AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15130, 22 October 1912, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

AN UNHAPPY FATE. [from ottk own* correspondent.] Sit>xf.y. October 15. The Australian aborigine has, like the American Indian, vanished wherever the white man has settled and now is only to be found in a wild state in those remote parts of West Australia, and the Northern Territory that have not yet been opened up. Mr. F. Connor, M.L.C.. who owns a cattle station of 7,000,000 acres, in the far north-west, of Australia, and who frankly confesses that ho has no great love for the blacks, because they frequently spear his cattle, told an interviewer yesterday that there was a lot of foolish sentiment and too much coddling of the blackfellow. He was doomed to extinction, no matter what they did. He believed he would have disappeared altogether in another 20 years. " Civilise him, and he dies out," Mr. Connor went on. " Sometimes a young black who has been working on a station will run. away and join a wild tribe, and put them up to all sorts of mischief. They're the worst. You may try to save them, but it's no use. Obedient to some mysterious Law, they vanish wherever the white man treads. Nearly all the blacks on the eastern side of Australia are gone, and, as I have said, they will, in a couple of decides, all be gone on the western side, too."'