AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 74, 29 March 1922, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES

RAPIDLY VANISHING RACE

(PROM ODS OWN CORSaSPDNDENI.)

SYDNEY, 9th March. At the present rate at which the aborigines of Australia are dying out, it is thought that, in New South Wales at least, where they were once so numerous, the children of to-day will live to see theend of tbo last full-blooded black man and the last black woman.

It is estimated by Governor Phillip and ether early authorities that the coast between Botany Hay and Broken Bay, and for many miles inland—roughly the boundaries of 'the Sydney metropolitan area—supported about SOOO aborigines when the first settlers arrived" With 5000 in the now metropolitan district, then, 50,000 or 60,000 for the whole State—for the . Riverina, the Darling River and its tributaries, and the northern rivers' districts carried largo tribes —is probably not beyond the mark. Some hiiva estimated the population to have been very much larger. No accurate enumeration of the blacks was, however, made till 40 years ago. by which time scores of tribes had perished altogether. At that time Iho remnants of the surviving tribes numbered about 7000, an<l . they have dwindled since to scarcely more than 1000, but while the- full-bloods are moving so rapidly toward extinction, the halfcastes are increasing. The blacks- are simply withering away by the blight of European" contract, snd ii would seem that nothing could save them. Their primitive life, so 'like that of our own palaeolithic ancestors; their profound knowledge of beasts and birds, oi hsrbs and trees; their voaiple.v and- effluent-, social system;' their marriage laws and their sign laifeuu.se, u.ll h»vo gonu witlioug record, ami apparently without reBret. .No scientific body or institution has a rare for Australian othonolosy, mid there in not n single scientific student ut work upon it.