WHERE MISSING AIRMEN LANDED

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3400, 30 July 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHERE MISSING AIRMEN LANDED

By BERNARD C. RYDER, F.R.G.S, In this article, Mr Ryder, who was a member of an expedition sent out by British interests to investigate the remote north-west coast of Australia,, describes conditions where the German airmen endured such hardships a few weeks ago. When William Dampier first sighted fhe north-west coast of Australia, he found aborigines roaming the bush armed with great 15ft spears, their bodies hideously disfigured with cicatrices caused by rubbing mud into self-inflicted wounds. Shy and wi-d, they peered at the strange sight of white men, and their eyes gioated on the wonders these men possessed —flintlock muskets and cutlasses. That was 200 years ago. . To-day, if Wilham Dampier visited the same coast, he w°uld find conditions little changed, for the blacks still roam the bush as their ancestors did before them. The few white visitors to this remote coast are still the cynosure of black eyes, and the same covetous eyes glint on wristlet watches and rifles, even as they did on Dampier’s gear. And as Dampier found them 200 years ago, they still remain the prototypes of a dark age. It is hard to realise that the northwest is a part of Australia, for, in the southern cities civilisation of the highest forin is to be found, while within comparatively few day’s sail are unclothed natives, veritable nomads of the north, armed with nullanulla arid spear, ready to attack any white man who appears amongst them unarmed.

Unlike the southern natives, the blacks of the north-west are of magnificent physique; men of 6ft ,6in are frequently met with. Many a white traveller has lost his life through a fatal trust placed in them. In the wild Kimberley. country, natives are known to drag their spears through the grass by their toes,'and the white man who sees them, apparently unarmed, falls an easy yictim to a disregard of caution. Crude crosses covered by leaves from the baobao tree mark the rest-ing-place of many a beachcomber, and the thrilling story of their fight for life against the wild blacks will probably be never found. A great baobao tree is to be found near Port George IV., where Eric McGuire, a beachcomber, carved his initials a few years ago. He was brutally done to death alongside the tree, and he set his own memorial where he was murdered, clubbed by a nuFa-nulla. On’a hill overlooking Sunday Straits are a number of graves, one being erected to a seaman, from the survey ship Fantome. Originally there was a cross at the top of the headstone, but the blacks in the district had chipped it away to provide spearheads. LIKE THE COMICS.

Probably Australia’s most remote picture show is to be found at Broome, .and it is a novel sight to see practically wild blacks brought from the bush by beachcombers’ luggers patronising the “movies.” In the theuatre the audience sits according to

their racial strata, the Japanese being on one side of the hah, Malays and blacks on another while the halfcastes herd in groups as though drawn together by a common bond of ostracism. The white men sit at the front in cane chairs, possibly like the Pharisees, returning thanks that they are not as these men. , The blacks do not understand nor like revues, snow scenes in America or the review of troops in England have no appeal; while the “close-up’ of a kiss in the final drama leaves them cold. But the slapstick comedies send them into roars of laughter, and feats of horsemanship set their black feet stamping with glee. The natives born and reared in a land where club rule is the dominant factor in their lives, and where nature presents the most trying obstacles, at times find difficulty in obtainng sustenance, for the country is har'd and wild. Game abounds, and the bird and fish life surpasses belief. A shotgun discharged into the mangrove trees womd never fail to bring down dozens of crested egrets, whose head feathers are so highly prized by our womenfolk. z White cockatoos rise in great clouds from the cliff face, while, with a whirr of feathers, a flock of black cockatoos wing away with a screech. Fringed on the backwater the mangroves rear their heads, smothered in bush pigeons. Along the mud flats hordes of guttural pelican waddle like an army in regular rhythmical movement, scooping snails into their bellied mouths and throwing the mud out with a swing of their heads; longlegged secretary birds poke amongst the oyster-encrusted rocks, and with a dart seize a stranded sea snake tucked under a coral rock.

RELICS OF THE PAST. Blaekfellows reap a rich harvest from the bird life of. the north for cockatoo, egret, and emu feathers contribute to their regalia in tribal dance. The natives’ ears being ,sensative to the sounds of the bush., are alarmed at rifles, and they keep in the background with hands to ears when one is being fired; but we soon found that though rifles may have been a little novelty they knew of cannon—cannon of the old Dutch type found on the boats of the early buccaneers—for one native drew the crude outline of one on the sand. We speculated as to the possible wreck of some early Spanish or Dutch navigator, and the cannon having been located by the natives in their travels amongst the hundreds of is ands. A rich field awaits the philologist, for on one island off the north-west coast, we found natives, some words of whose dia'ect bore a striking similarity to Latin. They spoke of dog as “caningo ” of water as “agua,” head “apita,” and when shooting crocodiles,, one old native, who acted as guide, gave a laconic “mat” when we bowled one over, signifying that the particular crocodile was in truth “morte.”

Far removed from civi’isation, these natives have remained practically untouched by white influence beyond an occasional visit from a beachcomber in search Of torchus, beche-de-mer, or turtle shell. It came as a shock for us white men to find words distinctly like Latin spoken in this remote spot. Possibly it was as pleasant for the old natives who paid us their respects in a dialect we could slightly understand.