KING BILLY DEAD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20085, 2 March 1928, Page 3

KING BILLY DEAD

THE LAST OF HIS TRIBE CANBERRA IDENTITY. King Biily of Canberra has g"-iA ■Q o-i. Australia feels lonely wiUiout ■•m. Neu Australia is too new io •uow whaL a magnificent figure King : *<ly was. •* King Billy was a picturosquu old au uhum any settle.- who did not .now any better might easily have iduied oil' hi& grounds. He was not cry clean, and lie wore an indescribIde collection of 0.'.l clothes; nothin# u the way of clothes appealed to 'illy until they were readv to ba hrowa away. There was always a log at the heels of this ragged old gui ~ and thus he wandered in and ut ol Can berra, looking and watchng, his dim, faithful old heart reaching out to a past that was hiddaa rom the young folk hurrying by. it is always' lonely to be last of our clan. King Billy was the last if the aboriginal tribe who had onoi ;tinted over the Cotter and the MoJ« ugio. He had stood by, first in biL- • r resentment, then in humility, Year, iml respect as the white man advance 'i and planted his civilisation on dhs .sht.s of the old. Billy, the native, with his Eog at his lecis, saw the first telegraph wires aii:?. Hu may for a time have shared, he idea of many of the natives that he telegraph was the white man's >oundary lence, and scanned it as a >ieue of foolishness; he had someimes seen the lads climb up and cut he wiie of that absurd fence. Billy lood by ami marvelled. He saw acre ,fler acre taken in from the wild, wept clean of its rugged life; he saw I all grow into a capital. , He v/as tncie when the new I’arliauent House was built; and when it vas opened by the Duke of York King Billy was ou the edge of the crowd, jnconsidered, forgotten. There was io place for him in the great proresion, but his eyes looked on a ceremony vhiuh was the last of the many aweuspiring sights planned by the white nen who ha<l borrowed his huntiufr»rounds to live in King Billy felt very -mall and insignificant anr.l very lone* y, for he knew that the old order was •hanging, yielding place to new, and or him, the last of his race, there aus soon going to be no home anywhere. The capital of a continent had swallowed up his home. He knew that the white man s irincc was a great Big Chief, but. he would not, have been human if he had not remembered other chiefs and other days and the hunting-grounds of old. Now Billy has gone; he passed away at 90, an old man alone, with not one member of his tribe and n< member of his racp left to follow hinr to his grave.