The man who cracked the Anaiwan code

Terry Crowley: A brilliant linguist who shed light on the mystery of Anaiwan. This is the first in a series discussing the deciphering of the mysteries of New England's Anaiwan or Nganjaywana Aboriginal language

Next part in this series; Terry Crowley's hunt for traditional languages 

It took the brilliant linguist Terry Crowley to crack the mystery attached to the Anaiwan or Nganjaywana language of the southern New England Tablelands. He did so as a third year student at the Australian National University.

Terrence Michael Crowley was born on 1 April 1953 in Billericay just east of London. The family emigrated to Australia when Crowley was about seven years old, taking up a dairy farm outside Shepparton.

Crowley was dux at Shepparton High School in 1970, enrolling the following year in a Bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies at ANU. There he came under the influence of R M W Dixon who interested him in Aboriginal languages. In 1974, he gained first class honours with a University Medal in linguistics and then worked as a research assistant in Bob Dixon’s department, again concentrating on Australian Aboriginal languages.

At this point, Terry Crowley’s interest moved to the languages of the Pacific and especially Vanuatu. His sudden and unexpected death from heart attack on 15 January 2005 came as a shock to friends and colleagues alike.

Crowley made his contribution to our understanding of the Aboriginal languages of the broader New England during the early part of his career.

In 1976 came his pioneering study of the Nganjaywana language. This was followed in 1978 by two publications on Bundjalung, the language spoke north of the Clarence. Then in 1979 came a piece on Yaygir, the language spoken at the mouth of the Clarence.

Prior to Crowley’s work, the Nganjaywana or Anaiwan language was a mystery. It seemed so different from other Aboriginal languages, a language on its own. Was it in fact a remnant of an earlier language, the sign of remnant group from an migration?

There has been dispute about the pattern of early human settlement of the Australian continent, disputes that have formed part of the so-called history wars. Are modern Aborigines direct descendants of a first founder group or have there been several waves of migration, with later arrivals mixing with and ultimately supplanting earlier arrivals?

The model extended and popularised by American anthropologist Joseph Birdsell suggested that settlement had come in three distinct waves involving different peoples. This model was supported by theoretical arguments, as well as skeletal, cultural, ethnographic and linguistic studies.

One thread in the discussion was that the Tasmanians, the pigmies of North East Queensland and perhaps the Anaiwan were remnants of an earlier migration pattern later supplanted by modern Aboriginal groups.

We now know, I think, that modern Australian Aboriginals are direct descendants of first settler groups. This does not rule out settlement by earlier hominids, we have no evidence here at all, nor does it rule out later admixtures. However, the basic pattern seems clear.

While modern DNA analysis is central to our new understanding, it was the work of linguists such as Crowley who filled in part of the pattern. In particular, Crowley showed that Anaiwan was related to surrounding languages.

I will continue this story next week.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 31 May 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.    

Armidale Teachers' College - becoming part of Armidale

Part and parcel of life: The 1937 swimming carnival at the old baths. College students and their activities became an integral part of Armidale. This, the eighth in Jim Belshaw's series exploring the early days of tertiary education in New England, concludes the series' first part. 

Today it is hard to realise just how important the Armidale Teachers’ College was to the pattern of Armidale life in the middle decades of the twentieth century. 

The College was ten years old when the University College was founded. It would be a number of years after that before university students outnumbered college students. Never big enough to dominate city life in a way the University would come too, it complemented and reinforced existing activities, laying the base for new ones.

Visually, the College on the hill dominated a city of generally single story buildings. The students who walked in convoy up the hill in the morning just before nine from Smith House and later the new men’s residences and then again down the hill at five were a familiar part of the streetscape.

The local sporting competitions were strengthened by the TC teams, the church youth groups received new members, while local store keepers found a new source of business. College students performed at local venues, while College facilities from the auditorium to the sporting fields were a valuable addition to local infrastructure.

For the students, the reminiscence of College life that I have been able to find have a number of common features.

The first was the collegiate if sometimes paternalistic nature of College life. To many students away from home for the first time with limited previous opportunities, the College was a new and active social and cultural world. They were encouraged to become involved in College activities that fitted their particular interests.

Sport was obviously important, as was the opportunity to mix with the opposite sex. Then there was the exposure for the first time to drama, writing, music and art.

Time and time again, former students referred to the Hinton Collection.

To Howard Hinton, photo, art was an integral part of life, to be enjoyed. He insisted that the paintings he donated be preserved as a single collection and shown in hallways and lecture theatre so that they formed an integral part of the daily round.

It is clear that he was successful. The paintings might not have been seen by as many as they would have been in, say, the NSW Art Gallery, but they were seen intensively. They became part of internal visual memory for many students.

Another feature of College life was involvement in religious activities at College and in the city. We tend to underestimate today just how important religious beliefs were in daily life.

We also forget the strength of sectarian divides between Roman Catholics and Protestants, between Micks and Prods. One devout Catholic records that this was the first time he had been forced to mix with with, let alone share a room with, a Prod!

From the College students went on to a variety of life paths, some achieving great prominence. I will look at this when I continue the story in a later series of columns.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 24 May 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.   

On-line source: first NSW Legislative Council records 1824-1855 now digitised

The NSW Parliament has now digitised records relating to the first New South Wales Legislative Council from 1824 to 1855. It includes tabled papers, Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reports of debates, and documents relating to the administration of the First Council (classified as "non-tabled papers").

These have been indexed by document type and date. Please note, over time some of the early original material has become faded and in some places illegible; nonetheless it is included here in its authentic form as a record of its existence.​ Also, while every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the archive is a work in progress and some classification errors may exist.

Bumpy beginnings for young teachers

Long trip: The Kempsey-Armidale Road in the 1920s. It wasn't always easy for students to get to Armidale over New England's dreadful roads, and the trip could leave them feeling quite sick. This is the seventh in Jim Belshaw's series exploring the early days of tertiary education in New England. .

To the young seventeen and sometimes sixteen year olds who came to Armidale Teachers’ College and, later, to the University College, it was a path to a new world. 

The College’s catchment extended from Maitland to the Queensland border. North Coast students were especially important, as they would be to the later University. 

In most cases, they were the first in their family to undertake any form of higher education. Many had barely travelled outside their home towns. The great majority were quite religious and came from socially conservative families and communities. 

For writer Shirley Walker, the College was a way of leaving the claustrophobia of home and community.

Many parents had reservations about education and risks, especially for girls. However, teaching was also seen as respectable, a means for social advancement. 

For some such as writer Shirley Walker who studied at the Teachers’ College during the Second World War, the College was a way of leaving the claustrophobia of home and community. For most, I think, the feeling was one of nervous excitement connected with the unknown.

Getting to Armidale could be an issue because of the poor east-west transport links. 

Les Sullivan from Kempsey was awarded a scholarship to the College in 1941. To solve the problem of getting there, his parents booked him onto the twice weekly Woodward and Purkiss coach service to Armidale. 

“Bidding my parents a teary farewell with an admonition from my mother, ‘Don’t do anything you’d be afraid to tell us’, ringing in my ears, I boarded the large open-style stretched tourer (probably a Studebaker or Hudson) for the 120 miles (190 km) gut-churning, dust-eating, corrugated ordeal”. 

“I had always been prone to carsickness so it was not a journey I was looking forward to. I can still see the sign at the bottom of “The Big Hill” warning of 12 miles (17 km) of winding road. I was too sick to enjoy the tea stops at Bellbrook and Jeogla and just prayed for the ordeal to end.”

Coming home was a little easier, for the large number of North Coast students made it possible to book return charters to at least the main destinations. Even so, as late as the 1930s, it was sometimes easier for one North Coast student to return home via rail to Sydney and then steamer to Woolgoolga. There he would be lowered onto the long wharf in a wicker ware basket along with his luggage.

But what type of College did the students find upon arrival? Here we have a 1935 description from the Sydney Morning Herald describing the completed main buildings and initial playing fields. The journalist was totally impressed with the space, the facilities and standard of teaching.

If the aim of the piece was to impress city students that they should consider the College, it would certainly have helped. 

For most of the Northern students, it would have been the largest and most impressive building they had ever seen and by a considerable margin. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 May 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.   

Research Note: Impact of Smallpox on Aboriginal New England

It is now well established that diseases brought by Europeans extended beyond the moving frontier wreaking havoc on Aboriginal communities still distant from European settlement. One such disease was smallpox, with outbreaks starting in 1789 and then again around 1829.

Discussion on smallpox has focused on two questions.

The first is where the smallpox came from. There are two schools. One said that it came from the settlement at Sydney, a second from Macassan visitors harvesting trepang in Northern Australia. The second question is the scale of the death toll. Both questions have become embroiled to some degree in the continuing history wars.

A related question is the nature of transmission mechanisms, a question that links to the structure of and relations between Aboriginal groups. For example, could smallpox in fact have come from Northern sources in the required time horizons given geography and the pattern of Aboriginal relations? Again, could smallpox have spread in the way sometimes described given geography and the pattern of Aboriginal relations?

I am interested in the impact of smallpox on the Aboriginal peoples of Northern NSW, the broader New England. The questions as to who might be responsible and why fall outside my immediate scope except to the degree it affects what happened in New England.

Based on my very preliminary work, my present tentative conclusions are:

·         The first smallpox epidemic came from the Sydney settlement. Its hard to fit the geography otherwise. I still have an open mind on the second.

·         In broad terms, the impact of smallpox was geographically patchy because of the particular dispersed structure of Aboriginal life in combination with the transmission pattern. It hit Sydney hard because you had a high population concentration meaning that people could mix during the contagion period. For smaller groups, infection would depend upon someone one coming while contagious and then infecting the group, with on-transmission depending on someone getting to the next group while contagious. In theory, I suppose, you could have it carried on possum coats or artifacts. The process would be easier if you had largish adjoining populations that mixed such as along the Murray.

·         In the first round, infection appears to have reached the lower Hunter but not beyond. The 1829+ second round was geographically broader, but perhaps not so intense. I say this because the descriptions of Aboriginal people across the North after 1831 that I have seen do not appear to contain references to smallpox markings. 

As I said, very tentative. I stand to be rebutted.

Source Notes

N G Butlin, Macassans and Aboriginal smallpox : the '1789' and '1829' epidemics, Australian National University 1984

Judy Campbell, "Smallpox in aboriginal Australia, the early 1830s", Historical Studies, Volume 21, 1985 - Issue 84

Judy Campbell, Invisible invaders : smallpox and other diseases in Aboriginal Australia, 1780-1880 ,.Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Vic. 2002.

Peter J. Dowling, VIOLENT EPIDEMICS: Disease, conflict and Aboriginal population collapse as result of European contact in the Riverland of South Australia, 1990, MA thesis in Biological Anthropology, Department of Prehistory and Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University Canberra ACT Accessed online 17 May 2017 file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/OWNER/My%20Documents/Downloads/b17470511_Dowling_Peter_J.pdf

C Mear, C. (2008) The origin of the smallpox outbreak in Sydney in 1789,Journal of the Royal Historical Society, Vol.94, Part 1 pp.1-22, 2008

Michael O’Rourke, The Kamilaroi Lands: North-central New South Wales in the early 19^th century, Michael O’Rourke, Griffith 1997

Jim Poulter, “The smallpox holocaust that swept Aboriginal Australia. - Red hot echidna spikes are burning me”, (We) can do better, 2 March 2014

Chris Warren, “Was Sydney's smallpox outbreak of 1789 an act of biological warfare against Aboriginal tribes?” Ockham's Razor, ABC Radio National, Thursday 17 April 2014 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/was-sydneys-smallpox-outbreak-an-act-of-biological-warfare/5395050   Accessed 17 May 2017

Build on: Armidale Teachers' College survives the Great Depression

The Parthenon on the Hill. "You are very fortunate to be in such a nice institution", Minister Davies is reported to have told students, somewhat reluctantly. This is the sixth in Jim Belshaw's series exploring the early days of tertiary education in New England. 

Armidale, March 1936. The weather was unsettled, threatening the forthcoming Armidale Show. Up at the College on the hill, the corridors were thronged with new and returning students and College staff.

Now established, the Armidale Teachers’ College was well on its way to becoming a jewel in the crown of NSW education. And yet its very survival had been at risk just six years before.

As work got on the new College building in the first half of 1929, few realised just how vulnerable Australian had become to international downturn. Import competition within the domestic market was increasing. Government public works funded by heavy overseas borrowings – fifty million ponds in 1928 alone – meant that ever more export income had to be used to pay interest and dividends to overseas investors; by 1927-28 these totaled 28 per cent of export income.

New South Wales was particularly vulnerable. It was already affected by growing import competition, while the growth in its metropolitan population, and hence the numbers in building, construction and public services, had been particularly marked.

In 1929, the worst possible combination of events happened. Export prices fell, while overseas borrowings stopped as a consequence of the closure of the London capital market to Australia.

In March and April 1929 as the building contract was let and work commenced, the State's London overdraft rose to three to four million pounds.. By June, the State was in a financial vice which tightened as the year proceeded: Not only could New South Wales not raise long-term loans, but the State's bankers were resisting any further increase in overdraft levels. Equally importantly, the State now faced declining income tax collections, rising losses on railway and transport services, and rising welfare costs.

By the time the new College’s foundation stone was laid on that day of hope and speeches in November 1929, Australia was in the grip of recession,. By early 1930, the expected State deficit for 1929-30 had risen to over three million pounds.

Soup Kitchen, NSW c 1932. As depression deepened, Drummond pushed forward with construction of the new Teachers' College building regardless

C B Newling later surmised that Drummond pushed construction of the building forward because he wanted to beat the growing collapse. I don’t think that’s true for at least the first part of 1929 because the scale of the crisis wasn’t yet recognised. What is true is that Drummond continued to push construction  regardless.

Drummond lost office in 25 October 1930, leaving his Labor successor William Davies with an almost completed but partially empty building because of reduced student numbers Drummond faced a withering storm of criticism, but was unrepentant.

There were moves to close the College. Drummond persuaded Labor Minister William Davies to visit Armidale in March 1931 to inspect the situation for himself. “You are very fortunate to be in such a nice institution”, Davies is reported to have told students, somewhat reluctantly. “It is one of the finest buildings in New South Wales”.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 May 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.   

Creating the building blocks of education

Laying the foundation stone of the Armidale Teachers' College, October 29, 1929, Drummond was determined  that a "Country College for Country Students ...should provide the amenities both architectural and cultural that the students would have if they were trained in Sydney." It was a time of hope and speeches.  This is the fifth in my series exploring the early days of tertiary education in New England. 

As lectures got underway in temporary premises in March 1928, planning for permanent premises for the new Armidale Teachers’ College had begun.

The best building site in Armidale consisted of eight acres of crown land on South Hill with commanding views over the city. This was occupied by an old goal set in gardens gone to wilderness. The previous Labor Government had considered re-opening the goal to hold sexual offenders, something that had created panic in the city. Mayor Morgan Stephens saw the old goal as a blot on the landscape: he had “done all in his power – except carting away the bricks and mortar – to remove it”.

In December 1927, Smith had obtained approval for the transfer of the goal site to his Department once the buildings had been demolished. At first, the Government Architect proposed to utilise the old goal buildings, something vehemently opposed by the College’s protagonists. Drummond set out the case quite clearly in words that guided his overall approach throughout the project: “if the Armidale Teachers’ College were to be a Country College for Country Students then the Government should provide the amenities both architectural and cultural that the students would have if they were trained in Sydney.”

On 10 February 1928, the decision was taken to demolish the goal. Drummond wanted the new buildings constructed as soon as possible. He called for sketch plans early in 1928, then on 5 April he wrote to the Departmental architect asking him to arrange for the Chief Architect to take the plans of “Sydney Teachers College to Armidale for personal discussions with Mr Newling to see what changes might need to be made to accommodate 250 students, taking local conditions into account.”

With plans complete, tenders for the new building were called. On 1 March 1929, a contract was let to the Public Works Department providing for completion within eighteen months at a cost of £81,200. Drummond had wanted an iconic building and the plans provided for that. Externally, the style was free treatment of Italian Renaissance with meticulous attention to detail. Internally, there was the same attention to detail

Construction began on 8 April 1929, with Drummond closely monitoring the whole project. In October 1929, for example, Smith recorded that the Minister had decided to proceed with the whole central section of the building comprising the gymnasium and Assembly Hall as originally envisaged. The gymnasium was constructed with special care, based on the then best models. It featured a floor specially mounted on elliptical springs to cushion impacts.

On 29 November 1929 with construction underway, a large crowd gathered to watch the laying of two foundation stones, one by NSW Premier Thomas Bavin, the second by Drummond. It was a festive ceremony meticulously planned by Drummond down to the last detail, including the supply of flags and bunting.

It was a time of hope and speeches looking forward to further decentralisation of education, including a Teachers’ College at Wagga Wagga and a possible University College in Armidale, However, storm clouds were gathering that would threaten not just the building, but the new College itself.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 26 April 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.  

Extracting ancient DNA from sediments - and the rise of multidisciplinary history

Fascinating story in The Atlantic, Scientists Can Now Pull the DNA of Ancient Humans Out of Cave Dirt.

In essence, new techniques allow animal and human DNA deposited into surrounding soil to be recovered. This has significance for two reasons.

It allows DNA analysis to be carried out without destroying fossils. It also allows inferences to be made even when direct evidence is not available.

When I first studied prehistory, we had very few scientific tools available. Now the explosion in science is reshaping our knowledge not just of the remote human past but of more recent times. History and especially prehistory have become truly multi-disciplinary disciplines.

One side effect is the merger of prehistory and history. A division based on the primacy of written records ceases to have relevance when so many alternative techniques and approaches are available. Now we have just history.

This poses a challenge to us all. I know that I struggle to understand let alone integrate all the new knowledge now relevant to the writing of history.

Human occupation of North America pushed back over 100,000 years

Fascinating archaeological results announced in the US.

In 1992, archaeologists were called in during renovation of the San Diego freeway to do some test excavations.  They found what appeared to be an abandoned campsite, where humans had left stone tools and hammered mastodon bones behind.

Of itself, this wasn't too unusual. It's apparently fairly well-established that humans were hunting mastodons in the Americas as early as 15,000 years ago.But the numbers derived from various dating techniques suggested that the bones had been buried more than 100,000 years ago. That was startling.

After 24 years and multiple tests, researchers now say that an unknown type of early human lived in California roughly 130,000 years ago! That dramatically changes our understanding of the human settlement of North America, pushing back the date of human settlement by more than 100,000 years. This does not mean, however, that those early settlers were modern humans. Based on what we know at present, they were probably Denisovans. .

This story from arstechnica provides further information, while this recently released YouTube video provides a very good summary of the story. Further comments follow the video.

Both the story and video show the painstaking work that has to go into this type of discovery, especially when the results are so startling. As a consequence of that type of work, our understanding of  the long human past is evolving rapidly and is likely to continue to evolve in ways that we can't quite foresee.

A note on New England Aboriginal servicemen

Interesting piece on ABC Radio National's Awaye! Program,  Indigenous Anzacs: Letters home from Aboriginal WWI diggers reveal humour, sadness, (program itself here, Saturday 22 April) on Aboriginal servicemen during the First World War. Presenter Daniel Browning's great-great uncle Thomas Browning (photo) was one of those featured in the piece.

Quoting from the piece on Thomas Browning::

"In May 1917 a military order revoked the nominal ban on Aboriginal men serving in the Australian Imperial Force, although in fact many had already enlisted.

One of the Aboriginal men who joined up after the military order was Samuel Browning, a fisherman from Fingal (then known as The Caves or Caves Point) on the North Coast of New South Wales.

One of Browning's mates enlisted with him but was rejected on the grounds that he had no European heritage. Browning left Australia in late 1917 aboard the troop ship Euripides, and disembarked at Devonport in the south of England on Boxing Day.

In Browning 's letters to his mother Mary, his heartbroken bride-to-be, and 10-year-old sister, there is no mention of the horrors of the Western Front nor of his gassing in the trenches near Rouen in northern France in August 1918, just a few months before the guns fell silent.

In an undated letter from Bath, where he was convalescing, Sam wrote urgently to Fingal, anxious that his younger brother stay away.

"Dear Mother, tell George to stop where he is instead of enlisting — one is enough from home, so don't forget."

Elsewhere, Browning longed for the beach.

"I am longing for a good feed of oysters and pippies. I'd give ten bob for a feed," he wrote to his mother from the ANZAC training camp at Codford in February 1918. 

Others who served from the opposite side of New England were the three Firth brothers.  Again I quote;
.

"Francis Walter Bertie Firth served in the Middle East and lost a brother in Egypt, but his letters from "somewhere in France" are consumed by anxiety about missing letters apparently sent by his mother Kate from Pilliga in northern New South Wales but never received.

Bertie wrote to his mother on Easter Sunday in 1917: "Just a few lines to let you know that I am still in the land of the living," he wrote.

"It is about time the winter was over, I would not like to be here for another, the coldest place on earth."

Characteristically, and presumably without irony, Bertie signs his letters that he hopes everyone at home is well as it leaves him, "in the pink of condition".

Another letter suggests that he may he have been jilted: "I got a letter from Peggy the other day. She is engaged to someone else. Good luck to her."

I don't have a lot of information on Aboriginal servicemen from Northern NSW. Another who served during the Second World War was David Cook. From a piece by Noah  Riseman:

"Lance-Corporal David Cook is an Aboriginal man born in Ebor, near Armidale New South Wales, in 1945. Around the time of Dave's tenth birthday, he and his four siblings were forcibly removed from their parents. Dave was placed in Kinchela Boys Home for three years before being fostered. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the Army, seeking a life away from his daily troubles.

Dave served in Papua New Guinea, Borneo and Malaya before being sent off to Vietnam. Throughout his service he proved to be a successful soldier and was well-liked by his peers. He served two tours in Vietnam before being discharged in 1968.

When Dave returned to New South Wales, his life rapidly spiralled out of control. Cycles of violence, imprisonment and racism threatened to turn him into another Aboriginal statistic. However, Dave managed to reconnect with his siblings, who helped him get his life back on track through emotional support, stability and employment. Now retired, Dave does volunteer work in Cambodia, applying his Army engineering knowledge in a land mine clearance program.".

I wondered if readers had more information on Aboriginal servicemen (and later women) from Northern New South Wales, Hunter to the border? This would help me flesh out another part of New New England's history.

Update

AIATSIS has an exhibition on the Stafford Brothers, a family with New England connections.

Debrah Novak put up a Facebook post repeating a story from the Grafton Daily Examiner on the attempts of Mackenzie Laurie to enlist. I quote:
This is a newspaper article in the Daily Examiner Tuesday, May 1916: TRUE AUSTRALIAN REGIMENT? CLARENCE DARKIES WANT TO ENLIST: Mackenzie Laurie has not just arrived from Scotland. He has never seen that county, and except he desires to help the Empire, has no desire to leave the land he loves and has lived in for 23 years. Laurie is, in other words, a young Clarence River Aboriginal, and has tried to enlist in Maclean, Ulmarra, Grafton and Harwood. He has been turned down everywhere he has tried, and, like many others in a dilemma, sought out the Daily Examiner man as a last resort. Laurie is bashful, if brave; had never been inside a newspaper office in his life before, and has always been a close reader of this particular paper – he read the tips and all about Randwick doings and the war. Here is his complaint told in his words.

“I want to ask is why not a pure Australian regiment? They won’t take me or Harry Grant, or Cowan, or Daley or Bundock- and we’re all Australians. They turn us down. They say the English will mistake us for Turks, and shoot us. But that don’t matter. We don’t care that we shot at or not. We want to kill a few Turks and (in deep thought and not wishing to appear misinformed) -The Bulgar (semi-nomadic warrior Turk) - that’s the fellow. If England goes under, where are we? Myself, Harry Grant, D. Torrens, T. Daley, Billy and Jim Cowan, K. Bundock, Harry and J Neville, Piebald, Ferguson, Hamilton, P. Mercy, my two brother in laws, and J. Morris and Alf Blakeney.

The pressman stopped; he seemed to have written a regiment. Laurie Persisted. He wrote on:
“Put all of them down, all of them want to go at once, NOW. There is also A. Olive, R. Cowan, B. Robertson, Donelly, Dunn and J.Boney.”

“All these are ‘pure Australian’s, everyone one of them as black as I am, no immigrants about any of them” (looking straight at the reporter). “You can call yourself ‘Stralian! You only immigrant Britisher. If you are pure ‘Stralian, you must first be able to speak our language – wurra-murra girooha lomiba booyamba, Can you say that?

The reporter said he didn’t understand the Australian classics.

Mackenzie Laurie continued to give names. “Harry Grayson, Walker, Cameron Fred Laurie (my brother) and D Cameron (my brother in law)”
.
“I want you to put all our names in this paper, and show the Government in Sydney that us pure ‘Stralians is ready to fight for the country straight away. I’m single, all teeth are good, as you see, good chest, aged 23, work for Mr Smith near the Common, and I am prepared to run any man on the Clarence 120 yards for any money up to 50 quid.”

“Tell them I am an athlete, went to Glenreagh Sports with sixpence in my pocket and came home with two quid. I’m off to work now, but if Sergeant Swan or Constable Sproule wants to get me, they can find me at Alumny Creek, ready straight away to fight for the country.” End Note: The is a photo of Harold Cowan from Grafton who enlisted in 1917 when Aboriginal people were finally allowed to enlist.