[Salter, Elizabeth, 1971, Daisy Bates: “The Great White Queen of the Never-Never”, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, Chapter 15]
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Tent at Maamba
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Everywhere she saw evidence of an implacable Nature that “is ever making and breaking with infinitely slow process. She fits her verdure to the soil, her trees to their surroundings, her plants to their environment and no sooner has she accomplished this work than she proceeds to disintegrate [it].”
The breaking up of the native groups she saw as part of this inexorable process. Her certainty of their eventual extinction provided the incentive for the enormous effort she put into the next few years. It was also her reason for risking the disapproval of the Government, believing that it was necessary to give all that she could of care and comfort in order to “mitigate the guilt of one’s race”, as she put it.
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The years 1904-11 were the “Indian summer of her contentment”. For the first and last time, life offered itself on her terms. As a representative of the Government she was accorded her place in the ranks of the ethnologists; as a writer she was recognized as “the authority” on the Aborigines. After one of her many lectures she was reported as “possessing the infinite capacity for detail, which, according to a well known philosopher, is the stuff of which genius is composed”.
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On the evidence of the press reports that she so carefully preserved, it would be fair to say that during her term of office Daisy did more than any one individual to interpret black to white in the West. Her lectures were greatly in demand, her subject, invariably, one aspect of Aboriginal life chosen to suit her audience. She spoke on Totemism for the Training College at Claremont, and again for the Geographical Society. She lectured on “Our Aborigines” at each of the country centres she visited, for Perth’s Historical Society and to the women’s political clubs.
According to the West Australian, “this well known lady, authority on the manner and customs of our natives . . . is good company for hours on end.” Her talks were illustrated by lantern slides and phonograph records; and her audiences, stirred out of their apathy by her ability to project her own enthusiasm, were stimulated and sometimes even conscience-stricken.
Her lecture at the Karrakatta Club for the benefit of Lord Northcote, retiring Governor-General, was of some significance, as he took her text with him to answer the questions still being asked in London on the subject of exploitation.
Her arguments in defence of the white settlers, and the controversy that resulted from them, overshadowed two important items. One was a suggestion from her friend, J. G. Meares, ignored at the time, but later adopted by the Government, that a reserve be established for the use of the natives of the Northwest. Meares presented the eminently practical scheme, also ignored, that this be stocked by white settlers to prevent the spearing of their cattle that was the current retaliation tactic on the part of the myalls.
The other was an astonishing statement from Daisy, that the alternative to the extinction of the black race was inter-marriage with the whites. It was not an alternative of which she herself approved but she had the courage to present it and was criticized strongly for having done so.
In 1909 she was given the official backing of the Australian Natives Association and asked to lecture at the Perth Town Hall with the Governor in the chair. Her doings had a habit of finding their way into the columns of the three main Perth newspapers. After this, her starring appearance, their applause reached new heights.
“What Howitt, Spencer and Gillen have been to the vanishing races of Eastern Australia, Mrs Bates has been to the natives of this State,” wrote the West Australian.
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