Aborigines at Box Ridge clearing ground for their play area, Pearl Allen is sitting in the middle of the children. There was Lena, who described her life as ‘a long black tunnel’ and who saw our coming as ‘a light at the end’. She is a potential leader of her people. She was determined to educate herself and her children. In the A.F.E.C. she saw a practical way of doing this.

Aboriginal Songs Saturday night developed into one of fun and gaiety. It started slowly with some action songs by the New Zealand party. Then gradually one or two of the Aborigines joined in. The climax came when some of the older Aborigines sang their songs for us. The songs lacked our kind of melody, but fascinated us. One of them did a corroboree dance. The dance consists of very vigorous leg movements accompanied by a chant and two sticks beaten rhythmically together. A sad commentary is that many of the younger men had no experience of the dance. I like to think that our obvious pleasure and pride in our own music communicated itself to them that night.

TV Documentary A TV team from the ‘Four Corners’ documentary series of the ABC covered the activities of the weekend. They became enthusiastic about our aims and methods and their only complaint was that they could not capture on film the warmth and harmony between the two races.

Pre-School Groups Established Sunday night we left the camp and travelled in pairs to the Aborigine Stations where we were to help establish pre-school groups. Pearl Allen and Hine Campbell stayed at Box Ridge where the TV team remained to film the start of an A.F.E.C. As there was no meeting place, the group's first task was to clear an area of scrub and weeds. The young TV men used axe and spade along with the aborigines. Hana Tukukino and Hiria Parata travelled further to Tabulum while Mana Rangi and I continued on to Woodenbong, arriving after 11 p.m. in a very heavy frost. Next morning we visited the station and saw the conditions under which our new friends existed. The Woodenbong Aboriginal Station is a tract of land administered by the Aboriginal Welfare Board for the Aborigine to live on, but which he does own. The men work away wherever they can find jobs, for the land does not support them. The Station is controlled by a manager, appointed by the Board. He is responsible for the Aborigines' welfare. Because of the Australian policy of assimilation (to shift the Aborigine away from the settlements and scatter him throughout the community) nothing has been done to the houses in Woodenbong. These houses are wooden; small, unpainted and unlined, with a wood stove and no electricity, no water laid on—one cold tap outside, in some cases no glass in the Windows, very little furniture and no home comforts. But this was their land, their dead were buried on the hill and they did not want to leave. We spent the morning visiting with those who had not been at the weekend, and at a well-attended meeting that afternoon the Woodenbong Aborigine Family Education Centre was born. When it was suggested that The Tabulum expert at mud-play. The children were at a high level at this activity.