigenous minority. The symbol of neglect, the humpy, is to be replaced by the symbol of assistance, the newly-built house.
Indigenous Responses: Complex, Diverse, Unanticipated and Resistant This brings us to another theme: that Indigenous people’s responses to non-Indigenous intervention in their housing and living environments have been complex, diverse, unanticipated and also at times quite resistant. Seldom, if ever, has intervention worked out as non-Indigenous people planned or intended. Consequences of intervention have been unforeseen, and almost always, it seems, Indigenous people had a somewhat
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different perspective. Some Indigenous people have resisted the intervention altogether, while others have tried to turn it, in some way, to their own rather different purposes and lifestyles. Bain Attwood writes of the Aboriginals at Ramahyuck keeping alive a separate Aboriginal domain and another sense of space and time outside the mission’s sphere of influence. Peter Read tells of how, in the late years of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century, Indigenous people of southern New South Wales resisted the directions of state-appointed reserve managers to live (and work) in particular places and ways. The managers were, he argues, although seemingly all-powerful, in fact in a fairly weak position. The Indigenous people were not going to allow the non-Indigenous managers to totally control and direct where and how they lived and worked. Stephanie Smith’s essay brings this issue of resistance right through to the present. Her story is about the determination of a small group of contemporary Indigenous people to remain in self-built dwellings on land long occupied by and reserved for Aboriginals, despite the opportunity in recent years to move to government-funded, industry-built housing nearby. Some of the motivation for this resistance may be economic, such as not wanting to pay rent, but equally it may be to do with Helen Ross’ idea of housing as a symbol of the self. Perhaps remaining in self-built housing has been, for these people, both a practical and a symbolic way of demonstrating control over their lives. Paul Haar’s chapter is similarly suggestive of Indigenous people responding to nonIndigenous intervention in the housing sphere in complex and sophisticated self-directed ways. His clients have tended to want substantial modern dwellings, but have had limited incomes. They have, in general, been able to achieve what they wanted through their own extensive participation in the production process. The responses of the Indigenous people in both Haar’s and Smith’s cases are, in some ways, unusual. The more common response among Indigenous people in recent years has been to simply accept industrially provided non-Indigenous housing and then try to put the resulting structure to some relevant Indigenous use. Cathy Keys’ essay on Yuendumu suggests that non-Indigenous housing provision there over the last fifty years has been inscribed with a European notion of providing dwellings for the nuclear family household and has taken little account of other types of living arrangements in Aboriginal society, such as single men’s and single women’s camps. Only in the 1990s have the Indigenous people of Yuendumu been able to make non-Indigenous authorities more aware of and responsive to the needs of the single women’s camps; but the single men’s camps remain essentially unrecognised in housing interventions. Yet there is also a sense in which the industrially provided structures at Yuendumu have been put to quite distinctive Indigenous uses, irrespective of the narrow perspectives of the nonIndigenous providers. The chapter by Paul Pholeros et al. describes the actions taken by a local Aboriginal health organisation when non-Indigenous industrial housing provision did not lead to significant health gains for Indigenous occupants. The focus of the subsequent work
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was on making sure that the houses and the surrounding living environment were ‘fully functioning’ and could provide the services which led to better health outcomes. The question was not how many more houses were being or needed to be built, but could those occupying the existing housing avail themselves of the services that a house can offer. Could they wash the child?, as the authors put it, or engage in other healthy living practices?
Shaping the Context of Indigenous Housing in Towns and Cities: The Role of Broader Non-Indigenous Interests The above Indigenous responses to non-Indigenous intervention in housing all refer to living environments which were or are at some distance from large numbers of nonIndigenous people. They have occurred, in modern policy terms, in what are sometimes referred to as discrete Indigenous communities. The dynamics of Indigenous housing become considerably more complex, however, when we move our focus to towns and cities, where Indigenous housing and living environments inevitably are in close proximity to non-Indigenous interests. In these circumstances, broader non-Indigenous interests, beyond those of missionaries and state officials directly engaged in Indigenous affairs, also begin to play a part in determining what is and is not acceptable in the Indigenous housing arena. Tim Rowse begins his chapter on Alice Springs from the 1920s to the 1960s by developing some ideas about towns in colonial Australia as zones of physical exclusion for Indigenous people. Towns set tests for Indigenous Australians which they were unlikely to be able to meet. Equally, however, towns were magnets for Indigenous people and often had a need for cheap Indigenous labour. So the idea of towns as zones of physical exclusion became somewhat compromised as Indigenous living environments were, to some extent, accommodated near or within towns like Alice Springs. This presence of Indigenous housing and living environments in towns was, however, tenuous, relying, as Rowse argues, on discretionary acts of patronage by particular non-Indigenous officials. Non-Indigenous interests broader than those directly involved in Indigenous affairs often had strong views about any Indigenous presence and made these heard through local political processes. Indigenous interests, although sometimes granted a presence in towns, were generally made to fit and sometimes later to move on at the convenience of these non-Indigenous interests. Sam Wells’ chapter on Darwin in the early decades of the twentieth century also makes clear this point about broader non-Indigenous interests. Whereas the Kahlin compound at Myilly Point was acceptable to non-Indigenous interests as a resolution of Indigenous people’s claims for housing in Darwin in 1912, by 1938, with growth of the town’s non-Indigenous population, this was no longer the case. By then Myilly Point was wanted by non-Indigenous interests for a new Darwin hospital and the Indigenous people and their housing were made to move on. Indigenous interests had to yield to
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non-Indigenous interests in a very stark example of the relationship of domination between the two societies. These tensions in towns like Alice and Darwin continue to this day, as different Indigenous and non-Indigenous interests try to find mutually acceptable living arrangements. All is not necessarily lost for Indigenous people simply because some nonIndigenous people would prefer them not to be in the town. But establishing a respected Indigenous presence in towns is certainly not easy, as the recent experiences of the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs and the Aboriginal Development Foundation in Darwin attest. Cities, Rowse suggests at the beginning of his chapter, may have been more absorptive of Indigenous people in the post-war era than towns. But, even in these larger urban environments, the accommodation of Indigenous interests in housing and living environments is far from uncontested. Kay Anderson writes of the bitter struggles over the attempt to establish an Aboriginal housing presence in Redfern, Sydney, in the 1970s and relates this to deep-seated ideas about savagery and urbanity in Western social thought. Local non-Indigenous opposition to the Redfern Aboriginal housing proposal were certainly strong—without the support of the local priests, the unions and the more distant Commonwealth government, the project would probably never have been realised. Penny Tripcony’s account of Aboriginal housing experiments in Melbourne is a little more kind to urban non-Indigenous interests, though even here there was resistance and obstruction as well as assistance and coalition building. Clearly, establishing housing for Aboriginal people in towns or cities is a difficult task constrained by nonIndigenous interests.
Program Politics Penny Tripcony also introduces us to what I have elsewhere analysed as the modern ‘program politics’ of Indigenous housing (Sanders 1993). This focuses on the competing claims of state housing authorities and community-based Indigenous housing organisations to deliver appropriate housing for Indigenous people. Tripcony tells of the efforts of the community-based Victorian Aboriginal Cooperative from 1973 and of the reluctance of the Victorian state government to hand over dedicated Aboriginal housing to the cooperative rather than to its own housing commission. From the late 1970s, following South Australia, something of a middle way was developed in Victoria, with the establishment of an Aboriginal Housing Board. This would advise the Victorian state housing authorities on the management of their dedicated ‘Aboriginal-funded’ houses. Although, on Tripcony’s account, this arrangement has been successful, twenty years on, the push is still there for dedicated Aboriginal-funded houses to be in some form of Aboriginal community ownership. Program politics continue unabated.
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Other chapters also illustrate modern program politics. Kaye Price expresses little faith in the ability of the Tasmanian State Housing Department of the 1970s to deliver adequate and affordable housing to Indigenous people and tells of her brief and rather unsatisfactory time serving on its Aboriginal Housing Policy Committee. Rod Little tells of ‘native welfare’ housing being included with general state housing in Western Australia in 1980 and of the difficulties his own family had in obtaining suitable accommodation from either of these sources, or from private rental. In adulthood with employment, and having rented unsatisfactorily from Homeswest, Rod opted for home purchase, rather than any of the community, private or public rental options. Yet for others, he notes, these forms of rental are the only options available and are by no means easy. These fairly negative views of state housing authorities are somewhat at odds with Jeremy Long’s assessment. He argues, using data from the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSIS), that there has been ‘a radical change in the housing status of Aboriginal Australians’ in the last thirty years and that this has been ‘substantially attributable to the success of state housing commissions in sensibly and effectively administering the massive additional funds provided by the Commonwealth’. He notes that the proportions of public tenants in the survey who considered their dwellings satisfactory were considerably higher than among renters from Indigenous community housing associations and he argues that the small associations ‘were never likely to be as efficient and effective as state housing commissions’, even if they had made a ‘massive contribution to the overall improvement in the standard of housing’. My own assessment of program delivery mechanisms, also based on the NATSIS, is somewhat more equivocal (Sanders 1996). Indigenous community rental may have higher proportions of tenants expressing dissatisfaction with dwellings than public rental, but it also has considerably cheaper rents and is considerably more concentrated in rural and remote areas where public rental may not be available. Clearly the community rental program through Indigenous housing associations does have its problems, related to financial viability and management sustainability over time; but it is not always competing with or offering a direct alternative to public rental housing. To judge the two by the same criteria, as if they are alternatives, may not be reasonable. The symbolic importance of Indigenous ownership in housing associations also needs to be borne in mind, although it may not be a decisive factor in program politics.
Rent and ‘Ownership’ Several of the chapters in this collection note an antipathy among Indigenous people towards paying rent, either for community rental housing or for public housing. Sometimes this seems to be an objection in principle to paying rent on houses which are on Indigenous land and often seen as a form of compensation for past displacement and dispossession. Sometimes the rental relationship is seen as a form of unwanted social
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control and supervision.1 Sometimes the objection is more simple and practical—the houses are not adequately maintained, so why should tenants pay the rent. Whatever the source of this antipathy to rent, it has not been acknowledged or accommodated by non-Indigenous policy-makers. The tendency, over recent years, has been to try to promote the idea that rent must be paid, rather than critically examining non-Indigenous expectations. This difference of perspectives around rent suggests a lack of ‘ownership’, in the broadest sense of the term, of Indigenous housing programs by Indigenous people. Houses provided under these programs are not seen by Indigenous people as ‘our’ houses, which ‘we’ have provided for ‘ourselves’ with a bit of government assistance. Rather, they are seen as houses which someone else produced, someone else owns, someone else ought to maintain and which Indigenous people just occupy and are required to pay rent for. This lack of a sense of ownership of Indigenous housing under recent policy approaches is a major issue, and one that needs to be explored more creatively than in the past. Why, for example, should Indigenous people in community rental pay rent to the community bodies that legally own their housing, when those community bodies are themselves Indigenous organisations, sometimes with not many more constituents than the householders themselves? The policy-makers’ response has been to argue that recurrent costs must be met, such as maintenance, local council rates and insurance. But if that is why rent is paid to community rental associations, then it is not really rent at all—in the sense that it is not payment to an owner for the use of their property—and there may be other more creative ways of meeting such costs. Certainly there is a need for greater thinking within Indigenous housing policy about the issue of recurrent costs in community rental housing (let’s not call it rent) and the issue of Indigenous ‘ownership’ of current housing solutions, or rather the apparent lack thereof. Paul Haar argues that housing is of ‘questionable worth’ if those being housed are treated as ‘passive recipients’, while control resides elsewhere. Indigenous occupants must be partners and owners in housing solutions.
Housing as an Ongoing Process Another theme, which relates to the issue of recurrent housing costs and Indigenous ownership of housing solutions, is that of housing as an ongoing process. Helen Ross introduces this theme when she talks of the importance of housing as a verb, as well as a noun, and of Indigenous housing as a lived experience. On this usage, it is apparent that housing Indigenous people is something that is achieved through many different processes occurring every day, not just by some one-off production or acquisition event. People house themselves daily by using and maintaining the spaces and services available to them, or in the case of more major technical maintenance tasks, by arranging for others to attend to them at some agreed price or under some agreed administrative arrangement. People also house themselves by attending to bills for services and other
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costs as they fall due. In a slightly longer time scale, people house themselves by adapting their dwellings to the changing requirements of the seasons and, over months or years, to their developing family and household groups. Housing, then, is very much a multifaceted ongoing process of marshalling resources in order to sustain and develop living environments over time. It is not a ‘thing’ or a one-time event. Although this theme of housing as an ongoing lived process comes through strongly in many of the chapters in this collection, the notion has not greatly informed recent government policy in Indigenous housing. Government policy has tended to construct the Indigenous housing ‘problem’ as a ‘backlog’ of capital supply. This backlog is to be overcome by the construction or purchase of additional dwellings to be made available to Indigenous people, predominantly in the form of public or community rental. While this construction of the Indigenous housing ‘problem’ seems, at one level, to be reasonable, it totally misses any sense of housing as a lived experience or an ongoing process. It treats housing as a noun, as a thing which once provided solves the problem. But the reality is more complex than this and the construction of the policy issue ought to be more sophisticated. The provision of a house may resolve one problem or issue for a household, but it will also almost always be the beginning of some new ones. To illustrate this point further, we can explore how different constructions of housing as a noun and a verb have been built into perceptions of the size of Indigenous housing programs in recent years. In 1989, Alan Gray calculated that over the previous twenty years the Commonwealth government had spent over $30,000 per Aboriginal family in current dollar values on Indigenous housing programs, and went on to remark that, since the mean cost of providing a dwelling at that time was some $68,000, this level of expenditure ought to have resulted in a ‘revolutionary improvement’ in Indigenous housing conditions (Gray 1989). Gray was here subscribing to a capital supply definition of the Indigenous housing problem. Had he instead seen housing as an ongoing process, he would have calculated that, over the twenty-year period, this meant that Commonwealth government expenditure was effectively subsidising ongoing Indigenous housing costs by about $1500 per Indigenous family per year. This does not sound like a large level of expenditure at all, particularly given that Indigenous people’s incomes are low and, as Paul Pholeros et al. contend in their chapter, essential health and safety maintenance alone in a dwelling is likely to cost around $500 per year. Conceiving of housing as a verb or an ongoing process, as well as a noun, can radically alter the way we perceive matters such as levels of government expenditure.
Housing Standards: Representation and the Politics of Equality, Difference and Diversity One other theme which I wish to briefly explore relates to the issue of housing standards and the way these feed into broader political processes surrounding Indigenous housing.
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Pholeros et al. write about the amount of work that is often required to raise existing houses occupied by Indigenous people, including quite new houses, to a standard of being ‘fully functioning’ in relation to various healthy living practices. They note that one of the common responses to this work is to suggest that the standards adopted are too high. They insist that the standards used are basic to good health practices and ask: who is going to say to Indigenous people that they should accept lower housing standards? This argument is persuasive. But the issue of housing standards is more complex than this exchange admits. Constructing the issue in terms of lower (and higher) standards means that the question is already loaded and unanswerable. However, there is often a social and cultural content to housing standards, which ought not to go unrecognised or uncriticised. To illustrate this point, let me dwell briefly on the recent use of occupancy standards in the measurement of Indigenous housing need and how this has fed into a rather simplistic politics of equality, both between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and among Indigenous Australians. In late 1992, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) commissioned a study of Indigenous housing need based on 1991 census data. The study used a bedroom occupancy standard which was derived from Canadian and Australian non-Indigenous contexts and revealed that Indigenous Australians occupied dwelling bedrooms at a considerably higher rate than this standard. This ‘overcrowding’ or ‘overoccupancy’ was represented as a massive figure of ‘unmet bedroom need’, with some 30,000 additional bedrooms being required nationwide to match Indigenous people to this standard. Regionally, this unmet bedroom need was seen to be greatest in sparsely settled, remote areas. Indeed, one remote ATSIC region was shown by this standard to have over 70 per cent of its need for bedrooms unmet (Jones 1994). The findings of this census analysis are open to very different interpretations or representations. The interpretation which the Housing and Infrastructure section of ATSIC preferred was to suggest that the remote areas were the locations of greatest Indigenous housing need and hence should be the recipients of a greater proportion of dedicated Indigenous housing funds. Another interpretation altogether, however, would be to suggest that the very idea of bedrooms and bedroom occupancy was not of great social relevance to Indigenous people in remote areas and that it was in fact other things about housing and living environments which Indigenous people in these areas valued and prioritised, such as access to shelter, water and electricity-based facilities. On this interpretation, the bedroom occupancy standard may have been misrepresenting Indigenous housing need in remote areas because of its lack of any great social relevance. Those involved in Indigenous housing in urban areas had some feeling for this potential misrepresentation, as they saw funds being redirected to remote areas. They argued that Indigenous people in urban areas also had pressing housing needs which were not being well represented by this occupancy standard, such as affordability and discrimination issues in urban housing markets. But, in the short term at least, such arguments were largely made in vain. They were dismissed as anecdotal, whereas the census-based analysis of the bedroom occupancy standard was represented as objective.
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Here was an instance of housing standards being used to engage in an overly simplistic exercise in the politics of equality. The standard was set, and difference from it measured and then represented as unmet need. No genuine diversity, which reflected differently valued social situations and living environments, was allowed for, either between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, or among Indigenous Australians. No account or representation was given of genuine difference or diversity. The idea of housing standards was simply used, uncritically, to reinforce government expenditure commitments and drive them more towards remote areas. A politics of difference and diversity would require a more subtle and sophisticated use of housing standards in processes of political and bureaucratic argumentation. Such a politics, too, would have its risks, which Jeremy Beckett (1988a: 12–14) once referred to as the possibility of rendering poverty picturesque and becoming a charter for those identified as different to live at lower material standards than others. Certainly, representations of Indigenous difference and diversity are not easily made. But they could, hopefully, lead to better processes of political argumentation surrounding Indigenous housing than the simple and unsophisticated politics of equality which has characterised the recent past. This, of course, takes us back to our very first theme: the great difference between the Indigenous and European traditions of housing in Australia and recognition that the Indigenous tradition is still alive and well, even if substantially changed by its interaction with a more industrialised society. These different traditions value and use housing in different ways and housing standards cannot be transposed uncritically between them.
Continuity and Change I began this concluding chapter by noting that many of the themes which were evident, historically, in relation to Indigenous housing were also clearly relevant to the present and the future. This is reflected in this collection in a very strong sense of continuity in accounts of Indigenous housing over time, at least for the last hundred years or more. This sense of continuity, while valid and important, should not be overstated. Change also needs to be recognised when it is occurring—and the interaction of the Indigenous housing tradition with the more industrialised European housing tradition has been a story of major change. In the last thirty years there have also been some major changes in the history of Indigenous housing through the entry to the field, on a nationwide scale, of the Commonwealth government. Jeremy Long’s essay in this collection details many of the developments which flowed from this, at least until 1991, and many have been significant. The incorporation of Aboriginal Hostels Limited has led to a whole new range of nonprivate dwelling accommodation being available to Indigenous Australians. The states’ grants program for Indigenous housing has facilitated far greater Indigenous access to public rental housing. The home loans program has contributed significantly to greater
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home purchase. And, perhaps most important of all, the direct grants program has spawned the development of an Indigenous community housing sector, which is in fact the largest element of all community housing in Australia. None of these program developments of the last thirty years is without its problems and none provides housing solutions for all Indigenous people in all life circumstances. But they have been significant developments which have provided a new and expanded range of housing possibilities. If critically assessed and built upon, they could lead to a better future in Indigenous housing. The history of Indigenous housing in Australia is not yet finished and it is not all bad. There is cause for hope that better, more workable resolutions of Indigenous people’s different and diverse requirements for housing can be worked through in the future. The process will not be easy, but then few historical processes are which involve the interaction of such different societies.
Notes
Preface 1
None of the writers has received any financial benefit from contributing to this book. 1 Lifescape and Lived Experience
1
Other descriptions of the shelters of different regions are available in Biernoff (1979) and Memmott (1991, 1994a).
2
This is a community-run, Commonwealth-funded program through which communities receive an employment budget to replace the amount its individual members would otherwise be eligible for in unemployment benefits.
3
Architects Hamilton (1972), Heppell & Wigley (1981), Memmott (1988, 1991), Pholeros (1990), Dillon (1986), Savage (1986), and Haar (1992) have consulted extensively with Indigenous people, particularly in Central Australia, and created innovative designs in response to the needs they heard described. Social scientists including Michael Heppell and those who contributed to his 1979 volume, myself (Ross 1987, 1989), Reser (1979), Memmott and Morel (Morel & Ross 1993) also have observed use of dwellings, studied Indigenous people’s needs, and reviewed the effects of different styles of housing on occupants and on community life.
4
Remote to non-Indigenous Australians, homeland to the Indigenous owners.
5
This view was challenged by Ross (1987) and Memmott (1991), who found that humpies provided their owners with far more personal control over their lives than other housing options.
1
This is in contrast to the Ganggalida whose coastal lands were very close to the frontier township of Burketown, established in 1865. An exceptionally early and at times hostile set of contacts occurred at Sweers Island in the South Wellesleys between 1866 and c.1871 when a sanatorium and then a customs port were temporarily established there.
2
Unless otherwise indicated, aspects of the material culture of the Wellesley Islanders are drawn from Memmott (1979a, b, 1990, 1996–97, n.d.). The data were collected in the mid 1970s. In this account the people are fictional, but their movement patterns, customary camping behaviours and ethno-architecture are reconstructed from accounts by individuals who were alive during the period under consideration.
3
Evidence on the mainland shelter types used in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria is to be found in the following sources: (a) Vaulted platform: Fysh (1950: 129) (1870s, 1880); Palmer (1903: 212, 213); Curr (1886: 96, 99); Leichhardt (1847: 349) (July 1845); (b) Windbreak: Palmer (1903: 212, 213); (c) Full dome: Curr (1886: 96); Jack (1885) (November 1881, spinifex thatched, internal standing room); Roth (1910: 53, 64); (d) Grass blankets: Curr
2 The Way It Was
249
250
NOTES (1886: 96); (e) Transitional dome (one open side): Creaghe (1883) (mid April 1883); (f ) Emu trap and hide: Leichhardt (1847: 364) (August 1845).
4
In addition to the references in notes 2 and 3, this third case study of a camp draws on Leichhardt (1847: 396, 397, 408–10). See Trigger (1987) for a material culture overview of the Gangkalida.
5
For a more detailed overview of the classical Indigenous ethno-architecture of Aboriginal Australia, see Memmott (1997), Smyth (1878), Worsnop (1897), Thomson (1939), Hamilton (1972), Koettig (1976) and Biernoff (1979).
6
See Memmott (1996–97) for a discussion of symbolism in Aboriginal shelters. 3 Space and Time at Ramahyuck
1
Victoria, Legislative Assembly 1877–78 (henceforth Royal Commission 1877): viii, x, 6; Victoria, Legislative Assembly, 1882–83, vol. 2: 45; Br F.A. Hagenauer to Rev. Andrew Mackie, 19 January 1885, F.A. Hagenauer, Letterbook 1875–85, National Library of Australia (NLA), MS 3343.
2
Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 2A: 154, 161–4; Ferry (1979: 25–36).
3
Minutes of the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines (CBPA), 5 May, 11 August & 28 November 1862, 12 January 1863, National Archives of Australia (Melbourne), CRS B314, item 2.
4
Church of England of Victoria, Mission to the Aborigines, 1862: 6–7; Royal Commission 1877: 46.
5
Hagenauer to Br L.T. Reichel, 19 September 1862, Hagenauer to Rev. A.J. Campbell, 10 October 1862, Moravian Mission in Australia, Paper, AIATSIS, MF 166; Victorian Association in Aid of Moravian Missions to the Aborigines of Australia, paper 4, 1863: 6.
6
William Thomas, Report of Visit to Gippsland, 31 December 1860, William Thomas Papers, Mitchell Library, uncatalogued mss, set 214, item 6.
7
Hagenauer to Reichel, 17 July 1862, 17 January & 17 August 1865, Moravian Mission, MF 166; Weekly Review and Messenger, 27 August 1864; Christian Review, August 1865; Victorian Association, Further Facts, paper 4, 1863: 6–7, paper 5, 1866: 11; Southern Cross, 14 April 1877.
8
Hagenauer to Rev. W.E. Morris, 27 April 1871, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1865–72, NLA, MS 3343.
9
See Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 2A: 162; Plomley (1966: 56).
10 Gippsland Times, 13 January 1874; Board for the Protection of Aborigines (henceforth BPA), 21st Report, 1885: 7. 11 Gippsland Times, 20 March 1866, 13 January 1874, 20 March & 29 December 1886; CBPA, 5th Report, 1866: 13; Melbourne Church News, 2 March 1868: 55; Royal Commission 1877: x, 105. 12 BPA, 7th Report, 1871: 6; Royal Commission 1877: 44; Argus, 26 December 1885. 13 Church Gazette, 16 September 1862: 127, 16 January 1863: 222; Fison & Howitt (1880: 209). 14 Gippsland Times, 13 January 1874; Br H.A. Hahn to Secretary, Department of Education, 1 December 1879, Public Record Office of Victoria (PROVic), series 640, item 858; Inventory of Ramahyuck School Property, 1892, PROVic, series 795, item 559. 15 Royal Commission 1877: 34; Hagenauer to Reichel, 17 January 1865, Moravian Mission, MF 166; Howitt to Anna Mary Watts, 7 October 1869, A.W. Howitt Papers, La Trobe Library, MS 9356, box 1046/3b. 16 Liney Howitt to Mary Howitt, 26 December 1870, Howitt Papers, box 1047/1a [my emphasis].
NOTES
251
17 Church of England of Victoria, Mission to the Aborigines, 19th Annual Report, 1873: 9; Report for Ramahyuck Mission Station, 1875, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1875–85; Southern Cross, 14 April 1877. 18 Hagenauer to Reichel, 9 July 1868, Moravian Mission, MF 166; Southern Cross, 21 April 1877; Local Committee of Ramahyuck Rural School to Secretary, Department of Education, 30 November 1883, Christopher A. Beilby to Secretary, Department of Education, 30 November 1883, PROVic, series 795, item 559; Hagenauer to Rev. Andrew Hardie, 19 January 1885, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1875–85. 19 Victorian Association, paper 6, 1867: 6. 20 Howitt to Watts, 29 December 1870, Howitt Papers, box 1047/1a. 21 Howitt to Mary Howitt, 20 January 1871, Howitt Papers, box 1047/1b. 22 Southern Cross, 5 May 1877; Hagenauer to Rev. Murdoch MacDonald, 30 September 1882, 30 March 1885, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1875–85; BPA, 19th Report, 1883: 10; Report for Ramahyuck Mission Station, 1885, Moravian Mission, MF 175; Argus, 2 January & 20 March 1886. 23 Hagenauer to Br J. O’Connor, 9 May 1877, Moravian Mission, MF 183. 24 CBPA, 6th Report, 1869: 28; Hagenauer to Morris, 27 April 1871, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1865–72. 25 Gippsland Times, 13 January 1874; BPA, 21st Report, 1885: 7. 26 Church Gazette, 16 January 1863: 222; CBPA, 5th Report, 1866: 10; John Bulmer Papers, Department of Indigenous Studies, Museum of Victoria, paper 2. 27 CBPA, 6th Report, 1869: 25, 27; BPA, 12th Report, 1876: 7, 12; Hagenauer to Hardie, 19 January 1885, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1875–85. 28 Gippsland Times, 13 January 1874; Report for Ramahyuck Mission Station, 1873, Hagenauer to Mr Allsworth, 21 August 1885, Moravian Mission, MF 175, 184. 29 CBPA, 1st Report, 1861: 9; Gippsland Times, 7 October 1871, 13 January 1874; Southern Cross, 5 May 1877; Hagenauer to MacDonald, 3 March 1882, Hagenauer, Letterbook 1875–85; Argus, 24 March 1886. 30 Although Hagenauer was able to impose much of his system of order on the Aboriginals on this mission station, he did not enjoy the same degree of success on the other reserves he supervised. 31 Hagenauer to O’Connor, 9 May 1877, Moravian Mission, MF 183. 32 Fison & Howitt (1880: 203); Bulmer Papers, paper 3. 4 Freedom and Control on the Southern Institutions 1
Warangesda Mission Manager’s Diary (henceforth Manager’s Diary), 7 June 1894, typescript in AIATSIS library.
2
Aborigines Protection Board (APB), Annual Report 1891: 14.
3
Manager’s Diary, 5 September 1894.
4
Manager’s Diary, 21 April 1883.
5
Manager’s Diary, 4 May, 3 July 1883.
6
South Australian Aboriginal stations such as Koonibba and Poonindie also offered models of authority and official power; see Brock (1993).
7
Manager’s Diary, 3 August 1883.
8
Manager’s Diary, 17 December 1896.
9
Narrandera Police to APB, 16 April 1891, APB Minutes of Meetings.
NOTES
252 10 APB Annual Report, 1898: 13.
11 Manager’s Diary, 20 November 1891, 5 August 1892, 8 December 1892. 12 Manager’s Diary, entry crossed out but still legible. 13 Locky Ingram and Paul Coe, interviews, in Read (1984: 14). 14 Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation, a community-based organisation that assists separated Aboriginals to reunite with family, community and Aboriginal heritage. 15 For biographical details, see Horner (1974: ch. 1). 16 APB, ‘Register of Letters Received 1910–1913’, 3 November 1910. 17 APB, Minutes of Meetings, 15 September 1910. 18 Evidence, W. Ferguson, NSW Select Committee on APB, Proceedings, NSWPD, vol. 152, 1938: 68. 19 List compiled from available APB records, including circulars, and minutes of meetings. 20 One couple, expelled from Brungle because they were not ‘Aboriginal’, brought their daughter Molly to the Cootamundra Girls’ Home. She spent twenty years of her life in a mental hospital and when found (at her family’s request) in Enmore in Sydney in 1981 she stated ‘I don’t mix with Aboriginals you know’ (Edwards 1982: 8). 21 Area Welfare Officer, Report, 22 February 1954, APB General Correspondence, State Archives of NSW, box 8/2852. 22 A. Roach, ‘Walking Into Doors’, Jamu Dreaming, CD, Mushroom (1995). 5 Labour, Control and Protection 1
Many thanks to Tim Rowse for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
2
In 1911 a total population of 1387 was recorded within a five-mile radius of Darwin. This included 442 Chinese, 374 Europeans and 305 Aborigines (Commonwealth Record Service (CRS) A1 1911/16191). For Baldwin Spencer it was this ‘great body of Asiatics’ who constituted the ‘greatest evil’ towards Aborigines, supplying them with opium and spirits and encouraging prostitution (Spencer 1913b).
3
This chapter includes historical terminology which today is considered racist. It is used in an endeavour to represent the past in terms of the ideas and assumptions then current but in no way indicates endorsement of such terms. It is important that such terminology is not read uncritically.
4
Protector of Aborigines, Percy Moore Wood to Government Resident, J.L. Parsons, CRS A1640/1 1885/995.
5
Northern Territory Times (NTT), 17 November 1883.
6
NTT, 8 April 1898. See evidence given at the 1899 Select Committee of Inquiry into Aborigines and correspondence in State Records of South Australia, GRS 1 333/1898.
7
Dashwood’s Bill was called ‘An Act for the Protection and Care of the Aboriginal and Half-Caste Inhabitants of the Province of South Australia, and for other purposes’ (State Records of South Australia, GRS 1 333/1898).
8
NTT, 18 May, 20 April, 14 December 1900; 15 February 1901.
9
See Rowley (1970) and Austin (1992b, 1997) for further discussion of provisions and exemptions under this Act.
10 Known respectively as King Camp and Lameroo Camp (Spencer 1913a). 11 Aborigines in these camps were said to be from the Daly, Alligator and Adelaide Rivers regions.
NOTES
253
12 1911 reports by Burston and Holmes, and Kelly and Beckett, CRS A1 1912/10964. 13 Beckett to the Acting NT Administrator, 8 December 1911, CRS A1/1 12/10964. 14 Spencer diaries, Mitchell Library (ML), mss 29/4; Larrakia elder, Topsy Secretary, recounts that her father moved from Lameroo Beach to the Kahlin site in order to be closer to an important ceremony ground (pers. comm., 1 September 1994). 15 Spencer also supervised the building of a camp for ‘Alligator River Aborigines’ a few miles out of town which was to be made up of corrugated iron sheds, divided into a series of compartments for each family and surrounding a ‘big open space in which they can perform their corroboree at night’ (ML, mss 29/4). 16 Stretton, NT Annual Report 1913, see footnote 1. 17 Stretton, NT Annual Report 1913; A3/1 NT1914/5471. 18 MacDonald, NT Annual Report 1917. 19 Annual Report 1915–16 and 1916–17. 20 Austin notes the comparative lack in concern over ‘half-caste’ male youth inside the compound, many of whom were sent away to pastoral stations or to other areas as stock workers or apprentices. Those who, on attaining 18 years of age, were no longer under the guardianship of the Chief Protector, left the compound to join the ranks of unemployed and live in the unemployed camps or poorer areas about Darwin (Austin 1997: 99). See Read, this volume. 21 Acting Chief Health Officer, H. Leighton Jones, CRS A452/1 52/284. 22 A report criticising conditions at Kahlin maintained that the food was so bad that employees obtained food elsewhere yet still had their living costs compulsorily deducted from their wages and compulsorily paid into an Aboriginal Trust Fund, supervised by the Chief Protector (W.V. Lancaster, 8 October 1936, CRS A452/1 52/284). 23 NT Annual Report 1928. 24 NT Annual Report 1925, 1928. 25 MacDonald, NT Annual Report 1921. 26 Aboriginals had formerly been able to live on their employer’s premises. Austin notes that for the first time a distinction was made between males and females in the legislation. Previously all ‘half-castes’ on reaching 18 years of age were freed from the guardianship of the Chief Protector and the provisions of the ordinance. Under the new ordinance, ‘half-caste girls’ were to remain indefinitely under the guardianship of the Chief Protector (Austin 1997: 75). 27 Aboriginal Compound Inquiry, CRS A452/1 52/284. 28 Aboriginal Compound Inquiry, CRS A452/1 52/284. 29 F.C. Urquhart to the Secretary, Home and Territories Department, 4 July & 27 November 1923, CRS A452/1 52/284. 30 The Commonwealth was under strong pressure from anthropologists, humanitarian groups, prominent clerics and Aboriginal protection societies to conduct an extra-parliamentary commission of inquiry into the condition of Aborigines throughout Australia. Queensland’s Chief Protector of Aborigines, J.W. Bleakley, was subsequently recruited to make inquiry in the Northern Territory only (see Rowley 1970; Austin 1997). 31 The matron and superintendent were responsible for both the compound and the Half-caste Home and therefore lived in a house between the two. See Bleakley (1929). 32 Many of these ‘half-caste boys’ were later transferred to a new home in Pine Creek (C.E. Cook, NT Annual Report 1931).
254
NOTES
33 Cook, NT Annual Report 1933–34. In retrospect, Cook maintained that Bleakley’s report ‘played no part whatever in my administration at the time I was there’ (C.E. Cook Oral History, NTRS 226). 34 See correspondence in CRS F1 1938/366 and CRS A452/1 52/284. 35 Assistant Chief Protector of Aborigines, V.J. White, argued that a growing tendency amongst adult inmates to ‘openly flout authority’ required some punitive action to indicate to ‘delinquents that institution rules must be observed’. White reported that the ‘malcontents’ to whom such restrictions applied had been repeatedly found guilty of ‘acts of insubordination’ like breaking out of the dormitory at night, leaving the institution without permission, failing to return at specified hours, flouting the authority of the matron by repeated acts of disobedience, refusal to work, use of abusive language and meeting men in the bush in the precincts of the institution (V.J. White to Chief Protector of Aborigines, 28 November 1938, CRS F1 1938/366). 36 W.V. Lancaster took photos of the beach dwellings and noted that most of them were removed within the next few days—an occurrence said to happen periodically (Lancaster, Assistant Accountant, Department of the Interior to the Secretary, Department of the Interior, 8 October 1936, CRS A452/1 52/284). 37 C.E. Cook to NT Administrator, 27 November 1936, CRS F1 1938/366. 38 Cook, ‘Half-Caste Housing Policy’, CRS A452 1952/414; Cook, NT Annual Report 1932–33. 39 W.T. Haslam, Senior Architect, 5 May 1937, CRS A452 1952/414; NT Annual Report 1933–34; NT Annual Report 1936–37. The Housing Scheme was initially funded by monies invested from accounts in the Aboriginal Trust Fund and tenants were required to pay a small weekly sum towards the interest on and redemption of amounts advanced to them. However, depositors wishing to withdraw their money from the Trust Fund before the amounts advanced had been repaid placed the Aborigines Department in an ‘extremely difficult’ situation and an alternative funding supply was consequently advocated (C.E. Cook to NT Administrator, 9 December 1936, CRS A452 1952/414). 40 Any future development of the scheme was curtailed by military build-up in the late 1930s and by the compulsory acquisition of the houses for defence purposes. 41 J.A. Carrodus, 20 November 1934, CRS A452/1 52/284. 42 See correspondence from Cook in CRS F1 1937/159 & F1 1938/354; NT Annual Report 1935–36. 43 W.B. Kirkland to NT Administrator, 17 June 1936, CRS F1 1937/159. 44 A.P. Elkin to Minister for the Interior, 30 December 1936 and C.E. Cook to NT Administrator, 20 January 1937, CRS F1 1937/159; Cook, NT Annual Report 1937–38. 45 C.E. Cook to NT Administrator, 20 January 1937, CRS F1 1937/159. 46 While none of the residents was injured, some fifteen huts and several outbuildings in the compound were demolished, and one of the dormitories in the Half-caste Home. 6 Aboriginal Shelters and the National Hookworm Campaign 1
This is a shortened name used by Pitjantjatjara-speaking peoples. Although now accepted as meaning a whole people, it is a word denoting direction and today it is used as a synonym for ‘Anangu’, or ‘us mob’.
2
Cleland (1912: 269); see also Cleland (1922: 192–5). For a more complete account, see Kirk (1981: 167–86).
NOTES
255
3
‘Hookworm control campaign’, in Queensland Health and Medical Services. This report gives figures for hookworm prevalence in Queensland Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. It contains reports from 1934 to 1960 and usually gives figures for separate locations (mission settlements), by age and group.
4
Denoon (1998: 121–38).
5
‘Hookworm disease’, AA/1969/10/1, item 17K: 1; Ancylostoma duodenale was first recognised in 1838 by Dubini, an Italian physician, in a post-mortem examination. The importance of the disease (ancylostomiasis) came to light in 1898 when Looss (accidentally) observed the penetration of the human skin by the hookworm larvae. The second type of hookworm was observed in 1902 by Stiles in the USA and he called this find Necator americanus, and this is an African, Australasian and American species, while the former is located in Egypt and Europe. Australia has both species. See ‘Hookworm disease and control’, AA/1969/10, item 17I: 1–2; Cumpston, ‘Gastro-intestinal diseases’, in Lewis (1998: 239–45); Longley (1924: 1–7), which reflects some of the concerns about rural health in Australia focusing on sanitation; and Sweet (1924a: 1–8).
6
Longley (1924: 2–5): see Figures 1–4, which give the various stages of the metamorphoses of the hookworm.
7
‘Hookworm disease and control’, AA/1969/10, item 17K.
8
Concise Medical Dictionary, p. 324; see also Benenson (1996: 219–20).
9
Gillespie (1991a: 7–46, 1991b).
10 Hookworm Campaign—General Correspondence’, in AN, 120/4, Acc. 1003, file 8297/1921, folios 25–27. An agreement was approved by the Western Australian Health Department on 6 May 1921; ibid., folio 28. 11 Sweet (1924a: 1–2); ‘Australian hookworm campaign’, AA/1969/120/1, (8B). 12 Gillespie (1991b: 64–87); see also Gillespie (1991a: 31–45). 13 ‘Hookworm disease’, AA/1969/10/1, Item 17K: 16. 14 ‘Hookworm disease’, AA/1969/10/1, Item 17K: 16. 15 Cumpston (1998: 239–40). 16 Chief Protector of Aborigines, Annual Report, 1913: 17, in Queensland Parliamentary Papers (QPP), 1914, vol. III: 1011–30; see also Long (1970: 97) and Bleakley (1929: 166–80). 17 ‘Justice for our Aborigines’, Daily Mail, 22 May, 12 June, 15 June 1919, National Library of Australia (NLA), mfm NX 643. See also Courier Mail, interview with Premier Theodore, 12 June 1919 and letter to editor, 19 June 1919, NLA, mfm NX 643; Standard, 12 June 1919, NLA, mfm NX 640; Cairns Post, 12 June 1919, NLA, mfm NX 190; Telegraph, 12 June 1919 and Courier Mail, 20 June 1919, NLA, mfm NX 190. 18 Chief Protector of Aboriginals, Annual Report, 1919–20, in QPP, 1920; see also Long (1970: 96–7) (Long refers to the scheme but does not elaborate). 19 Chief Protector of Aboriginals, Annual Report, 1919–20: 6, in QPP, 1920, vol. II: 233. 20 ‘Hookworm disease and control’, A/A, 1969/10, items, 17I, 17J and 17K; Sweet (1924a: 1–13). 21 Cumpston (1998: 241–5) is a much shorter version summarising the period of operations and outcomes, but for more detail see the archival material cited above and Gillespie (1991b: 64–87). 22 ‘Final Report of the Australian Hookworm Campaign’, A/A, 1969/10, item 17K: 17–18. 23 Ibid., see copy of letter, ‘from A.E. Wilkinson Town Clerk of Cairns to Dr J.H. Waite, of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine’, 27 August 1918.
NOTES
256 24 NHC Final Report 57a.
25 ‘Relief and control of hookworm disease in Queensland, Australia’, A/A, 1969/10/1, item 2E: 1–17, see Table 5: 10. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.: 12. 28 Ibid: 12ff. 29 Gillespie (1991b: 86). Gillespie also cites this letter and quotes more extensively from it; see letter from Elkington to Cook, 18 August, CRS, A1928/495/21. 30 Gillespie (1991b: 45–66, and 138); see also Burrows & Morton (1986: 78–80); ‘Relief and control of hookworm disease in Queensland, Australia’, A/A, 1969/10/1, item 2E. 31 Chief Protector of Aborigines, Annual Report, 1924: 16, in QPP, 1925. 32 Ibid: 16. Bleakley stated his scepticism that little support of the hard work already applied would be forthcoming. 33 Gillespie (1991b: 66–86). 34 ‘Preliminary Report, No. 73871, on the work for the relief and control of hookworm disease in Queensland, Australia, from April 17 to August 28 1918, by J.H. Waite, MD, State Director’, A/A, 1969/10/1, item 2E: 11. 35 Ibid., Preliminary Report: 12 ff. 36 Sweet (1924a: 9). 37 ‘Australian hookworm campaign’, AA/1969/120/1: Table VI. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 ‘Australian hookworm campaign’, AA/1969/120/1: 10. 41 Sweet (1924b: 1). 42 Sweet (1924b: 3–4); see article cited by Waite (1917: 22) and Lambert (1921: 332). 7 Housing and Colonial Patronage 1
Parts of my chapter overlap with the narrative in Heppell & Wigley (1981: chs 1, 4, 5 and 6). Collmann (1988) is also illuminating about Alice Springs town camps in 1975. The annual reports referred to throughout are those of the Department of Interior.
2
G. Ballingal to Bleakely (Minister Home Affairs and Territories), 2 April 1931, AA (NT) CRS F1 42/70a.
3
Strehlow to Chief Protector, 18 March 1937, AA (NT) CRS F126, item 37.
4
Finke River Mission Annual Report 1940: 1–7.
5
Finke River Mission Annual Report 1937–39: 2.
6
The Prohibited Area was within a two-mile radius of the government offices from 1930 to 1943. In March 1943 it was extended to the area within five miles of the Alice Springs Post Office. Even in its smaller size, the Prohibited Area was compromised by the activities of the two missions.
7
White to Administrator, 9 July 1942, AA (NT) CRS F1 42/433.
8
C.L.A. Abbott to Secretary Interior, 19 September 1942, AA (NT) CRS F1 42/293.
NOTES 9
257
L.S. Ormerod and V.G. Monks to Government Secretary, 24 June 1944, AA (NT) CRS F1 44/389.
10 Driver to Administrator, 27 July 1944, AA NT CRS F1 44/389. 11 McCaffery to Government Secretary, 7 July 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/250. 12 McCoy to Director, 26 May 1950, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 13 McCoy to Director, 24–26 February 1951, AA (NT) CRS F1 49/29. 14 Moy to Administrator, 2 March 1951, AA (NT) CRS F1 49/29. 15 Moy to Administrator, 26 November and 1 December 1952, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/245(1). 16 Administrator to Director of Native Affairs, 11 November 1952, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1); the Census is on the same file. 17 L.N. Penhall to District Superintendent, 15 January 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 53/417. 18 Greatorex to Acting Director, 2 November 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 53/417. 19 Stahl to Acting Administrator, 5 November 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 53/417. 20 Leydin to Stahl, 6 November 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 53/417. 21 Administrator to Secretary Department of Territories, AA (ACT) CRS F1 53/414. Other developments recorded in this paragraph are also documented on this file. 22 H.V. Barclay to Acting Government Secretary, 18 December 1952, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1). 23 C.R. Stahl to Administrator, 5 January 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1). 24 Moy to Acting Government Secretary, 7 January 1953 (misdated 1952), AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1). 25 Administrator to Director of Native Affairs, 8 January 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1). 26 Minister to Secretary, 20 February 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1). A generally available housing loans scheme was announced in July 1953. 27 Quoted in C.R. Lambert to Administrator, 17 March 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/245(1). 28 See file AA(NT) CRS F1 52/245(2). 29 Harry Giese to Administrator, 5 July 1960, AA (NT) CRS F425 C161. 30 McCoy to Director of Native Affairs, 22 April and 14 May 1952, AA(NT) CRS F1 52/600. 31 McCoy to Director of Native Affairs, 30 May 1952, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/600. 32 Moy to McCoy, 5 June 1952, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/600. 33 McCaffery to McCoy, 27 March 1953, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 34 H. Kitching to Acting District Superintendent, 8 April 1954, AA(NT) CRS F1 52/614. 35 See McCoy to Acting District Superintendent, 23 August 1954, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 36 McCoy to Acting District Superintendent, 21 September 1954, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 37 Evans to Acting Director of Native Affairs, 30 September 1954, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 38 McCoy to Acting District Superintendent, 18 October 1954, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 39 McCoy to Acting District Superintendent, 26 October 1954, AA (NT) CRS F1 52/614. 40 Albrecht to Dr Watsford, 4 April 1957, AA (NT) CRS F1 55/254. 41 McCoy to Director of Welfare, 2 May 1958, AA (NT) CRS F1 57/1881. 42 ‘Alice Springs Town Management Board: camping sub-committee report and recommendations’, (n.d.), AA (NT) CRS F1 66/3320.
258
NOTES
43 Collmann (1988: ch. 3) has argued that the Alice Springs town camp can be interpreted as a successful strategy by Aboriginal people for maximising the benefits and minimising the costs of their economic subordination within the Central Australian post-war economy. 44 For studies of the problems and achievements of ‘self-determination’ by Alice Springs town campers, see Rowse (1988), Coughlan (1991) and Memmott (1994b). 8 The Commonwealth Government and Aboriginal Housing 1
Well before this, the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 had made it clear that all Aboriginal Australians enjoyed citizenship, which was automatic for all born in Australia.
2
DAA AR, 1974–75: 26. At the 1975 ANZAAS conference, the secretary of the Aboriginal Housing Panel chaired a session at which were read several papers, later published in Heppell (1979a).
1
At the time of writing I was completing a PhD concerned specifically with the architectural implications of Warlpiri jilimi (single women’s camps).
2
Aboriginal workers and their families walked over 10 km on the return trip from their camps to Yuendumu. Over time, camps were relocated closer to the government settlement which consisted of several buildings planned around a central park.
3
This incorporation of European building materials had begun on stations and mines at the turn of the century when calico, hessian, corrugated iron, canvas and cattle hides had been used in the absence of grasses and Indigenous cladding materials.
4
When using the term ‘Aboriginal housing’ I am referring to domestic-scale architecture/building intended for Aboriginal occupants.
5
In 1958, a truckload of ‘Stage I transitional houses’ (in the form of prefabricated one-room aluminium huts called ‘Kingstrands’) arrived in Yuendumu. The settlement superintendent at the time thought Aboriginal people were not ready for housing and sent the truck back to Alice Springs, taking material for only three huts (see Tatz 1964: 143). The materials were used as roofing on the sandstone guest house located on the eastern end of the park (Ted Egan, pers. comm.).
6
The term ‘donkey houses’ was widely used in Yuendumu in the 1990s to describe these houses. Memmott (1988: 35) used the term ‘igloo house’.
7
Soon after completion, the houses were associated with several unexpected deaths. As a direct result of the deaths the houses were considered unsafe living environments (by Aboriginal residents) and they remained unoccupied for a long time.
8
The Aboriginal Housing Panel was established following a seminar concerned with Aboriginal housing in 1972. The seminar was conducted by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Council for Aboriginal Affairs of the federal government (Memmott 1988: 36).
9
Gole & McAra (1975: 25, 26) provide a summary of Aboriginal perceptions of the James wiltja houses following their use: ‘During the course of the project, we observed a strong interest in the James wiltjas, and we were approached by many people wanting to acquire them’. However, no more were imported to Yuendumu.
9 The House and the Yupukarra
10 In 1997 the Yuendumu Housing Association was disbanded and control of housing was shifted to a subcommittee of the Yuendumu Community Council.
NOTES
259
11 In the 1990s these houses were being demolished. There is a continuing debate in Yuendumu between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal residents about the demolition/renovation of ‘donkey houses’. 12 Many problems have been encountered in the occupation of these ‘hostels’ by the frail aged; for example, steps in the floor slabs, and small toilet and shower rooms. 13 By 1998, twenty-five concrete-block houses had been built in Yuendumu for Aboriginal tenants. 14 Usually houses went to an uncle (mother’s brother) of the deceased; this uncle had been the person to whom the deceased’s possessions were transferred prior to contact with nonAboriginal people. 15 The gender exclusiveness of jilimi and jangkayi can be seen to depend on age, life experience, degree of cultural change experience by occupants and relationship between individuals. 16 Warlpiri people in Yuendumu continued to reside in yupukarra, jilimi and jangkayi during the 1990s. 17 In the 1990s, these marriage practices were maintained by many older people, but less so by younger people. 18 Following a series of deaths (including one of the oldest women in Yuendumu), the courtyard house was occupied by families of the deceased women and was not considered a jilimi. 19 When applying for funding in 1994, the Yuendumu Women’s Centre had identified six jilimi requiring six separate houses, for a total of forty-nine women (not including their children). 20 Yuendumu Old People’s Programme and the Yuendumu Women’s Centre. 21 In 1994, 1995 and 1996 the ‘hostels’ were mainly occupied by aged single women and were considered jilimi. 22 Of the four different house designs trialled in the 1970s, only two Koehne houses were still in use in the mid 1990s. 10 Savagery and Urbanity 1
The author is grateful to the many people and organisations that supplied the primary data for this research. Thanks are due to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission for granting me special access to view Commonwealth records on Redfern (1970–90), to the NSW Office of Aboriginal Affairs, to Terry Murphy who supplied official documents of the Council of the City of South Sydney for the period covered in this chapter, and to Australian Archives Victoria Branch for allowing me to view the papers of the late Gordon Bryant. I am also grateful to the people I interviewed and whose story forms the basis for this chapter, including Kaye and Bob Bellear, Dick Blair, Dr H.C. Coombs, Jim Cope, Barrie Dexter, Dick Hall, Colin James, Ted Kennedy, Ian Kiernan and Kevin Martin. In addition, the author would like to acknowledge the University of New South Wales and the Australian Research Council which funded the research.
2
For an important critique of the city as a colonial artefact, see Jacobs (1996).
3
This chapter draws heavily on the 1993 publication, while recasting that article’s conceptual framing.
4
South Sydney Community Aid, submission, 30 September 1970.
5
Laurie to Director, 20 August 1971, in Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) R76/89.
6
Cited in transcript of radio interview, Murphy papers.
7
Treffery, St Vincent’s Church, Redfern, unpublished report, 3 November 1972, in Murphy papers.
8
Cited in report of meeting between members of council and Ingrid Sandberg and Peter Bradley, 5 December 1972, in Murphy papers.
NOTES
260 9
Cited in report of meeting between the mayor and priests on 15 November 1972, in Murphy papers.
10 Report of meeting between members of council and representatives of the Catholic Church, 29 November 1972, in Murphy papers. 11 Bellear et al. to Coombs, 17 December 1972, in DAA R76/89. 12 Cited in transcript of settlement meeting, 25 March 1973, in Murphy papers. 13 Cited in minutes of meeting between Bryant and representatives of AHC, unions and council, 23 February 1973, in Murphy papers. 14 Trotman, 26 March 1973, in NSW Office of Aboriginal Affairs, file F107. 15 South Sydney Residents’ Protection Movement to Gough Whitlam, 10 March 1973, in Bryant papers. 16 Mann to Hartup, in Murphy papers. 17 Bryant to Hunter, 30 May 1973, in DAA 73/1103. 18 Hall to Bryant, cited in ‘Chronology of Aboriginal commune’, in Murphy papers. 19 City of Sydney Archives, South Sydney Council, item 17, Health Committee agenda, 4 April 1973. 20 Cope to Bryant, 23 March 1973, in Bryant papers. 21 O’Grady to Mayor, 7 May 1973, in Murphy papers. 22 See the news reports headlined ‘Sydney’s Black ghetto’, The Sun Herald, 22 March 1973; ‘Whites leave as Blacks move to city block’, Daily Mirror, 23 March 1973; ‘Aboriginal housing block for Aboriginals’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April 1973. 11 Towards Aboriginal Management of Aboriginal Rental Housing 1
‘All Aboriginal families to be properly housed within a period of 10 years.’
2
Liquidation procedures for the Victorian Aboriginal Cooperative Limited commenced in 1992.
3
The Age, 28 July 1975, reported that ‘the Department (DAA) produced a report by W.D. Scott and Associates, which found 44% of Aboriginal householders in Victoria had bought or were buying their own homes, nearly double the Aboriginal Australian average’. Many, but not all, of these were HCV properties.
4
By cancelling debts, it appeared to many that those with arrears had been ‘rewarded’. Tenants whose rent was not in arrears at the time felt that they had been penalised: on this basis, some refused to ensure that their rent was up-to-date.
5
Because of an amalgamation of regions in western Victoria, AHBV membership was reduced in 1986–87 to eight elected Aboriginal representatives and one nominee of the minister.
6
AHBV AR 1982: 19. Ninety-three of these houses were in the Melbourne area.
7
Final Report of AHRC Project 48: Public Housing Provisions for the Marginally Housed, entitled ‘Marginal housing: Market failure and the rationale for public intervention’ (Fitzroy: Centre for Urban Research and Action), although published in 1982, made no mention of Aboriginal housing issues or organisations.
8
In some localities, there were (sometimes public) objections to the proposed acquisition of properties for Aboriginal tenants. The AHBV did not recommend purchase in such areas, having no desire to place tenants in such unfriendly and stressful environments.
9
Particularly, NEAT Constructions (Melbourne), Wimpitja Construction (Mildura), Gunditjmara Constructions (Warrnambool), and Ballarat Painting Team; AHBV Annual Report, 1989: 4–5 (Report of Bev. Murray, Secretary/Research Officer).
10 AHBV Annual Report, 1989: 6 (Report of Penny Bamblett, member for Metropolitan Melbourne).
NOTES
261
12 A View of Tasmanian Aboriginal Housing 1
At this time, Brian Plomley was the Senior Associate in Australian and Oceanic Ethnology, University of Melbourne and earlier had been Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, University College London. Plomley published Friendly Mission in 1966.
2
From ‘The untouchables’, an article written by Tess Lawrence and published in the Saturday Evening Mercury, 9 June 1973. The same article also states: ‘When we speak of the Tasmanian aboriginal, we mean part-aboriginals, since we did a thorough job some time ago of wiping out the whole race’.
3
Abschol was established initially to help Aborigines obtain educational scholarships, but later became a public advocate and information-gathering network on many Aboriginal issues.
4
The 1976 census recorded 2942 Aboriginal people in Tasmania.
5
The Examiner, 23 July 1973. Mrs Langford was interviewed by Bruce Montgomery following the 22 July 1973 conference (see Tasmanian Mercury, 23 July 1973).
6
The Examiner, 24 July 1973. The minister was commenting on criticism raised at the Launceston conference.
7
Mercury, 28 June 1973. This report was accompanied by the following paragraph, which I include to illustrate the mentality of the time: ‘Tasmanian aboriginals are not full-blooded but they are direct descendants of the long-haired peculiarly Tasmanian native’.
1
The term ‘humpy’ was used to describe a wide variety of temporary or seasonal structures which were often made from materials including bush poles, bark, brush, corrugated iron (or other metal sheeting), canvas, plastic and reinforcing or weld mesh.
2
There was no official church mission at Goodooga. Many of the camping places where Aboriginal people live are referred to as ‘the mission’. Some are missions, some were missions, some were government stations and others were no more than camping places (Long 1970: 3).
3
Early records mention the use of corrugated iron in the colonies around 1837 and John Spencer patented a rolling system in 1844 (Pearson 1979). According to Scott (1982: 24), galvanised and corrugated iron were already in use in the Goodooga area in the 1880s.
4
The kerosene tins were opened out and flattened into sheets. The terms ‘tin’ camps and the ‘tins’ used to build them were probably originally derived from these early huts.
5
Felix Hooper (‘Wiggity’) was apparently the man whose efforts initiated the Bohda Housing Cooperative venture.
6
Whilst the individual dwellings were referred to locally as ‘tin camps’, the reserve itself was often called ‘the camp’.
7
The discovery of a brown snake nestled somewhere between the external tin cladding and internal tin lining brought a group of men over to house 2 one afternoon, armed with an axe and a rifle. Apparently the snake had been hanging around for months but no-one had been successful in killing it. In this final attempt to find the intruder, the axe was used to slash at the internal lining, hacking off the sheets of ‘tin’ from the wall, virtually chopping the inside of the room to bits until they were satisfied that it had been located. The rifle was then used to shoot several bullets right through what remained of the wall, annihilating the snake in the process. This apparently wanton destruction was possible and acceptable because the wall cladding was so easily and cheaply replaceable.
8
Girts are horizontal members spanning between posts at intermediate levels above the floor.
14 The Tin Camps
262 9
NOTES According to Clem, the term comes from the Slim Dusty song ‘The Cobb and Co. Twitch’ where he sings ‘you can do anything with a Cobb and Co. twitch’. It is apparently based on a technique used in fencing.
10 Clem had also built several houses for his mother-in-law, Dulcie Nean, and his mother, Gladys. Gladys was apparently always asking him to modify the planning of her house on site 29 or to build another house on the block of land she also occupied from time to time down by the Bokhara Bridge. Apparently Gladys moves backwards and forwards from the reserve site to the one adjacent to the bridge out of a desire for change. 11 The blue and white colour scheme on house 20 was actually chosen not because of being a favoured team but because it represented the opposition to the red and white team favoured by the neighbours. According to the householders, this was done as a deliberate act to tease the household next door. 15 Housing for Health 1
UPK is the abbreviation for uwankara palyanku kanyintjaku or, approximately translated, ‘a strategy for wellbeing’ which was a major environmental and public health review carried out on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands in the north-west of South Australia in 1985–86; the results were published in 1987.
2
The Anangu Pitjantjatjara (AP) Lands are the designated freehold Aboriginal lands in the northwest of South Australia.
3
Before commencing work on this survey all previous housing survey information for the region was requested. Whilst many ‘housing surveys’ had been completed no surveyor had been inside the house or made any comment on house function.
4
Often in each of the critical categories (water in, hot water, waste out) the score, in percentage terms, was in the low forties. If the categories were combined, a house that had a hot water supply would have no working drainage, so the cumulative function score would have been significantly lower. In many cases not one house could have provided all these basic services (see below, Pormpuraaw section).
5
Pipalyatjara was one of the communities originally surveyed in 1986 during the UPK review.
6
The AHRC grant of $40,000 was not money specifically devoted to Aboriginal housing and therefore did not negatively impact on existing Aboriginal funds.
7
This is a survey usually conducted from a moving vehicle, hence the name, and usually defines only roof type, materials of outer walls and whether the house is in good, fair or poor condition. It gives no indication as to the function of essential health or safety items within a house.
8
See both Housing for Health and Pormpuraaw reports.
9
See the UPK Report (Nganampa Health Council et al.); Housing for Health 1994, South Australia; Housing for Health Pormpuraaw 1997, Queensland; and the third Housing for Health trial project is currently progressing in New South Wales.
1
Stress in an institutional setting may also occur through an Indigenous person’s removal from their land, belief in malignant spirits (Hamilton 1973), attitude towards death (Memmott 1989b) or psychosomatic afflictions (Reid & Trompf 1991).
16 Lock Hospitals, Prisons and Indigenous People
NOTES
263
2
The reserve system certainly acted as a vehicle for psychological ‘modification’ through a system of scientific racism (especially when combined with assimilation policies), with the intention of changing an individual’s cultural practices and beliefs.
3
Melanesian, Polynesian and Caucasian people were also sent to Peel Island.
4
Peel Island had been declared a quarantine reserve in 1873 and had actually accommodated (detained and isolated) several people suffering from Hansen’s disease since 1895.
5
That the patients at Peel Island were effectively incarcerated is clear in the following statement from one of the non-Indigenous female patients whilst writing to the Home Secretary in 1910: ‘Sir, I won’t be locked up like a criminal ... why are we being treated in such a harsh manner ... what crimes are we supposed to be guilty of ... If these rules continue there will be more die of broken Harts [sic] than Leprosy’ (Blake 1993: 17).
6
The ‘coloured’ compound accommodated Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Melanesian and Polynesian people.
7
Ludlow attempts to make light of this practice by describing a ‘gaping hole [in the fence] through which the aboriginals could pass freely whenever they wished’, at the rear of the compound (1987: 36).
8
The principle (and indeed perceived benefit) of individual isolation for leprosy patients was seemingly unimportant or irrelevant when it came to Indigenous patients.
9
This is an example of early Indigenous deaths in custody.
10 The investigation followed concern at the practice of mass arrests and the extremely high rate of conviction due to many factors such as poor legal representation, and court proceedings conducted in a ‘foreign’ language (English) (see Biskup 1973). 11 There is further discussion in this chapter on some of the statistics and recommendations pertaining to architecture. 12 Alice Springs has since had built a new detention facility. A newspaper article reporting on its potential for inmate violence described it as a ‘sweltering cement box built in the desert’ (Irby 1997). On visiting the jail, however, I was pleased to see culturally appropriate accommodation for low-security Indigenous prisoners in the ‘Cottages’ built outside the main perimeter fence. 13 A new community watchhouse has also been built at Wujalwujal (see the case study on this facility, in Eckermann 1997). 14 Such reports can be found in Eckermann (1997) and in Office of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner (1996). 15 However, multiple hanging points exist in otherwise appropriate new dormitory accommodation in one Northern Territory prison. 17 A Self-help Approach to Remote Area Housing 1
Murcutt received the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Special Jury Award of 1994 for his Yirrkala house (Quarry 1997).
2
Terms used to characterise Murcutt’s earlier work, as presented in Drew (1985).
3
Kim Dovey (senior lecturer at Melbourne University’s School of Architecture) received the Royal Australian Institute of Architects ‘Architecture and the Media’ Award of 1997 for a collection of articles on architecture for Indigenous Australians, including the controversial Dovey (1996: 98–103).
264
NOTES
4
These include a television documentary on Glenn Murcutt’s life and work (sponsored by BHP Steel), and Hyatt (1993: 2–11).
5
These were inspired by Professor David Stea from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California.
6
This figure is not adjusted for inflation ex 1988.
7
In 1992, in association with David Week (architect) and Shane Kenny (construction trainersupervisor), I facilitated a community-based housing process at Butler Bay on Palm Island. This project involved the relocation of three beach camper households to new rental accommodation on fully serviced allotments, as required by the local council and DFSAIA. Whilst the campers participated actively in both the design and construction of these houses, the new lifestyle offered by what became a suburban development was neither an original wish nor an eventual pleasure for many of the campers. I have witnessed similar processes and outcomes at Wilcannia (1985) and Dareton (1986).
8
This was communicated by Department of Community Services radio messages to St Paul’s Island Council (3–7 April 1997), demanding a stop to construction work pending proof of compliance.
9
For further information about self-help housing, see Dugdale (1992), Merrison & Calvert (1990), Office of Aboriginal Liaison (1984), Spink (1989), and White (1991). 18 Understanding the Past, Looking to the Future
1
Note here Tim Rowse’s reference to the Aboriginal Welfare Administration’s 1947 decision in Alice Springs to rent, rather than sell or grant, new houses at The Gap settlement to their Indigenous occupants. The reason given related explicitly to greater potential for ongoing supervision and social control.
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Index Alice Springs 85ff, 113, 118, 241 allocation of space, gendered 19ff, 126–8 Amoonguna houses 119 Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands 199–203 Anderson, K. 240 Aputula Mark III space frame houses 123 architects 215–17, 221–2 Army time 90–1 Arnhem Land 222 Arrernte 86, 89 Articles of Association of the Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria 153 assessment 115–17, 237ff assimilation 3, 92–8, 239 ATSIC survey 1992 246 Attwood, Bain 238, 240 Australian Aboriginal Affairs Council 104 Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine 77 Bagot 73–4, 106 Bairnsdale 154 Bamblett, Jack 59 Barambah (now Cherbourg) 81, 83 Barker, Geoffrey 221 Barwick, Diane 147, 148 Beagle Bay 78 bedrooms and bedroom occupancy 49, 162–3, 172–3, 227 behaviour 49–50, 209–10 Berg, Jim 152 Berndt, R.M. & C.H. Berndt 6 Bernier Island 215 Birdibil 17ff birth, locations of 59–60 Bleakley, J.W. 70–1, 86 Block residents 131 boarding house 47 Bohda Housing Co-operative 182 Bokhara River 181 Boney, Edward 183 bough shades 19ff, 194 Bourke 7 Bowen 79
Aboriginal Aged Persons Homes Trust 109 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) 10, 14, 246 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel 114 Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC) 10, 114 Aboriginal Family Resettlement Scheme 7, 111, 123 Aboriginal Hostels Limited (AHL) 11, 12, 112, 115, 174, 247 Aboriginal Housing Board (AHB) 10, 113, 173, 174 Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria (AHBV) 152ff Aboriginal Housing Board of Victoria, activities of 152ff, 242 Aboriginal Housing Board, South Australia 10, 152 Aboriginal Housing Committee (AHC) 139 Aboriginal Housing Conference 11 Aboriginal Housing Panel (AHP) 4, 9, 11, 114 Aboriginal Housing Policy Committee 163 Aboriginal Land Fund Commission 112, 114 Aboriginal Legal Service 153 Aboriginal lifestyles and values, maintenance of 162 Aboriginal Loans Commission 114, 125 Aboriginal Medical Service 137 Aboriginal Public Health Improvement Program 114 Aboriginal Rental Housing Assistance Program 114 Aboriginality and the city 155 Aboriginals Ordinance 65–6 Aborigines Advancement League of Victoria 146 Aborigines Protection Act 55, 62–3, 181–2 Aborigines Protection Board 55, 62–3 Aborigines Welfare Board 179–81 Abschol 159–60 Albrecht, Pastor F.W. 89, 95
278
INDEX Brabiralung 43, 44 Braiakaulung 43, 44 Briscoe, G. 238, 239 Brungle 56, 60, 62–3 Bryant, Gordon 112, 142, 161 budget, Department of Aboriginal Affairs 110, 114 Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) 139 Bungalow 86, 91–2 Cairns 78, 79 Camp Jungai 151 camps 22ff, 57–8, 91, 169ff, 179ff Cape Barren Island 159–60 Capital Fund for Aboriginal Enterprises 112 cattle stations 6 cell conditions, see prisons Centre for Appropriate Technology 14 Cherbourg 81, 83 children 47, 55ff, 67–8 Chinese 61 chlamydia (or trachoma) 76 Christian churches 41, 56 Cilento, Raphael 81–2, 84 city, concept of 134 civility 133–4 cladding 22ff, 189, 122 climate 212, 227ff ‘Cobb and Co. twitch’ 190 Collingwood 145–6 Collman, J. 12 Commonwealth direct grants, policy of 150 Commonwealth government 103ff Commonwealth Grants to the states 13, 106, 161 Commonwealth programs, success of 243 Commonwealth–State grants to Tasmania for Aboriginal housing 161 Commonwealth–State Housing Agreements 8, 114, 153 communities, inner city 136ff, 144ff Community Development Employment Program 10, 155 community housing 114, 241ff community response 239–40 community-based Indigenous housing organisations 223, 241ff compounds 44, 64, 239 construction 19ff, 119ff, 179ff containment 62–3, 64ff control 62–4
279
Cook, Chief Protector 71–3, 87–9 Coombs, H.C. 105, 106, 115–16 Cooper, William 166 Cootamundra 60 corrugated iron 179ff costs 245 cottages 49, 51, 70 Council for Aboriginal Affairs 105ff Council of the City of South Sydney 137–8 Cowra 62 Cue 169 Cullen Beach 62–3, 74 cultural space, arrangement of 17, 179ff, 209–10 Cummeragunja 145, 146 Cumpston, John 82 cypress pine 189 Darlington Point 55, 57, 61 Darwin 64 death, by hanging 2, 7–8 decorations 191 Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) 110ff, 150, 162–3 Department of Employment and Industrial Relations (DEIR) 223 Department of Family Services and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs (DFSAIA) 231 Department of Housing and Construction 111 Department of Lands and Housing 13 Department of Territories 116 Derby 210–11, 214 designs 2, 45ff, 119ff, 189ff, 224–6 detention 210ff direct grants 106–8 discrimination 75ff, 86ff, 167–9, 199 disease compound 84 dogs 200ff domiciliary groups, gender-specific 17ff, 126 donkey houses 125 dormitories 47, 55–6, 67–8 Dorre Island 215 Downing, Reverend Jim 93 drains 199ff Dunstan, Don 104 education 50, 62, 64 Electoral Act 103 electricity 14, 206 electricity, ‘mains’ 14, 201 Elkin, A.P. 73 ethno-architecture 15ff, 179ff
280
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expulsion 62–3, 65–6 external domiciliary spaces 192, 194–5 facilities, recreational 71 families Charles 59 Coe 59 Edwards 59 Freeman 59 Glass 59 Grosvenor 59 Ingram 59 Kennedy 59 Kirby 59 Murray 59 Williams 59 Fantome Island 213 Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA, later FCAATSI) 103 fences 47–9 Ferguson, William 60 Finke River Mission 95, 96 Fitzroy 145, 146 Flinders Island 42 Foley, Gary 161 food 71 Fremantle prison 215 fringe-camps 12, 85ff Fringe-dwelling Communities Inquiry 180 ‘full-bloods’ 68 fully functioning living environments 203–4, 206–8 funding 103ff furniture 190–1 Gap camps 92–5 Gascoyne 171 geodom 123 Geraldton 173ff ghettos 145–6 girls 55ff Goodall, H. 42 Goodooga 179ff Gore Street Mission 146 Goulburn Island 71 Grant-in-Aid Program 106ff Gribble, J.B. 55ff group identity, tribal and/or sub-tribal 20, 185 Haar, P. 144 Haasts Bluff 95 Hagenauer, Friedrich 41ff Hagenauer, Louise 41, 53
Half-caste Home 69, 70 Half-caste Institution 68–70 ‘half-castes’ 58–9, 91–2 Hansen’s disease (leprosy) 70, 210ff Hasluck, Paul 94, 96, 103, 119 health 3, 75ff, 199ff hearths 191 Heavitree Gap 90–1 Heland, Fanny 55, 56 Heppell, M. 5, 6, 9 Hermannsburg 87, 89 hessian sacking 190 hiding possessions 191 Hobart 158, 160, 163–4 holding cells 215–16 Holt, Harold 105–7 home loans program 243–4 Home Ownership Scheme 174 homelands movement 3, 4 Homeswest 196ff hookworm 77ff House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs 12 household 191–4 houses backlog of 112 customary 30 following death 126 three-bedroom 8, 126 housing agenda 13, 47 and culture 4, 45 as a lived experience 168ff, 244–5 as an ongoing process 244 associations 4, 9, 10, 109, 111, 114 boards 4 in urban areas 246 location 32, 42–3, 183ff meaning of 1, 9, 14–15 self-constructed 189ff, 244ff self-managed 148ff standards 245–6 status 272 stock 245 Tasmanian conditions 157ff temporary 11 traditional 15ff Housing Commission of Victoria 153–4 Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board 145–6
INDEX Housing Trust in South Australia 106 humpies 6, 51 identity, Tasmania 157–8 igloo houses 121–2, 125 imprisonment 214ff Indigenous community rental 243–4 Indigenous deaths in custody 215ff Indigenous responses 239ff industry, cleanliness and order 50–4 initiation camps 25–6 institutions ix, 60–2 inter-household communication 186–9, 209–10 Jackomos, Alick 145, 146 James wiltja 123 jangkayi (single men’s camps) 119 Jay Creek 87, 95, 96 jilimi (single women’s camps) 126, 128 Junee 73 Kahlin 64ff Kaiadilt 15 Kamien, M. 13, 14, 190 Kanaka 81 Kennedy, Ted 138 Keyes, C. 240 kin, see domiciliary groups Kinchela 62 King George, Larrakia elder 73 Kingstrand huts 112, 121 kitchen fittings 13 Koehne design houses 112–13 Kurnai 42, 43 labour 52–3, 68–9 Lake Tyers 50 Lameroo Beach 69 land rights 3 landscape, mission 43ff Langford, Rosalind 160 language 62 Lardil 15ff Larrakia 64, 69, 74 Launceston 162–3 laundry 68 legislation 65–6, 147 leprosy, see Hansen’s disease Levi family 223, 225 Liberal–Country Party coalition 7 Little Flower Mission 89 living/dining room 224–5 Lock hospitals 210, 215
281
Long, J. 243 maintenance 199ff managed reserves 35ff managers 55ff Maningrida 108 Mansell, Michael 165 married women’s houses 118, 127 masculine self-confidence 58–9 materials, building 6–7, 19, 76ff, 179ff McMahon, William 106 Meekatharra 168, 171 Melbourne 144ff Memmott, Paul 221, 237–8 men 50, 58–9 mental asylums 44 Mia-Mia Project 149–50 Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs 149 Mission Block 95–7 missions 43ff design 44ff Moa Island 223 Moravian missionary precepts 44 Mornington Island 15, 17 mosquito camps 30 movement 58–9 Moy, Frank 92 Mt Catt Homeland Centre 222 Muirhead, Royal Commissioner James 219 Mukinbudin 169, 170 Murchison 171–2 Murcutt, Glenn 221 Murray, Nancy 59, 61 Myilly Point 67 Nampijinpa, Uni 119 Nangala, Rosie 119 Napaljarri, Ruth 119 Narrandera 58, 60 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSIS) 243 National Hookworm Campaign 98ff native welfare 171–3 neighbours 22, 185, 209–10 New South Wales stations 55 Ngukurr 108 Nicholls, Doug 146 nomad houses 125 Northern Territory 64ff nutrition 71 Nyoongah 168 O’Donoghue, Lowitja 5
282
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Office of Aboriginal Affairs 106, 136 Operation Raleigh 228–9 opium 65 Orcher, Clem 183, 190, 193–4 Orcher, Curtis 183 Orcher, Isabel 190, 193–4 overcrowding 67ff, 78–9, 199ff owner-builders 179ff ownership 243–4 Palm Island 80, 83 Papunya 9 pastoral properties 97ff Peel Island Lazaret 211 pepper-potting 103–4 Perkins, Charles 5, 101, 162 Pholeros, Paul 221, 239 Pipalyatjara Housing for Health Project 203–4 Pitjantjatjara 12, 199ff plunge and shower baths 52 Police Paddock 61 police watch-houses 219 policies, assimilationist, see assimilation population 87, 116, 146, 175 Pormpuraaw Housing for Health Project 205–6 principles of healthy living 199ff prisons 214ff privacy 50–1 program politics 242–3 prohibited areas 86–7 properties, outright purchase of 175–6 punishment 56–7 quality testing 200ff Queensland Building Code 232 Queensland Hookworm Campaign 78ff Queensland State Housing Commission 106 Racial Discrimination Act 150 Racial Discrimination Convention 103 railway housing 169–70 Rainbow Town 91 Ramahyuck 41ff, 238 rations 68, 86–7 Read, P. 240 Redfern 112, 136ff referendum, 1967 104–5, 157 Regional Aboriginal Housing Organisation 174 re-location 73–4, 182 remote communities 118ff, 122–3, 199 renovated igloos 125
rent 13, 174–5 forms of 243–4 private 188 renting 163–6, 174 repairs 163–5, 202–3 reserve housing 195 reserves 6, 35–9, 238–9 residential blocks 95–7, 140 residential units, gender-specific 126–8 resistance 56–8, 182, 239–41 rituals 25–8 Roach, Archie 63 rock shelters, over-hanging 76 Rockhampton 79 Roebourne gaol 215–16 rooms, types of 8–9, 193–4, 246 Ross, Helen 238, 244 Rottnest Island Prison 214–15 Rowley, C.D. 85, 86, 93, 94, 98, 105 Rowse, T. 241 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCADIC) 218–19 rubbish 201ff Ruddick, Daisy 68 rural, remote areas 12–13, 118, 199 salvation 53 Sanders, W. 12 sandstone architecture 120 sanitation system 83–4, 199 Sansom, B. 12 savagery 131–4 School of Tropical Medicine 77 schools 47, 52–3, 56, 68, 168 Sculthorpe, Heather 160, 165 seasons 19ff Second World War 90, 145 security 214ff segregation 86, 162–5, 170ff self-build program 221ff self-construct paradigm, advantages associated with the 231–2 self-determination 9–10, 114–15, 139–40, 239–40 self-help 227ff self-injury 217–19 Senate Committee on the Social Environment 108 septic tanks 210ff settle down permanently 54, 59–60
INDEX settlement planning and surveillance 43ff, 185, 209–10 settlements 4, 35–9, 43ff sewerage 127, 199ff shade 19–21, 22–4 sharing 194 shelters 3, 15ff, 75–6, 237–8 skin infection 199–200 Skuthorpe, Ernie 183, 184, 190 sleeping positions 19–20 sleepouts 225 slums, abolition of the 145 smallpox 76 soakage trenches 202 social order 18 Social Security Act 103 song cycles 27 South Australian Housing Trust 106 South Sydney City Council 137 South Sydney Residents Protection Movement 141 spatiality 44ff Spencer, Baldwin 66–7 squatters 86–7, 145–6 St Paul’s Village 223ff standards 72, 162–5, 169ff, 201–2, 245–7 State Grants (Aboriginal Assistance) 107, 161, 174, 242–3 State Housing Commission 110 Stolen Generations 6, 62 storage 191 Strehlow, T.G.H. 87 strikes 57 structures, ‘lean-to’ 17ff, 75–6 ‘subsection’ or ‘class’ systems 15–17 surveillance 185, 209–10, 218–20 Sydney 136ff Tangentyere Aboriginal Council 9, 12, 13, 114 Tangkic 15, 37, 237–8 Tasmania, growing up in an Aboriginal community 157–8 Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) 159ff Tasmanian Aboriginal Information Service (AIS) 159 Tasmanian State Housing Department 163ff Tatungalung 43 Tatz, C. 119–20 temperature 121, 201 tenants 10, 154, 173–6, 243–4 The Gap 90–1
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tidiness 50–2 timetable 52–3 tin camps 179ff toilets 50–1, 82, 199ff topography, use of 186–9 Torres Strait 116, 222–33 Town Campers Assistance Program 12 town camps 12, 85ff, 115 towns 36–7 trachoma 12 traditional housing 15ff traditional organisation 19ff transitional housing 7 transitional shelter forms 22–3 Tripcony, P. 242 tuberculosis 76 Tuckanurra 169 Tucker, Margaret 146 Umbakumba 108 urbanisation 85, 130ff uwankara palyanku kanyintjaku (UPK) 199, 200, 202 vandalism 207–8 vaults, barrel 31, 32 verandahs 56, 122, 189ff, 201, 227 Victoria 144–6 Victorian Aboriginal Cooperative Limited 9, 242 Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines 54 Victorian Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs 153 village green 46 voting rights, federal 104–5 wading pools 200 Waites, Betty 183 Walgett 107 War Service Homes scheme 107 Warangesda Mission xi, 55ff Ware, Elia 223–4 Ware, Grace 229, 231 Ware, Ned 236 Warlpiri 5, 118, 128 Warrabri 108 washing 202–3 waste 200–1 water 6, 127, 200ff waterproofing 22–3 Wave Hill 109 Wedge, Sophie 59 Welfare Branch 106
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welfare legislation, Northern Territory 105 welfare policy 14 Wellington Valley 56 Wentworth, W.C. 106, 108–9, 139 Western Australia 107, 167ff, 210ff Western Australian Department of Aboriginal Affairs 171–2 Western Australian Government Railways 169–70 Western Australian Housing Board 176 Western Australian Housing Commission 112, 113 wheat belt 170–1 Whitlam, E.G. 110–11, 140 widows 119, 126–9 Wigley, Julian 221 Wigness, Suzi 230 Williams, Gary 137 Williams, Raymond 132 wiltja 74, 75, 123 windbreaks 19–23, 75 Wiradjuri 55ff women 127ff women’s houses 128–9 work teams 227–8 Yamaji 168, 171 Yangkaal 15 Yarrabah 80 yaws 76 Yirrkala 221 young men’s houses 128 young people 44 Yuendumu 118ff Yuendumu Housing Association 125 Yuendumu Women’s Centre 127 yupukarra (married people’s camp) 118–19, 126
