Braided Channels of History Recording & Transcript - 08 (Raw)

File contents

                    INTERVIEW WITH JOSLIN EATTS
                                 3 June 2000
                    Transcript updated 16 December 2009.
                     Timecode refers to tape 08_BC_DV
                                Topics in Bold

TC from tape 08_BC_DV

R     00:01:04:20    Alright. It was bad when I was going to school because we
      were living in Hughenden at this time and because I’m left-handed and at
      that time they still had the British belief that if you were left-handed it was
      wrong, you were evil, or dominated by Satan and the devil, and that came
      back through their old Celtic myths from way back in the early century of
      their history. But they did carry it, not in all schools, but Hughenden, it must
      have been through that teacher, probably through his family, lilfestyles, and
      that sort of stuff. So, because I was left-handed, he broke these four fingers
      on my hand because I wouldn’t … I was a left-handed writer. So, needless
      to say, my Dad came down, bashed him up and they arrested Dad and put
      him in the lockup for a couple of days, but he went to court and I don’t know
      what the outcome of that, I never really asked Dad, but he was out anyway.
      He didn’t stay in there very long. Probably got fined, I’d say. But after that,
      that teacher left and we never seen him again and, of course, my finger, well
      it had given me four months of leisure. No school. (laughs) So I loved it.
      But that was the worst part of my schooling days other than fighting my way
      through. Needless to say, I didn’t get much education. We were only briefly
      in towns because Mum and Dad always worked out … contract work always
      entailed bush work.

I     And what was it that kept your parents moving? Like, they weren’t afraid to
      be taken under the Act, it seems. What was the engine to move?

R     Race Relations-Sex

      00:02:57:10    Well, I think it was freedom.       Freedom to do what they
      wanted to do. And freedom to be in the bush, because that’s the life they
      chose. I mean, they grew up through that way. My Mum was the same and
      my Dad, too.     And even today, I mean, you see evidence, even today,
    Aboriginal people, where they live is always close to their lands. That’s why
    I still live in Winton. And when I bought that house in the seventies, I never
    knew that we had the Irish link there. Never knew until I started doing some
    history research of old Winton and I discovered that he had that piece of
    land. He had the whole block, actually, for his bullock wagons, and I
    thought ‘Well, wow, if that isn’t something deep. Of all houses, I had to go
    and buy that place’. I could have bought any house. I could have bought any
    house at all and, of course, after my life in the west as a young girl and a
    teenager, I was sort of just working in hospitals and … mostly hospitals I
    worked in. I didn’t like station work and so I stayed mostly there till I got
    married and then my life changed.

I   So, I want to talk about marriage but why didn’t you like station work?

R   00:04:24:22    I don’t know. I mainly liked the hospital work. I suppose it
    was cleaner and there wasn’t any chance of any bloke raping me or anything
    like that. I couldn’t be locked up like my old people were. And I think that’s
    basically the reason why.

I   So did you directly observe girls being raped?

R   00:04:47:02    Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, of course, alcohol. Well, we never
    drank, see, my Mum or Dad or any of us. A couple of the kids do now, like
    my brother there and one sister. They like a pot or two but I don’t, never did.
    My Mum and Dad never either.

I   So in what kind of circumstances did you see Aboriginal women being
    raped?

R   Race Relations-Sex

    00:05:11:00    Well, I didn’t actually see them being raped but Dad told me
    what they used to do out on the stations. They all had an Aboriginal house, a
    specific house, only young girls in there, all for the white men. Every station
    had them. They were called stud places. Springvale had them, Diamantina
    Gates had them. Every station imaginable. Durack had one. Costello had
    one. All the big heroes had that.

I   And they were jails, essentially, weren’t they?

R   Yeah.

I

R   Race Relations-Sex

    00:05:46:00    Yes, they were locked up and they were only used for sexual
    purposes and, as I said, their kids were probably killed. I don’t know.
    Maybe they got a few out. It’s hard to say. I never really did much research
    in that because to talk, when you’re doing research in Aboriginal history, you
    have to talk to people and there’s not much documented, I can tell you that,
    because the whites hid it. Mum’s aunty is one of them, although he looked
    after her and his white wife accepted it because she had no choice anyway.
    So Mum was the same. Her people were all station people but Mum will tell
    you that side of that.

I   So your Dad, you grew up with your Dad telling you these stories?

R   00:06:38:13    Mostly, yeah.      Yeah.    Oh, yeah.     And I believed him.
    Everything my father has told me, maybe not everything. He didn’t tell me
    some … some things he’d tell me, little fibbers that I found out were not true.
    Other things he never told me nothing that I found out. But the things that he
    did tell me were honest things. They were cultural things. They were to do
    with the family, the history, and the way they were treated on the stations and
    them old people, the last poor old fellas still buried out there, and that was a
    really sad thing. There was eight old people left in 1924 and they were all in
    their seventies and their eighties, all waiting to be transported to the mission.

I   On, this is Springvale?

R   00:07:27:05    Diamantina. They moved them from surrounding stations,
    see. After Meston’s report they started rounding and sorting them up then,
    see. And the few … they had a lot of the old people herded in special areas.
    They always had special areas set up for them. Whitula was one of them.
    Meston got that one fixed up with Costello because that was part of his land,
    so that was a way of shoving everyone in there and all, oh yeah, you know …

I   So                      was a station but all the old people got rounded up and
    put on one station?

R   00:08:04:10    Yeah. Eventually, yeah, they must have made a deal with
    Costello so it was proclaimed an Aboriginal Reserve and there was well over
    two or three hundred Aboriginal people there by the 1900s. And 1904, I
    think, it closed down by then. They’d herded them all into Diamantina
    Station because that was another big reserve there. They had relay camps,
    what they call relay stations. We call them holding yards because that’s
    where they used to hold them and there were usually sections, kids in one
    section, women in the other section, and the men were always out on the
    stations anyway, working, and the old people were always in a section so
    they could dispose of them very smartly.

I   And Palm, if anybody bucked the system …

R   00:08:53:20    Oh, yeah, straight to Palm, yes. One of Mum’s ancestors
    murdered one of the blokes that he worked with. Oh, boy, that was good.
    Everyone cheered. They thought it was great because he was a very cruel
    man and that’s wonderful. I think one of the last ancestors died here a few
    years ago and we all laughed and we all had a merry old time. I rang Mum
    and she said ‘Oh, God. Good’. But he was one of those cruel people. There
    were a lot of them but there were also good ones too.

I   So Joslin, there is here, in just researching this film so far, there’s an ugliness
    in that history …

R   Oh, yes.

I   … deeper than I even realised.

R   Yes. Oh, there’s a lot of ugly things.
I   I want to come now to your life and I understand you saying you didn’t want
    to work on stations.

R   No.

I   What were the race relations and the sexual relations and the gender relations
    that you observed as a young person on stations?

R   Race Relations-Sex /Work

    00:09:49:20    Well, I knew if you went onto the station you’d have to end up
    in the bed with the bloody station owner, or the manager. That’s where
    you’d have to, or you’d end up on Palm Island or Cherbourg. And they’d
    just work the guts out of you anyway. Get you pregnant and shove you on a
    mission. So I avoided those places. I wouldn’t work on them. I always
    made certain I had a job in town somewhere, at the hospitals, or the pubs. I
    didn’t like the pubs very much but I did work in a few of them, but mostly
    the hospitals is where I worked mostly, throughout my working life. Even
    after I got married I was still working in hospitals.

I   So, from what years, from what ages would you have been on Springvale
    with the Milsons?

R   00:10:36:12    Oh, I was only a little kid. After that, as I said, my Mum and
    Dad were free and they just did contract work and I just went with them till
    we ended up in Hughenden and I think it was the first year that I got my
    fingers here broken. So I could write right-handed, and I still can’t write
    right-hand either. But from there, then, we just moved around until Mum
    and Dad busted up and I just worked where I could get work, and one thing,
    we could get work. You just had to watch where you were working, that’s
    all, and who you were working for. But there was quite a few of them. One
    bloke tried to, I remember, he was a wardsman, tried to be smart and I
    remember kicking him in the fork and I think I must have busted one of
    them. But he copped it. He was going to get me charged and I said ‘What
    for?’ because I was very cheeky when I was young. I used to stand up to
    them all, coppers and all, because we knew the secrets and Dad was good at
    relating a lot of that stuff. And I was good, too. I used to observe a lot of
    things, like if there was whitefellas mucking round with black women, you
    know. I used to go out of my way to let them know that I knew too.

    00:11:48:18    So it happened in a lot of the towns. I avoided it mostly and
    most of my jobs, even from there, like when I got married, I was still sort of
    working on and off when I could to help with the money – it was pretty
    tough – and he worked in the Railway. Then we busted up and I ended up
    moving down to Brisbane then, where I could get the kids education, better
    education. There was hardly anything out here then. And a bit of a tough
    battle for a while. I used to work, because you couldn’t get the dole in them
    days, you couldn’t get pensions or anything, so I used to work in a cannery
    down there then. And I think most of my life I was backwards and forwards.
    I’d go down to Brisbane and work for a while and I’d go back to Winton
    because Dad was still out there working around there, and till about the
    seventies when things changed. There wasn’t that much racism around, I
    noticed, because I’ve had fights with teachers, throwing teachers out the
    window too and been charged with assaults and all them things, or bashing
    them up, because they were cruel to my kids. I copped it when I was young
    and I wasn’t going to let it happen to them. So there were quite a few of
    those conflicts during the time when my kids were going to school but boy,
    oh boy, it’s a wonder they didn’t lock me up for life. I was really, really a
    nasty person. But I think it was, just going back over the years, you’ve just
    got to stand up stronger and you had to learn to fight.   00:13:24:10

I   I’d like to understand a little bit more about …

    Now I’m rolling, so it’s 1708 here and it’s 1345 on the camera,
    thereabouts.

    Joslin, you wanted to tell me one more thing about life with your husband
    and how you brought up your children.

R   00:13:59:20    Yeah, it was really hard, difficult, and he was working in the
    Railway and Mum was living here in Mt Isa then, and she went down to
    Brisbane so we sort of followed her down there, and then things went wrong
    from there. Just one of those things, I guess. He ended up picking up with
    someone else. So it left me with all these children.

I   How many children?

R   00:14:25:15    I had six kids then, and I was pregnant with my seventh. So I
    had no money, no way of getting anything at that time. So I got a job in the
    cannery. I worked then till I started having pains. I booked straight into the
    private hospital, down The Valley there, had the baby and went straight back
    to work. They give me two hours, so it took me two hours. I went straight
    back to work. And then I was there, just kept working for a while and got
    sick, and I ended up picking up with a bloke. I lived with him for a while
    and had some more children and that was a battle too. I was still doing the
    same thing, working and that, but I had a partner too. That didn’t last long
    either. He sort of turned into an alcoholic and so we just split and went our
    separate ways and then I moved into … and I become a cab driver. I drove a
    cab for seven years in Brisbane to support my kids. That was a good way of
    looking after them and making money at the same time. I was lucky enough
    to win a licence through the government auctions. So I bought into the cab.
    I owned it, paid it off, and I leased it out in 1975, went back to Winton,
    leased it back to the company for 12 months and then till I got a buyer, and
    sold out my interests in Brisbane and bought the house in Winton that my
    ancestor owned, which I didn’t know at that time.

    History/Education
    00:16:04:08    From there, then, I tried to get a job in Winton but that attitude
    was still there, you know, and I didn’t have the skills. I had no skills, not
    much schooling either to go with it, so I … and at the time a couple of the
    kids wanted to do Year 11 and 12 and they didn’t have that facility in Winton
    so we packed up and went back to Brisbane. The girls finished their 11 and
    12 and I went to TAFE College and did a two-year course on Aboriginal and
    Islander History and it got me a Diploma.         It wasn’t much but it was
    something, so from there, then, I got a job as a Liaison Officer at Cherbourg
    Community, Aboriginal Community, and I spent two years there, and that
    was, my interest was aroused then with history, so I started doing family
    trees of the Aboriginal people at Cherbourg. And a friend of mine, a little
    white girl, she was the secretary for the Community Services, we combined
    our skills together and we created the Cherbourg Historical Society.
    Between the two of us, we did all the histories of all the people and some of
    their stories and we had a newsletter that we used to put out little bits and
    pieces of interest on history.

    00:17:32:00    And then I got homesick, packed up and come back to
    Winton, and I couldn’t get a job. By then, you know, without a job I was had
    it and I thought ‘Here I am’. I didn’t want to go back to working in hospitals
    and pubs. I had a degree in something better, so I ended up getting a job
    over here in Mt Isa and from here, I stayed there for a little while and then I
    become involved with government contract work then, because 1986 was the
    first year that the Census involved Aboriginal people. So I become involved
    in doing all the government work and the Electoral Commission opened up
    the way then for ATSIC                                 so since then that’s the
    only work I’ve ever done is government contract work for the Bureau of
    Statistics, and I did housing surveys with a couple of private firms that do
    surveys and …

I   You did the Pipeline Project?

R   History/Channels
    00:18:35:16    And that came up. The Pipeline Project came up and that
    gave me an opportunity, then, to move back into the country and follow up
    on the interest that I had in history, and I’ve always been interested in history
    from my Dad, way back, and I just developed my own style and I’m a private
    researcher now. I don’t say, I’m not skilled, I don’t have any degrees or
    anything but a lot of people come to me for assistance, so that’ll tell you
    something. And even the John Oxley Library send people out to me, and
    that’s black and white.

I   And you are now doing a degree, a higher degree, aren’t you, with Deakin?

R   Native Title
    00:19:14:14    Yeah, with Deakin University now. And it’s been wonderful.
    It was cultural interpretation. Because of my land claim, in 1992 the land
    became available and, of course, the Mabo Decision had just came down
    then and awaiting the Wik Decision, so I started moving things into place to
    lodge a land claim. So in 1992 I lodged my very first one under the Lands
    Act but I was knocked back because the parks were not gazetted at that time,
    so I kept pushing and pushing until, finally, I just got there. And my land
    claims, so far, are going ahead steadily, following the guidelines, and I do a
    lot of undercover stuff, too, like land protection and cultural management
    and history.

I   Where do you reckon is the source of your passion for history?             You
    mentioned your father.

R   Yes.

I   What did your Dad tell you about history?

R   00:20:24:04    Well, he said it was very important to preserve it as much as
    we can. We have one advantage now. We have computers that we can
    document things and they’re preserved forever.          The oral history that
    Aboriginal people had died out, sort of thing, during his growing up time, so
    just using the modern techniques, I mean we’re just as active as what they
    were. I still don’t have any computer skills, only the basics, but some of the
    kids chip in occasionally and type things up for me that I want done, but I
    still do all basic writing and I’ll keep all my history in books and I’ll have a
    couple of little small pamphlets of different sections of my work that I do and
    surveys and the history of the Channel Country, I know everything.

I   So Joslin, when you were saying that you think that computers have given
    Aboriginal people a way of transmitting their culture, similar to the old oral
    system, do you want to explain that?

R   00:21:47:10    Yes. Well, it’s not similar but it’s a way. It’s not similar.
    You can’t do anything with a computer that comes straight from your heart,
    because when you’re writing English, which is what we have to use, you can
    portray some of your feelings in the work that you do by words that you use,
    but it’s not the same because you can’t combine the oral history with your
    land. I tried to do it with pictures, like the book that I did, with the pipeline.
    I tried to portray what things I’ve felt, how I felt about that, by using those
    pictures. It didn’t quite make it but it’s there, you know. But it’s not the
    same. It’s just a different method, a different way of preserving history,
    because a lot of the people, say, during Dad’s time, they held back a lot of
    stuff from him too, probably, because you had to follow the law and Dad was
    initiated but he may not have been fully initiated. You see, we come from a
    very high degree race of people. They were all kings, even on my mother’s
    side, which means they were very special people. So they had very strict
    guidelines to follow and Dad knew that but I didn’t know that at the time
    until I got into deeper research. And, of course, with Native Title we have to
    go right back now and there’s been a whole lot of stuff. Alice Duncan
    Kemp’s work, I’ve always been an avid writer and reader. I love books, I
    have a lot of first editions. I just love them. So I’ve had all her books. I
    bought them every time they came out, the first one even I bought as soon as
    I was able to read and, you know, be really interested in it. And it wasn’t for
    a few years that I begin to understand the meaning of her books. The things
    that she put in there all were my family.           00:24:08:16

I   So Alice’s first book came out, I think, in 1932.

R   Yes.

I   So that would have been before you were born.

R   That’s right, yeah.

I   So when do you remember first being aware of Alice’s books?

R   00:24:21:00    Oh, I’d say about, probably about 10 years ago, that I …
    because I look for everything to do with history. So I combine the stuff that
    I’ve got and build it … you build history by what other people write. One
    good thing that English language and books have given people like me is
    their history and that gives me an opportunity to dissect them, because they
    only tell you the good things but they do tell you locations. They tell you
    where they were, what years they were there and on the other side of the
    Aboriginal histories, you get all the other stuff, and you can put them
    together very simply. If he was the father of that child, there he was, the year
    that that child was born. It’s a bit difficult doing Aboriginal history but I’ve
    developed a very good style that works very well and probably because the
    interest has always been there anyway, and I like the truth. If nothing else, I
    go for truths and facts and always have on the sideline something to back it
    up, so you have their books that they write about their histories.

I   So you’re saying that for you to read the history written by white people
    gives you a way to understand their perspectives?

R   00:25:49:20     Oh, yeah, definitely. And how I found my family in Alice’s
    books was one name. It was Poperara, King of the Diamantina River, and
    Moses. Well Moses was my grandfather’s cousin. They were first cousins,
    by blood, too. So I just tracked them all back and there they were. They
    were all in her books. Even my grandfather’s name is there. My Dad’s
    name wasn’t. It could have been one of the young boys that she mentions in
    there, young boys, but I don’t know for sure. But Mick, you can’t mistake
    that. There was only ever one Mick in that area and that was Michael
    McCabe. There’s never, ever, been another one.

I   And Michael McCabe was your grandfather?

R   Grandfather, yeah.     And plus he was tall.       He was handsome.       Very
    handsome.

I   So you probably told me and I’ve missed the connection somewhere but
    Mooraberrie is a long way from Springvale.

R   That’s right.

I   It’s probably what, three or four hundred kilometres?

R   Yeah, probably round about that.
I   So how had your … you said your Dad was Kurrawalli and your Mum was
    …

R   No, my Dad’s Murrawalli, my grandfather is Kurrawalli on his Mum’s side.
    Because she is Kurrawalli.

I   Right. So your Dad was from the lower Channel Country.

R   00:27:14:00    His mother, no my Dad is from the top. The Murrawalli. His
    mother was Murrawalli person.      That was their clan group.      And my
    grandfather’s mother was Kurrawalli and they linked up and Palparara, King
    of the Diamantina, that’s in and throughout her books, he was born at
    Palparara which is in the middle, and he has both connections. Now, that
    was the name that tore me back to her books and I thought ‘My God. How
    would she ever know that?’ and I researched and found all Native Affairs
    records and my Dad’s and grandfather’s certificates, everything I could find
    on them, and they were there.

I   Now it’s interesting, I’ve interviewed a number of people, well a couple I
    suppose, so far, and talked to some others on the phone. White people from
    around Windorah, Jundah, don’t necessarily give great credence to Alice
    Duncan Kemp’s books …

R   Of course they don’t.

I   … partly because they say that Alice left Moraberry when she was 20 and
    she was writing the books …

R   00:28:22:04    You see Alice didn’t … Alice wrote the books but it wasn’t
    her words. They were written by an Aboriginal person. That is why her
    books are different.

I   Do you want to explain that?

R   Women/Land – Alice Duncan-Kemp

    00:28:34:15    Yeah, Moses wrote them. And Mary Ann helped. They were
    both educated. Alice only just wrote them. And if you’ve seen any copies,
    and Pam will tell you the same thing, so will Yvette, there’s no way in the
    world that that white woman could write the way she did. And that would
    only come from a blackfella’s heart, not from hers. And she tried so hard,
    she’s like Yvette, she tried so hard to get that feeling of belonging but she
    never, ever reached it. Right throughout her life, Alice never reached it. But
    she tried so hard. It would be like Yvette, it’d be the same thing. And she’ll
    never get there because they’re not Aboriginal. Simple. But they can get
    close. I mean, it’s not what they want but it’s close and maybe they’re going
    to have to be … and I’m sure Alice was the same, although they reckon even
    before Alice died she was moody, she was quiet, she was very secretive, and
    she used to lock herself up in her rooms and she was weird. So she searched
    probably most of her life and still never got what they had. The feeling of
    freedom and love for the land, the culture, the true spirit of everything. The
    honesty, the truthfulness and the deep religious feelings of everything that
    grew, the land, the trees, the water, the birds, everything.

I   So Alice left Mooraberrie, I think in 1923, something like that. When she
    wrote the first of the books, she would have been I think married, travelling
    round with her husband …

R   Yeah.

I   … and as I understand it, because there was bad blood between, I’m not sure
    whether between Alice and Laura or which of the Lauras, you know, Alice
    and her Mum or Alice and her sister.

R   Probably the sisters, I think, because Alice remarried, see, and none of them
    knew.

I   You mean Laura remarried.

R   Laura remarried, yeah, and none of them knew. She kept it a secret. And
    then when he died, well she had an affair with the other bloke. And they
    never knew that either.

I   Are you talking about Arthur Churches?
R   00:30:57:17      Yeah. Yeah. He was her boyfriend, he was the last one. And
    he only came there as a, he was just a rabbit shooter. He was a nobody, a
    nothing, and she, well there was limited men out there in them times and the
    whitefellas would have had their own wives, you know, and there were
    plenty of black women so why would they want another white one? They
    usually only had one white one and a lot of other Aboriginal women. So
    Laura was fair. I still think there’s, I haven’t found it yet but I will.

I   You haven’t found what?

R   Laura’s identity.

I   You’re talking about Laura the daughter?

R   No, Laura the mother.

I   Laura the mother?

R   00:31:44:20      Laura the mother, yeah, when old William Duncan died, she
    remarried and then when he died, she lived with the other bloke, so as I said,
    that’s all been, even the family never knew a lot of that. So it was probably
    kept secret because you’re not supposed to do them things, see.

I   I know Robyn said that her Mum, yeah, didn’t tell her a lot about the first
    Laura, Laura the mother.

R   No, no, that’s right. Very rarely is anything spoken of her and if you go
    through all her books, she only mentions one or two sisters’ names, so they
    couldn’t have been close at all. And none of them were involved with
    Alice’s thing.

I   So what I want to understand, Joslin, is exactly what you believe, because
    Alice left Moraberry in the, say, early twenties …

R   About the twenties, I think, yeah.

I   … and I think only came back about three times so would barely have seen
    Moses and …
R   Alice Duncan-Kemp

    00:32:51:02    Well Moses didn’t go very far.         He only went as far as
    Windorah and that was only briefly. He stayed around Morney for most of
    his life. He was on Mt Leonard as a black tracker for a while and then he
    retired then, and died in 1952. And that’s where he’s buried, on Morney
    station. And Mary Ann’s buried a bit further down at Betoota. That was his
    sister. So they never left the place, and plus the fact he could write, you
    know. And have you seen that handwriting? Oh, you wouldn’t have seen
    any of the notes, eh? That’s been left. Yeah. Some is very good writing and
    the rest is real illiterate looking. Alice, from what I can gather, some of the
    stuff, I can’t even find her listed in any of those private schools that she was
    supposed to have gone to. So maybe she didn’t have any education. I
    shouldn’t be talking about her like this. As I said, she left me something that
    nobody could ever leave. She left our people, and she was probably just a
    pawn, a person, or someone to relay something on for someone else. I think
    a lot of us, maybe not a lot of us but some of us, are probably meant to do
    those things anyway. There’s always something in someone’s life that you
    benefit someone else. I don’t know, it’s just things that I can see sometimes,
    and I think she left that for us. Because what she did, she put all the tribes on
    Moraberry Station.       She put every tribe on Mooraberrie Station.       Now
    common sense is going to tell you that that could never have happened.
    Never. Never, ever, could happen. All those people in one station? No.

I   Because traditionally they would have had …

R   00:35:49:06    Rights.     Even if they were hunted off their lands from
    Kurrawalli or Diamantina Gates or any of the stations round there, Monkira,
    there’s no way in the world, even Debney, he’s had Aboriginal descendants,
    too.

I   Debney?

R   00:35:05:16    Yeah. He was on Kyra. So, no, but she put everybody on
    Moraberry Station. Everybody. And they did not all come from Moraberry.
    Even Clara, there’s a lady she mentions, Clara, in her books. Clara comes
    from Springvale Station. She was there during my Dad’s time and I have a
    picture of her and how she says she, what’s the word she used? ‘With her
    heart, she gave me her son’. Now that’s a lot of crap. He was sent there by
    the Native Affairs and I found the reference to it, too, through Native Affairs
    records. So a lot of it’s lies. I’ve dissected her books. I’ve dissected them
    that much, there’s not much left of them. There’s not much left of Alice
    Duncan Kemp, and her dream. What she did leave, as I said, she left what
    she wrote, yeah of course, but the rest I’ve dissected it.

I   So is what you’re saying that Alice didn’t actually write the books?

R   00:36:12:16    No.    She wrote the books alright, because she had the
    typewriter to do it. I couldn’t imagine a blackfella having a typewriter. But
    she wrote them, but it weren’t her words, they were all Aboriginal words.
    And what she did, she just put them all in, on one station. She’s got history
    there of Wonkamara people. She’s got history of Durrie people. She’s got
    history of Pitta Pitta people. She’s got history of Murrawalli Kurrawalli
    people. She’s got history of that many people. Wonkamatla people. She’s
    even got history of the Kullalli and Boothamara people from over the
    Cooper’s Creek. Now that’s not hers, that’s come from McKenzie. Because
    McKenzie …

I   Who’s McKenzie?

R   That’s the second husband. Husband No.2.

I   Laura’s second husband.

R   00:37:02:20    Second husband, yeah. Yeah, well he did a bit of exploring
    and a lot of that stuff that she writes in there about Aboriginal people coming
    over here on a land bridge, that’s all a lot of crap too. That’s all his stuff and
    plus his father was a scientist. His father was a very educated man from
    England and he was over in the New Hebrides and India and all them places
    doing all that indigenous research there. That’s all his stuff that she used.
    She must have had access to it, probably the son kept a lot of his father’s
    things, and you know there’s a lot of stuff in there but, as I said, I don’t want
      to tear Alice down because she left a lot for me. Stuff she’ll never dream of,
      even in death. So no, I always give a reference to her when I’m writing any
      material on the history of our country down there and legends and stuff like
      that. I always put a little reference to Laura, not Laura, to Alice, because she
      kept it together. It could have been lost. See? Native Affairs could have got
      it and dissected that too. It would have been burnt.00:38:21:16

TAPE 2 – SIDE A