[“Crumbs”, The Hedland Advocate (Port Hedland, WA), Saturday 05 August 1911, page 8]
Corporal Brodie (whose actions in regard to the illegal treatment of natives in the Kimberley have emptied the Derby, Broome and Roebourne gaols of natives, saved the country over £20,000 per annum, and procured for all accused natives a fair trial,) has, after 19 years’ service, resigned from the force, disgusted with a department which, evidently, does not wish to encourage in its ranks men of umimpeachable honesty and virtue, but prefers the skunk who would cause the Commissioner no trouble in his office and at the same time fatten on the blood of poor, innocent savages in the North, amassing thousands of pounds by means of faked ration accounts. Some day (if the Perth papers do not take the matter up) we will administer a potargo to the Colonial Secretary, Aborigines Chief and Commissioner of Police which will have a more deadly effect on their dreams than a Fresh Water Bay crab supper with whisky to wash it down. The evidence taken at the fortnight’s police inquiry at Derby, if published, would place an inerasable smudge on the escutcheon of the government of this State.
AB notes:
After trying to expose police corruption in Derby and West Kimberley, John Brodie was transferred to Port Hedland,
where he found a sympathetic ear at the Hedland Advocate.
