Australian Blacks Perform Corroboree For A White Woman

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27241, 18 November 1949, Page 7

Australian Blacks Perform Corroboree For A White Woman

NZPA—Copyright Rec. 10 p.m. DARWIN, Nov. 17. The natives of Daly River, Northern Territory, who once sang and danced in a corroboree to purge devils consuming a sick white woman, this week corroboreed again for the same woman—to bid her farewell on a sixmonths’ tour with her New Zealander husband. She is Mrs Tasman Fitzer, wife of Constable Fitzer, of the Northern Territory Police, formerly of Riccarton (Christchurch). White women are almost never allowed to see dances by blacks, but Mrs Fitzer has become the white queen of the Daly River. Her word is law among the natives. Some months ago the Fitzers figured in an epic of tne bush. For a fortnight Mrs Fitzer suffered agonising pains from rheumatoid arthritis and was kept alive by dangerous doses of morphia administered by her husband. Blacks swam and plodded 50 miles across the flooded Buffalo Plains,to the Adelaide River for help. A police launch fought its way up the flooded Daly River for 30 miles through hordes of crocodiles and took Mrs Fitzer to Darwin for treatment.