HEALER AND SLAVER

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 May 1934, Page 3

HEALER AND SLAVER

A BORN EXPLORER. Australia has lost one of her most, picturesque wanderers with the death ci' Dr. Sidney Spencer Broomfield, in Brisbane, recently. He would rather have died with his boots on while following some jungle pad in the only surroundings where he was really happy'—exploring alone some corner of the world where no white man had ever been. His story of Arnhem Land is one of the most, interesting ever recorded. All his life, from the time he graduated as a doctor of medicine in England, .in 1563, has been spent like that. While Trader Horn was hunting elephants on the Gold Coast of Africa, Dr. Broomfield was trading in ivory, collecting specimens and lighting slavers in the east, of the dark continent. Ten year.-; later ho was a partner of the romantic Bully' Hayes, the notorious blackbirder.

Another ten years found him pushing through from Rockingham in West. Australia to Van Diemen’s Gulf in the north on camels defying the thirst, which killed his camels ami the warlike Kimberley' and Fitzmaurice River natives. In the prime of his life he was wandering among the headhunters of Borneo. He was an old man when he set out for South America, and just, before he died he finished one of the strangest trips of exploration in Australia’s history.

In February', 193.1, when 84 years old, lie hitched two horses into a buckhoard at Ru.sliworth, Victoria, and two years and six months inter turned up in Darwin.

"CHEEK FELLOWS." During his journey his buckbosrd wore oiit and his horses died under him. lie lost, everything he had except his books, a. few clothes and his medicine chest, hut he kept going 110<l miles through Arnhem Land from north to south and east to west, through country that is only represented by blank- spaces on the maps. Even this did not. satisfy him. When he was taken off the boat at Brisbane, lie was burying back to Melbourne to lini-h .his book on Australian natives ami their customs so that. Im could finance another ami more dang-Toim trip to llm hc.idfina 11 cry of the cannibal tribes in tin' c<m,ti I ry where the .Sc; ik River rises in New Guinea. Information of great, value to the police, protectors of aborigines, nnl hropologisl s amt the Lands ami Survey Department, was collected by Dr. Broomlieh] on his Arnhem Lam! trip. Wherever h,' went, he was befriended by (lie natives whom he won over with his medicine chest, performing what were to them miracles of healing. At times his progress was like a triumphal procession. as many as Inti natives travelling with him. hunting lor him ami making his path easy. Apart from the interest of natives in their untouched slate that Arnhem Land holds for anthropologists, Dr. Bi oomlield has little praise for the pari of it he saw. Hole is the story of his travois ami impressions in his own words: — "My first low days out from Roper River taught me that Arnhem Land was a starvation country. It was hard to find enough food and water top my riding horse ami eight pack horses, ami for that reason I roujd irayel only

from 10 to 15 miles a day. The first natives I met were about 350- Rose River aborigines—southern neighbours of the Caledon and 1 Blue Bay tribes. “1 made friends with them by treating one boy for a septic foot. The next day live more came along with eczema and opthalmia. The next day my' sick parade was nine, so with this retinue following me.l moved off. “In a few days I was in the Caledon territory, but those aborigines were the only ones of the 1500 I met on the whole of my trip that I could not get to speaking terms with. “I saw only a few scattered myalls when passing through their country about 20 miles from the coast, sometimes going nearer. They showed the deepest mistrust and though I made friendly' signs to them, they would not let me get closer than 50 yards or so, hacking away whenever I tried to walk nearer, holding their spears ready', but never threateningly. “The biggest crowd of Caledons I saw was nine, and my Rose River following were badly scared of them. They called the Caledons ‘proper cheek fellows,’ and were glad to leave them behind. The Caledons, however, never tried to interfere with me, and I did not. try to follow them. As I wanted to get to the least known parts of Australia 1 did not waste time over them. Many' of these natives had obviously never seen a white man or a horse before. “However, as I struck westward from Caledon Bay I was an even greater curiosity'. Natives would run ircm. their camps to meet me, bringing tiici,’ picaninnies and holding il:en> up to got a better view of me ; mi. my hors.'.

“A lew of Hie older men between .\iuh-ni Bay and the Goyder River re:.u mI i't ed white men from the atBnipt Io establish a cattle station at Arm ura. just west, of the Goyder, 30 vci’i.: ago. But none of the younger irita spceple had seen whites, as the utition was abandoned a few years Imi’i. I went to the old homestead ■io.' troni curiosity. But all that remains o;’ civilisation there is a heap of 37 coils of barbed wire and a giant palm tree, 'rhe bush and swamp have claimed the rest.

BIRTH CONTROL. "West of ilm Goyder 1 immediately m>ied an improvement for the better 'it the aborigines, because then 1 I came within the sphere of influence of I I be Millingimbi Methodist Mission. It i was very easy to make the comparison, as I had 250 of the Goyder mob i i cih. wing me ai I hat. I ime. i "The missionised tribes wore far I i Ater behaved and more intelligent, i r l be blacks east of the Goyder were ' ' nimerable lot and remarkable for the i ai‘-mice of young children among I them. Their numbers must be dele.easing last through the practice of i some form of hi rth control. "< eventually got rid of those foli lowers by shooting a buffalo and leav- ' in g io tlx-m. It was not. pleasant to | watch Hmm. They ate every scrap ex- ' cept the skin and bone, hacking the i I east to bits ami warming the flesh | over fires, eating it .practically raw. 'I hey were too full and too lazy to follow me when I moved off. "Tim nearer I got. to Millingimbi the hotter the blacks were in physique. 1 here was an abundance of native food in the shape of fish, quail ami marsupmlr. They had'also learned io fashion bct(<T tools, and bad Jcurimd

other means to make hunting and living easier. “After a stay at the mission I set out for the Liverpool River tribe because I heard that the Millingimbi boys had an argument to settle with the Liverpools. .“Nearly 400 of the tribe travelled with me the 50 miles into the Liverpool country, and then settled the argument in typical aboriginal style. Both tribes painted up, and the Millingimbi boys told in corroboree fashion how one of their tribesmen had been killed by a Liverpool native. “They looked piost tierce, but it all boiled down to a spear-throwing contest, two or three warriors from each tribe taking it in turns to stand out on a plain and let the opposing tribesmen throw spears at them until honour was satisfied. Afterwards they all sat down good friends again. “I particularly' wanted to study the Liverpool natives, as they were new to me, and still carry on cannibalistic practices. So I stayed with them a week. I found them a timid and surly crowd, with very little intelligence. They were very scared of me at. first, but after treating some of them for sickness I got near an old man who seemed to have some sort of loose authority, and gave him tobacco and questioned him through a Millingimbi boy. “He told me that they occasionally' ate picaninnies or lubras, but appar-

ently they do so for ceremonial purposes, as the cannibalism is always accompanied' by' a dance, in which the bones of the eaten child or lubra are tied on to the old man of the tribe. The warriors were too timid and afraid of a white man to give me any trouble. I often went unarmed among them, leaving my' firearms with my' swag for perhaps 24 hours at a time, but they never touched anything belonging to me. They are a very diffi-

cult tribo to get on with and need a lot of tact and patience. “My candid opinion of Arnhem Land is that it is good for nothing except the use to which it is now put—an aboriginal sanctuary. In all my trips I never saw anything that, looked like river, bird life and game were scarce. I saw only old tracks of buffalo in the east, there is no good - feed and water that would support a de-cent-sized herd of cattle, and though I searched carefully for minerals I saw none of any' value. “Aborigines are the only people who could live in such a country.’