50
[Low, James Galloway, Letters, 1904-91, Battye Library, MN681, ACC2612A, Letter from Jim to his sister Jane, 21 June 1912]
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We have got another year added to our pearling coloured divers and tenders. 2½ years yet to run on the old lines. I believe if they tried to force us to take the white labour before we are ready for it that tropical W.A. would blossom out into an independent state with the sanction of the old country, we would annex the Northern Territory as well and make our own laws to suit the work we have to do, and who are going to do it. One of the white divers one of Siebe Gorman's crack men died of paralysis last week, he wouldn't work to the scientific method and refused to be recompressed after the attack, he was of the old school who had made a name for himself in the diving world, recovering treasure from wrecks, went with the McMillan expedition through Central Africa bringing up specimens out of the deep pot holes somewhere or other and now has finished up here, he wouldn't let them save his life because he didn't believe in the method, they could have forced him down but couldn't keep him down, and so he told them. It is a bad thing to have happened but it has opened the eyes of the blind in Broome when some of us came forward and gave our testimony of what we had seen ourselves in the cure of paralysis. Tomorrow I go out again with another engine and air compressor to start two more of the white men, but I am going to keep them near Broome this time and they bring me back themselves inside of a week, no more chance passages or dismasted luggers for me with stones for bread. I know, I don't care if they don't pick up a single shell but I know a place where shell is mighty scarce but every one has got something in it, baroque or pearl, we'll practise there. I have never seen or heard of the last crowd I was out with since I left them, nor anyone else has either. They are off quite on their own somewhere or other, their engine must be going all right or the Malay child has killed them all, one or the other.
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