NORTHERN TERRITORY

Otago Witness, Issue 3556, 9 May 1922, Page 21

NORTHERN TERRITORY

A WHITE MAN’S COUNTRY. SYDNEY, May 2. In the course of his evidence before the Commonwealth Works Committee, Mr David Lindsay, who was formerly Labour Administrator in the Northern Territory, declared that the territorv was a white man’s country. A white man could do a decent day’s work there. The aborigines could do much better than they were considered capable of doing. He regarded them as one of the best assets of the Territory. They were intelligent and easily taught anything ,but the blackfellow had never had a chance in anv part of Australia to make good. He suggested that the natives in the Territory, whom he estimated numbered 20,000, should be placed on Melville Island under the control of married whites, no outsiders being admitted. There they could be taught agriculture, stockriding, and other avocations, and thereby be made valuable citizens. STARTLING ALLEGATIONS. DARWIN. April 23. Startling disclosures, matching the worst features of uncivilised communities, are reported from Darwin. The general conduct of affairs by the department in charge of the Northern Ter-# ritory is described locally as an open scandal. Since 1917, when proper official inspection was abolished, natives have been neglected and uncared for. They have been oonstantlv drunk and disorderly, arid regular pitched battles have been frequent near the compound and on the outskirts of the town. A correspondent of the Standard, the local newspaper, publishes terrible revelations concerning the treatment of natives on far-back cattle stations. He gives names, dates, and places, and says that he and others saw the manager on one station order a black boy to be tied to a post. He then flogged him with a stockwhip until he (the manager) was exhausted. Because a Chinese cook hit a boy on the head with a boot-last, causing a nasty cut, the boy retaliated and knocked the Chinaman dowij. The manager covered the boy with his rifle and made two other boys tie him up. Then he flogged him. Further along the road he met the head stockman of the same station on horseback, driving two boys before him with a stockwhip. The boys said the station would not feed or clothe them, so they were forced to run away. They had called at a neighbouring station and found another black boy, their mate, in a wretched way. His young wife had been taken from him by the station cook, who would not let him speak to her. The wife then joined the other boys and ran away to live in the bush, where they were caught and brought back. All four were chained up and flogged. The two were kept in chains until the stockman called to drive them back. The writer asserts that the natives are enslaved and flogged, the women are ravished, and many acts of fiendish cruelty are perpetrated. The correspondent further complains of the shocking insanitary conditions of most of the stations. Sickness is rife. One station manager called out at night to see a Chinese cook, who was sleeping on a kitchen table with a lubra. He said he had always done so, as there was no other accommodation. “Some stations,’’ said the correspondent, in conclusion, “can be smelt before being seen—the worst offenders being the largest pastoral stations. ’ ’ Some revelations are too disgusting to mention, others are most pitiable.