Aborigines Cling To Their Old Customs

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31501, 16 October 1967, Page 3

Aborigines Cling To Their Old Customs

(Specially written for "The Press" by KRISTIN ZAMBUCKA)

Unlike many other stations in the Northern Territory of Australia, Ammarroo supports the natives who work and live there with their families. On this property of 2000 square miles and 2000 head of prime cattle, the Aborigines live in two separate camps.

The men sleep in wurlies round the cattle yards and the women have a camp a quarter of a mile away. Compared with their nomadic cousins, who wander in small family groups 500 miles west of Alice Springs, the natives at Ammarroo are quite civilised. When I visited the women’s camp I found them huddled together for warmth against a biting desert wind. A tin pan of greasy meat sat on a dead fire and a bag full of offal lay beside it attracting swarms of flies. Brightly labelled fruit and jam tins were strewn everywhere, souvenirs from their regular raids on the station rubbish dump. “Dog Blankets” Dozens of dogs were straying around. Every Aboriginal camp encourages these dogs to hang about because the people sleep with them using them as blankets in the freeze ing temperatures of the desert nights. Most of these Aborigines have at some time in their wanderings received some Christian instruction at the missions around Alice Springs, Hermannsburg, Ernabella and Santa Teresa. Natives who have recently lived at a mission are referred to on the station as “Proper Flash Ones,” as they will wash regularly, comb their hair, and wear clean clothes.

In spite of the Christian training, they still cling to their tribal beliefs and rituals.

Saturday morning is ration time at Ammarroo. Mrs Daphne Oldfield, the manager’s wife, has made it a rule that the natives must clean and tidy themselves before coming to the homestead to collect their stores.

So Saturday morning has become an eagerly awaited

event in their lives, and at nine o’clock or thereabouts the women and their babies arrive bright and shining at the homestead storehouse for a hand-out This consists of: On« tin of golden syrup or treacle; one bar of washing soap and one cake of toilet soap; two boxes of matches; one tin of tomato sauce; two blocks of “nicki-nicki” or chewing tobacco; one 251 b bag of flour.

I watched the women queueing, hungrily eyeing the gaily-coloured shelves of tin cans.

“Me wantum aspro, Missus,” one young woman said. “No good, Lily,” Mrs Oldfield answered. “You eat them like lollies and get sick.” “But me gottum cutsache, Missus.”

Daphne Oldfield handed the woman a small packet of the tablets and her face lit up as she frantically screwed the small pink packet to open it. “Board” and Wages

The Aborigine men get a separate ration of food and clothing, plus their fortnightly pay of $5O for their station work as stockmen, horse tailers or jacks-of-all-trades.

The station manager, Mr Vivian Oldfield, a former jockey, may take back a small deduction of this payment to cover the cost of “board.” But it is still a fair arrangement for a family man because his wife, children, grandmother and visiting uncles and aunts, who wander in from their walkabouts, will be fed and supported free of charge for as long as they remain camped on the station. The station manager’s wife has also taken it on herself to provide the women with clothes. They love brightly coloured dresses, and Mrs Oldfield has introduced them to lacy nylon panties. Some of the women wear these undergarments as headscarves.

At the end of September all the natives clear off the station and go walkabout until the next March, because they will not work in the hot

weather. Finding it hard to support themselves after the easier conditions on the station, they wander back unkempt and starving. Baby Born

While I was staying at Ammarroo, a young Aboriginal girl had a piccaninny. She dug a hole in the soft earth and, unaided, delivered her child in a natural position—on her knees.

The long umbilical cord was rubbed with meat fat to stop bleeding, and was then left uncut, until it dropped off naturally. I saw the little girl, named Chloe, again when she was a fortnight old, neatly wrapped in a coolamon, or shallow wooden dish. She had weighed 3jlb at birth, but she appeared to be thriving. She was small but very healthy. At birth Aborigine babies are a light pinkish yellow, but at 10 days pigmentation begins and they turn brown. One day some time before I arrived the four stockmen on the place came running terrified towards the homestead, calling out for “the boss.”

In their Pidgin English, they described a shiny silver space-ship that had landed beyond the creek. By the time Mr Oldfield had ridden over to investigate, he found nothing but a 50-foot wide patch of scorched earth.

I asked Mr Oldfield whether he had ever encountered the telepathic ability that Aborigines have. “Well, I’ve worked with them for years and they’ve certainly got something that I don’t understand,” he said. “I can’t work it out in my own mind. “Once I was travelling on a train taking the herd down to Adelaide for the sale. It was night time and my only mate was an old “Abo” called Smoky. Well he was moaning and groaning and getting on my nerves. But I never said a word.

“Finally he stopped his moaning. And I asked ‘What the hell’s been wrong with you Smoky?’ “He said ’AU right now, boss. Daughter bin habbin dat baby boy now.’ “Later we checked with the flying doctor and found out that Smoky’s daughter had had a son at the same time as old Smoky had been ‘in labour* with her,” Mr Oldfield said.