BLACKS FIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 112, 15 May 1939, Page 7

BLACKS FIGHT.

MISSION STATION FEUD. WINE GIVEN TO ABORIGINES. (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, May 11. Allegations that wine had been given by whites to aborigines at Boggabilla Mission during the manager's absence, and had started a wild melee, were made at the Moree Quarter Sessions this week, when five aborigines were charged with having caused actual bodily harm to another black. One of the aborigines said that he had had several swigs from a bottle of wine offered to him by "a white fellow."

It appeared that there had been a long standing feud between two sets of aborigines known as the Binges and! Bartmans. They had been enemies since one of the Binges, who was second in i charge at the mission, had refused a Bartman his rations unless he worked. One of the aborigines said that he had i been asked to referee the fight but had refused because he knew that the referee, would soon be in the thick of it. Pieces i of timber, stones and bits of concrete' flew in all directions while the fight was on.

One of the blacks was hit by another on the back of the head with a piece of! 4in x 2in timber. He staggered, bleeding, into a hut and crawled under a bed, where he hid until the police came. He was admitted to Moree Hospital with a! depressed fracture of the base of the skull which would almost certainly have killed a white man. Half-way through the evidence for the defence the jury gave up the effort to sort out the rights and wrongs of the blacks' feud and found all the accused not guilty.