CATTLE SPEARING

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 December 1937, Page 5

CATTLE SPEARING

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. Aborigines in the coastal areas of the Northern Territory and in the north-west of Western Australia still help themselves to the white man’s cattle.

The Myalls, knowing the penalty of detection, are’ cunning enough to operate in isolated areas where chances of being caught in the act are small, (states a contributor to the “Sydney Morning Herald.”)

It would be hard to estimate the number of cattle the Myalls account for annually, but on some of the large holdings where the blacks made periodical camps killings occur regularly. It is not only the loss of cattle that makes the Myalls a source of annoy.ance to station managers. Repeated 'onslaughts cause cattle to become wild, and a herd soon loses condition and gets out of hand. Cattle from Myall infested country are alwhys troublesome on camp at nights, the slightest noise evidently conveying the fear that cattle spearers are abroad. A rush is the outcome.

In some instances country in the north-west of Western Australia has been thrown up owing to the inroads made in the herds by the Myall spearers. Where distances are reckoned in hundreds of miles the prevention of killings becomes impossible. What dingoes are to sheepmen, the cattie spearers are to cattlemen of remote areas. Yet it is only logical that the original owners of the country should consider themselves justly entitled to help' themselves to food, more especially as the coming of the white men drove away the native game upon which the Myalls depended for an existence. The law, however, stands, and cattle spearing is a crime. Were a cattle station to provide beef for ail tiie Myalls within its boundary the slaughtering of cattle, would be a fulltime job, and'even then the blacks would probably prefer to indulge in the sport of securing their own beef on the hoof. They have done so for decades, and in spite of the thinning out of the aborigines and the control exercised by the mounted police, they continue to lake heavy toll of cattle beyond the outskirts of civilisation.