ABORIGINAL SAMARITANS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1936, Page 12

ABORIGINAL SAMARITANS

FIGHT OVER WHITE MEN

SYDNEY, July 2

Philip Carter, an overlander, who arrived at Mount Isa (Queensland) recently from north-west Australia, told of a tribe of aborigines who aided two prospectors and even fought an internal battle over them.

Near the Kimberley Ranges (Western Australia) the prospectors’ camels “went bush’’ with their packs, including water, food and arms. The men were 50 miles from their base, and one of them had sprained an ankle. His mate would not leave him, and so for two days the men struggled toward their camp without food or water. On the third day, the men were almost exhausted, when they fell in with some aborigines, who gave them native food and water. Within 20 miles of their base the uninjured prospector was bitten by a venomous snake, hut one of the blacks, after killing the snake, sucked the wound and applied some plant juice to the punctures. Then several of the aborigines quarrelled, and one of them was dangerously speared in the back.

It soon became clear to the white men that two of the blacks were unfriendly. All night the faction fight

went on between the natives. At daybreak the unfriendly aborigines withdraw. The snake-bitten man developed a high fever, became delirious, and had to be strapped between two natives, who carried him the remaining distance to the camp base. There it was found that most of the provisions had been .looted. One of the frienly natives went 40 miles to another prospector’s camp, and eventually a rescue party of white men arrived.