Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in 1960s Australia

By the 1960s European occupation of Australia had had a profound impact on Aboriginal and Torres Stait Islander people. From 1788, indigenous resistance had been widespread, protracted and in some areas extremely effective, but over time spears proved no match for the guns, disease and terror tactics of the invaders.

"I have heard men of culture and refinement, of the greatest humanity and kindness to their fellow whites ...talk, not only of the wholesale butchery ...but of the individual murder of natives, exactly as they would talk of a day's sport, or of having to kill some troublesome animal,"

wrote the British High Commissioner Arthur Gordon in April 1883. 1

Dispossessed of their traditional lands and waterways, exposed to introduced diseases and subjected to the genocidal attitudes and practices of the colonisers, the Aboriginal population was dispersed and decimated.

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Aborigines from Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, c1920s

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Aboriginal women and children on Elsey Station, Northern Territory, c1930s

Efforts by the British Government in the 1830s to introduce some form of protection for Aborigines foundered on colonial non-cooperation. Once territorial control was assured, however, protectionist ideas began to appeal to colonial governments as a solution to the problem of dealing with the Aboriginal survivors. But again, the intentions of genuine reformers were manipulated to suit the needs of white-settler society. Aborigines were forcibly rounded up from sought-after land and confined on reserves or missions under the control of churches and administrators with extremely coercive powers.

 

The reserves were often located near large European settlements where they could serve as, in Raymond Evans' words, "a local cheap labour reservoir and a place where native remnants ...could be kept." 2   In this way, protection policies were converted into "policies of controlled subjugation." 3
 

Zoom Image  Image 1A - Map showing Aboriginal reserves and missions as at July 1962

In the north and west of the continent many Aborigines were allowed to remain on or near their tribal lands as a source of labour for the burgeoning pastoral industry. As domestics, cooks and stockmen these men and women provided the labour that created some of world's biggest and wealthiest pastoral empires while working for little or no pay. They were supplied poor food, they could be beaten and even shot with virtual impunity and girls and women were often the victims of predatory sexual behaviour by white managers and stockmen. 4

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Aboriginal stockman drafting cattle, Elsey Station, c1930s

  

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Five generations of Aborigines, Elsey Station, Northern Territory, c1930s
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