CIVILISED GIRLS FROM THE VICINITY OF TOWNSVILLE.
This “civilisation,” which is quickly assumed through intercourse with the white man, does not, however, strike deep root, and the good nature which often accompanies their brutal qualities rarely wholly overcomes the latter. However comfortable they may be with the white man, they still long to get back to their forests. As a rule they must have an annual vacation, when they visit their tribe and take part in the hunting and in other amusements. There is no use in refusing this, for then they would become sulky and unwilling to work. Their love of change makes them constantly give up one situation for another, though they may have no reason to be dissatisfied with the one they abandon. In some few cases a black man will become very much devoted to his master, and will occasionally serve the same one a long time if he only gets his annual vacation. I may mention that a black boy who had been with his master for many years nursed him during a severe illness, nay, even prevented him from committing suicide in a moment of desperation.
A black man twenty-three years old, who from childhood had been educated at a station in Victoria, where he had lived nearly all his life and had been treated almost as a member of the family, one day suddenly disappeared. He was found in the camp of the blacks as naked as he was born, but later on he returned to the station, where he resumed his former work. Sometimes this kind of civilised native becomes so fond of savage life that he never returns to the stations.
It frequently happens that a black-fellow makes a journey abroad when the squatter goes to visit his native country. It would be reasonable to suppose that the great cities of the old world would make some, if not a very deep, impression, on this child of nature, but such is not the case. The Australian native is not surprised, because he lacks the faculty of appreciating. A locomotive flying past him for the first time does not astonish him very much. When, after a long journey, he returns to his tribe he sees the difference, but he has no words with which to explain himself, although his fellows get the general impression that their comrade has had wonderful experiences. He is naturally very proud of his achievements, and wears an air of superiority over both white and black men. A colonist who was trying to give a black man a grand impression of Sydney, received the startling answer: “I like London better.”
Though the language used by the colonists in conversation with the blacks, which the latter gradually learn, is a disconnected jargon, still some of the natives learn to speak English very well. These more talented blacks, mostly from Victoria and New South Wales, become literally angry when addressed in the common jabber-jabber English. A white man who was out hunting emus asked a black of the above kind: You been see ’im tshukki-tshukki big fellow? The latter indignantly replied: “I suppose you mean an emu.”
Though the Australian native is thus able to acquire some of the fruits of civilisation, it still remains a characteristic fact that he never gets so far as to occupy an independent position. As a subordinate he may serve to the complete satisfaction of his master, but he never saves anything, and does not comprehend the value of money. He never learns enough to become a tradesman, and all that he gets he at once spends. In his natural condition he has a decided distaste for agriculture, and this aversion clings to him when he becomes civilised. Cattle-raising is an easy way of making money, but not even this can teach him to make money on his own account.
“A living sheep is an impossibility in the camp of the blacks,” most truly writes Mr. Finch-Hatton, and the gold of Australia is nothing but a common stone to him, even when he sees the greedy digger getting rich by seeking the precious metal. A strong tendency to communism hinders social development among the tribes. Natives employed on a farm invariably share their earnings with their relatives and friends, who live in their camp near the station. When a black man has regular employment at a station he frequently gets five shillings a week besides board and tobacco, but all this he divides with his comrades in the camp. The latter do not care to hunt, but live on what he or their women earn from the squatter. No sooner has one of them saved a pound than he and his friends go to town and buy brandy and opium with the money.
As a rule the relation between the whites and the blacks is not at first a friendly one. It has occasionally happened that the natives have received the whites kindly the first time they met them; they have even given assistance to people who have been shipwrecked, but in most instances a war soon breaks out between the two races. Sheep and cattle begin to feed on the grounds that have belonged to the blacks, and the latter are prohibited from going where they please; because the herds are disturbed by the black men’s hunting, nay even by the smell of the savages. As a matter of course, the natives therefore try to resist the strangers who interfere with their inherited rights.
