Límite y Derivada

mistakenly shot with a group of ’mya.il S’ camping at Alice Bore in the region of Gordon Downs.

that Ivanhoe station kept stock losses low and

tound it easy to attract labour because of a policy ot killing bullocks for the inhabitants (Durack. M. 1983:372-3), and this policy was apparently also pursued elsewhere (Willey, K. 1971:98).

This kind of contact shows that colonisation was not initially only a territorial war but a more diffuse conflict over a long period within the matrix of other forms of relations. Within a short time of their arrival the whites usually found themselves communicating with local groups who

camped nearby. Others grew familiar with the whites through labour as prisoners or by congregating at towns such as Wyndham and Halls Creek. Within ten years of the Europeans appearing at the latter place Carnegie declared, in phrasing echoed consistently and with similar error ever since,

their ways and habits are now so mingled with the ideas gathered from the whites that they are not worth much attention" (Carnegie, Hon. D.W.

1898:330). Rapidly acquired skills in aspects of European culture such as clothing, horse-riding, vocabulary, etc. became a resource to be traded with whites, among themselves, and with less

acculturated visitors. Idriess’ description of the approach on horseback to Gibb River homestead in 1933 is evocative of the typical station

composition at various times across the Kimberley in the preceding fifty years:

Across open country a wisp of smoke showed,

then gunyahs [bough shelters], and in a

moment more we were right in the bush camp. One startled glance and then lubras were snatching for some old dress, men snatching at a pair of trousers, piccaninnies climbing

to the gunyah roofs, dogs crouching

uneasily. Most of the lubras squatted in the

dust and ashes, looking strangely like

monkeys.... Tousled-headed tribesmen, their chests deeply cicatrized, stood scowling or staring silently.... Some hundred yards away towards the homestead were the tar better built huts of the station blacks; a crowd of them were watching while over by the goat- yard excited voices called....We rode across to the homestead, prettily set in a circle of natural grass-land with the bush trees half a mile away. Every leaf was swept clean

for yards around the homestead. The ’old

place’ was a huge log shed. Close by it was the new little house of iron, green painted, the feathery leaves of a poinciana shading its verandah. ... To the barking of the dogs a white man came from the kitchen to greet

us....Behind him toddled a fat little

piccaninny, her big black eyes rolling from curiosity (Idriess, I.L. 1947:83-4).

’W i l d ’ Aborigines would come and go from the outlying territory to the station camps of kin, their presence often regarded with a good deal of caution and mistrust. They might aid the

pastoralists at peak times, such as mustering,in return for tobacco (Idriess, I.L. 1947:82. Willey, K. 1971:62). Others were more consist e n t l y

available and received rations of flour, sugar and tea that was also distributed among numbers of semi-employed kin. Even these largely sedentary groups, however, would hand in their clothes and blankets at the start of the wet season and walk into the bush for a season of traditional pursuits (Broughton, G.W. 1965:82. Kaberry, P. 1939:3). This pattern suited both sides. At a period when work was impossible there was also little competition with the introduced stock over access to water. After ’the w e t ’, as creeks dried into a series of water-holes that then themselves diminished, the congregation of local groups around a homestead was a form of mutual accommodation.

The West K imbe rl e y - P olice a nd Pastoral ists

The physical appropriation of the West Kimberley followed much the same process as the East, but the existence of a pearling industry at Broome and the relative proximity to longer-settled areas in the Pilbara and Murchison and to Perth led to more reliance on the police and the dubious sanction of law for control of the indigenes. The division between East and West Kimberley is a long-standing one that is said to be grounded in the Queensland infiltration in the east being opposed to the West Australian immigration in the west. Instead of open range cattle methods, settlers in the west arrived by sea with sheep and spread out along river

valleys*practicising paddocking (Bolton, G.C. 1954:12 )7 The introduction of sheep in the west required greater labour input for shepherding than did the open range cattle of the East. Pearling also required a large number of divers; whose

conditions of work were brutal, necessitating their physical coercion. Consequently, state involvement in the colonisation of the West Kimberley was two­ fold. The police acted both to pacify the

resistance of the indigenes and to regulate their use by means of indenture and other legal sanctions

(see below pp.102-9). The relatively greater accessibility of Perth than in the east, and the longer established outposts of Broome and Derby, also contributed to the greater ease with which recourse was made to government and the police.

From Broome parties of armed pearlers spread out along the Fitzroy River capturing Aborigines for

7 Differences between the two can be over-draaatised. Several cattleaen