Cirrus@Austlit

'On 23 August 1966, approximately 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, protesting against poor working conditions and the taking of their land by pastoralists. Led by Vincent Lingiari, this land-mark action in 1966 precipitated the equal wages case in the pastoral industry and the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. While it is well known that the Walk Off was driven by the poor treatment of Aboriginal workers, what is less well known is the previous decades of massacres and killings, stolen children and other abuses by early colonists. Told in both English and Gurindji, these compelling and detailed oral accounts of the events that Gurindji elders either witnessed or heard from their parents and grandparents, will ignite the interest of audiences nationally and internationally and challenge revisionist historians who question the extent of frontier battles and the legitimacy of the Stolen Generations. ...' (Source: AIATSIS website)

'The name of the tracker in Danbayarri's story matches one from the list of police trackers on the back cover of the Wave Hill Day Journal. The names read Leo Braskella, Ribbon Jumpinjinna, Sambo Wombigarrie, Smiler Row-e-arry (Rawuyarri).'  (Introduction)

'In these stories, Violet Wadrill, Topsy Dodd and Ronnie Wavehill discuss three Afghan storekeepers. Although Afghans are credited with bring camels to the area, the animals were used well before Afghan cameleers arrived in Gurindji country, for example, Nat Buchanan commonly used camels in droving and his explorations of areas south of Wave Hill. Nonetheless, camels are strongly associated with the Afghan storekeepers who came later, although they were using trucks by the time of the events recounted here.' (Introduction)

'Yes, alright. Today I'll tell you a story about one kartiya who lived here at the Settlement. He was an Afghan, that Kartipa, we called him Walyjiwalyji. Whatever his name was, we called him Walyjiwalyji.' (Introduction)

'I'm going to tell about when I was little. I didn't grow up with my mother, with my father. My granny and granddad raised me and took me around with them everywhere, through the bush, all over the place.' (Introduction)

'This story of the search for the Kookaburra was recorded in 1979 by Norm McNair. On board the ill-fated aeroplane had been the pilot Flight Lieutenant Keith Anderson and mechanic RS Hitchcock. The plane disappeared after it left Mice Springs on 10 April 1929. Anderson and Hitchcock are reported to have died of thirst several days after their emergency landing in the north-east Tanami semi-desert, and were spotted apparently lifeless from the Qantas plane Atalanta by Pilot Lester Brain, who knew the area well. Michael Terry describes meeting Lester Brain at Jervois Range in 1929, five months after the event. Brain told him that he had sighted a thick plume of smoke which showed the location of the aeroplane and missing crew who had died.' (Introduction)

'Dandy Danbayarri's story describes in detail the construction in 1929 of the Wave Hill airstrip, which was built to accommodate planes belonging to a search party, and the first landings on it. The planes were participating in the search for aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and the airstrip was one of several that allowed them to fly directly across the country from New South Wales and Victoria, instead of following the coast via Perth.' Kingsford Smith, missing in north-western Australia, was soon found alive near Wyndham; however, the airstrip at Wave Hill was to very soon see much greater use than expected when the Kookaburra, a plane travelling north to join the search, was forced to land in scrub about 130 kilometres south-east of Wave Hill. The cattle station was then used as a base for one of the search parties. These events captured the attention of the nation at the time and are documented in many aviation histories and pilot biographies.' (Introduction)

'Okay, I'm going tell you a story from the old days. Alright, one day our boss, my father's boss, came to speak to him. 'You mob gotta go work now: all of the old girls, old men, everybody not the very old — just the fit and healthy ones. You gotta cut down trees. There's a flying machine that's going to come and land here, just over there, west from here. We've gotta clear out all the grass and trees — everything. It's going to fly over here and land right here.' The boss man was explaining '  (Introduction)

'A lot of children were taken from old Wave Hill Station. They were taken away to Croker Island.' (Introduction) 

'I was a bit older when we first learnt of Welfare, the boss of Aboriginal people. They were the ones who took away the pilyingpilying and sent them to Darwin: my sister, Ronnie's brothers (Jim Ryan and Ted Henry) — there were lots of them --Jarrangka was another. I know them all. Some pilyingpilying are still living in Darwin. I know the ones who got taken from their mothers. The police took them. The children would be hiding behind their mothers when they came.'  (Introduction)

'When I was a child, a flood came and inundated everything. There were kartiya stranded up high in different places. All kinds of things were picked up and swept away by the floodwaters: plates, saucepans, camp ovens — all that kind of thing was taken by the flood. The station people had put food, like bread and sugar, in high places but anything else was swept away. The kartiya themselves stayed high up in the trees or on the roofs. They spent two nights like that.' (Introduction)

Ronnie Wavehill, Blanche Bulngari and Dandy Danbayarri (in Chapter 5) tell of the 1924 flood that washed away the original Wave Hill Station homestead, which was located at Malyalyimalyalyi and Lipanangku near the Wave Hill Police Station, 
which remains at the same location today. Burt Drew and Alex Moray were named as two kartiya present at the time.' (Introduction)

'A long time ago, east of here is where the first Wave Hill homestead used to be. I'm going to talk about what my great-grandfather, Tinker,41 did there when he went upstream from here to Seven Mile, to inundate this area. When I was little my father told me this himself, because it was about his grandfather.  (Introduction)

'This account by Ronnie Wavehill tells of the establishment of Wave Hill Station and the strategy used to bring Gurindji people to the station. Dandy Danbayarri and Peanut Pontiari told a similar story to Patrick McConnell about two young men of the subsections Jangala and Japarta, who were taken from Jangawayarung (a waterhole on Gordy Creek) to the station and trained up?' ' (Introduction)

'Today I'm going to tell the story of the place where that old homestead was. Before that, there was nothing there and the kartiya put up tents. A lot of them came from Darwin and found the country east of here. I was told how kartiya arrived; my great-grandfather who made the flood told this story from a long time ago. '(Introduction)

'This story, in which a white man travelling up the Victoria River is murdered by several local Aboriginal men, clearly correlates to the murder of Patrick O'Neill (also called 'Paddy the Lasher). Accused of the murder was a Gurindji man, reportedly called Wallagoolah (who was probably named after the place Warlakula, (see Chapter 3). Several details of the dialogue Danbayarri reports correspond with witness statements recorded in a newspaper report in December 1896, for example where two of the men were hesitant to murder the man, but one of them was convinced it was necessary and committed the murder himself. Danbayarri describes a farcical, almost comical, scene where the kartiya mocks a ngumpin over his hunting catch, a dead goanna, takes it from him and slaps one of them with it. Both Danbayarri and the newspaper accounts describe the body being thrown into the water. The witnesses in the trial, a man named Caralagoolah and a woman named Bungalla Kitty, were not eyewitnesses to the event, but were from the same Aboriginal clan and claim to have overheard one of the defendants, Jaydeadda, telling of how he had committed the so-called 'killing'.' (Introduction)

Over here to the east - I'm not talking about Jinparrak, but the original Wave Hill Station which was washed away by the flood. I was little then. I was small and with my mother all the time, like these little Nawurla girls here. I was that age. I was starting to understand about things. So over here to the east, where the old homestead was, that's what I'm going to talk about. There was a kartiya manager who was going to arrive. He was travelling up from Darwin by boat. He got to Timber Creek and took a motor car. He unloaded all his gear, swag and everything.' (Introduction)

'It is difficult to match any but a few killings with European accounts. Particulars of events are not reconcilable, although their locations are to some degree. Many of the massacres described by Gurindji historians are said to have occurred before Wave Hill Station was established; however, it is likely that many of the incidents described in the stories occurred during the early station times. ' (Introduction)

Today I'm going to tell a story from a long time ago. You know where I told the flood story (in 'Rainmaker Destroys the Homestead Chapter 4) , and where Jukurtayi (Dandy Danbayarri) talked about when the station shifted to Jinparrak (as told in Chapter 5), well all that's all more recent. This happened right at the start when kartiya (Europeans) found the place on the east side of the Victoria River (the site of original Wave Hill Station) and they made their camp. They came down from Darwin, maybe by boat, to Timber Creek and from there they continued on land, following the Victoria River all the way. They came all the way up here, up to this place on the east side of the river here where the old yards are.' (Introduction)