BLACK MAGIC

Grey River Argus, 12 August 1937, Page 4

BLACK MAGIC

NATIVE DYING. TORTURED IN DREAMS. PERTH, July 16. Hector, the Kimberley native, who became famous because of his feat of endurance after the finding of the crashed German flyers, Bertram and Klausman, is slowly dying on Forrest River Mission Station, from an overwhelming superstition. His enemies have “pointed the bone” at Hector, and their black magic is killing him. Already this once fine, upstanding aboriginal, who ran at top speed for 37 hours over some of the roughest country in the world, to bring the news ot the plane’s recovery to Wyndham, is but a shadow of his former self, and he tells the missionaries Who are trying * to help him that he is tortured every night in his dreams by natives with spears. After the white light of the publicity of the finding of the airmen, Hector went back to the bush. Then one of Hector’s relatives died and was buried on the mission station. The native died a natural death, from internal trouble, but aborigines there must find a valid reason for a blackfellow’s death, and there must be one of their tribe responsible, if only indirectly. Suspicion fell on Hector, although there seemed no logical reason for it. He went bush, but recently he crawled into the camp of Dick Davidson, chief Forrest River stockman, late at night. Davidson has stated that Hector’s condition was pitiful. He had shrunken to an aged, shrivelled and bent figure, who was frightened at his own shadow.

He told Davidson that the natives had pointed the bone at him, and as a result he was getting practically no sleep. He would eat nothing. Davidson sent him into the Forrest River Mission, where he will be given every opportunity of living if the spell of the black magic can be broken.