Australian Natives Believed To Have Died From Starvation
BRISBANE, Oct. 26.—Large areas of land churned up by the Bentinck Island natives in a frantic search for food were found by a rescue party which has just returned to Burketown. The party removed 19 survivors of the island’s population of 300 natives to the Mornington Island mission.
Members of the party said that starvation was probably the cause of the mysterious decrease in the population. There is no real evidence of tribal fighting or cannibalism. The island was desolate, with no game apart from a few seabirds. The natives had apparently lived on dry nutgrass.
There are now 68 Bentinck Islanders at the Mornington Mission, and the missionaries are confident that they will be able to prevent extinction of the race.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19481028.2.73
Bibliographic details
Wanganui Chronicle, 28 October 1948, Page 6
Word Count
130Australian Natives Believed To Have Died From Starvation Wanganui Chronicle, 28 October 1948, Page 6
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Wanganui Chronicle. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.