BLACK KILLERS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4872, 18 July 1936, Page 6

BLACK KILLERS

CONVICTS AT DARWIN. "LIKE CHEERFUL CHILDREN." Crime in the Northern Territory of Australia leads offenders, sooner or later, to Fanny Bay Gaol Darwin (writes E. W., Waterman, in the Brisbane Sunday Mail). For more than 50 years black killers, white cattle thieves, and yellow opium pedlars have worked out sentences behind battered gaol fences of bush timber and galvanised iron. This year, stout concrete ramparts are to be reared in its place at a cost of £SOOO. Follow a track to a cliff edge overlooking the changing blues of Darwin Harbour. A herd of goats, white and bearded, watch you walk past a row of guards' houses squatting in the shade of palm, poinciana, and fangipani. Within sound of the sea, of cowbells, and of machines from the aerodrome at the back door, a high black barred front gate is the one traditional grim feature. Beds for White Men. A ring of the polished brass ship's bell brings a scraping of bolts. A wicket gate opens. You present a sheriff's permit to the gaoler, Bob Walker. The door closes. With 55 prisoners, 45 of them aboriginals, you are in Fanny Bay Gaol. Through a barbed gate in brown stone walls 22in. thick you step into the pungent smell of disinfectant and cool dimness of corridors. You pass rows of narrow cell doors. Although gaol regulations do not provide for beds, stretchers are given to European prisoners whose conduct is good. There are 10 white prisoners. Some are lying in the corridor for coolness. They wear blue dungaree trousers and khaki shirts stamped with the broad arrow and a number. Close-cropped heads are bare. You are conscious of a swift scrutiny as you pass to the next barred gate. • Corrobore'e. in Gaol.

The inmates include one European and 20 aboriginal murderers, whose original death s sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment, 3 aborigines who are serving 20 years; 14 serving 12 years, and nine who are "in" for 10 years' imprisonment.

Your eyes blink at the sudden harshness of sunlight as you step into the prison yard. There is a sound of tapping hammers, and a soft scraping of bare feet on dust. A khaki-clad guard, pistol holster at hip, paces by an awning", where a dozen black men sit cracking, stones. • In a shady corner another group squat on bags—threading beads! The beads of coloured glass have been given to them by the guards, who have an amused regard amounting almost to friendliness for their black prisoners. With a cotton framework hooked over a dusty black toe, the dark needlemen weave intricate patterns with infinite patience. These are headband decorations, which are worn at corroborees permitted in gaol every Sunday.

Murderers of Japanese,

A laugh, strangely like a small boy's mirth, makes a top note in the medley of sounds.. These are the black killers . . . Munkee, Minmara, Lin, the notorious Nemarluk, Mangul and Marrigin, who killed three Japanese at Port Keats in 1931; Chalma, Chugulla, Maru, Alligator, and Frying Pan, who, under the leadership of Tiger, speared two prospectors, butchered their bodies, and sank them in acanoe to destroy evidence, at the Fitzmaurice.

And these, the gaoler will tell you, are the best prisoners in the world. They are children, cheerful and tractable. Although humane treatment tempers the rigour of their sen-

tences, they are well disciplined. It is in the darkness of night, when they lie four or more in a cell, that gaol is distasteful. A cry breaks the stillness. The guard flashes a torch over black prone shapes . . .

f'What's the matter, Munkee?" White teeth, gums that look strange in the torchlight because they are red, herald a sheepish laugh. . . . "Me bin sleep. Thinkit debbil-debbil, Boss."