'An Inspector Bonaparte Mystery featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective. Why had Luke Marks driven specially out to Windee? Had he been murdered or had he,as the local police believed, wandered away from his car and been overwhelmed in a dust-storm? When Bony noticed something odd in the background of a police photograph, he begins to piece together the secrets of the sands of Windee. Here is the original background to the infamous Snowy Rowles murder trial.'
Boney and the Powder Trail
( dir. Peter Maxwell
)
Australia
:
Fauna Productions
,
1973
Z1458937
1973
single work
film/TV
Inspector Bonaparte is sent to investigate a murder and finds himself tracking a hired killer who is attempting to escape across the outback with a young Aboriginal guide and a bag of highly marketable heroin.
Three Acts of Murder
Blood in the Sand
( dir. Rowan Woods
)
2009
Perth
:
Taylor Media
,
2009
Z1503194
2009
single work
film/TV
crime
While working on a rabbit-proof fence in 1929, Australia's leading crime writer of the period, Arthur Upfield, began plotting the perfect murder for his 1931 novel The Sands of Windee. A discussion between Upfield and a fellow worker about finding a fool-proof means of disposing of a body to use in the novel was overheard by one of the author's friends, stockman 'Snowy' Rowles. Shortly afterwards Rowles murdered three men and put the scheme into effect. He was later charged by police, however, and the subsequent trial became one of Australia's most sensational during the 1930s.
'This paper’s main concern is how educators can best face the challenge of teaching Australia’s history of frontier violence. Understandably, high school and undergraduate students are wary of such a dark topic that draws in massacres, rapes and allegations of genocide. However, if teachers steer clear of the controversial material, students are left with significantly reduced understandings of why Australian race relations can be so strained. Ignoring the full story of colonisation undermines reconciliation and augments a racial divide. Ignoring frontier violence also strengthens imperialism’s capacity to render subjugated people ‘invisible’. The curriculum’s requirement to teach Australian Aboriginal history in partnership with Indigenous community members is therefore a crucial way of dispelling invisibility and reasserting the legitimate rights of Indigenous peoples to their intangible heritage. Shared teaching humanises the impact of colonisation and frontier violence on Australia’s First Peoples, and protects, maintains and respects Indigenous knowledge, practices and innovations. This is the first paper to indicate that Western Australia’s 1927 Royal Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Killing and Burning of Bodies of Aborigines in East Kimberley and into Police Methods when Effecting Arrests may be the plot source for Arthur Upfield’s (1961[1931]) novel The Sands of Windee and for the Murchison murders (1929–30). The case study’s example of Kimberley Aboriginal people becoming ‘invisible’ leads into an overview of imperialism, where invisibility is implicated in the process of colonisation. The paper then illustrates how collaborative teaching benefits students, teachers and Indigenous people.' (Publication abstract)
