Fear pervaded relations between those Aborigines who contracted infectious diseases, the white and Asian residents of the northern towns of Western Australia and the institutions responsible for managing the infections. These groups and bodies, however, distrusted each other. Among groups of indigenous people diseases affected them which settlers feared might infect them. In the south white rural populations feared venereal diseases while indigenous groups feared institutionalisation and being denied services white people took for granted. In the north it was leprosy which acted as the motive for settler fears, and indigenous people feared disease and the prospect of being removed from their environments and incarcerated in institutions, and never be seen.

Tensions intensified among the increasing numbers of people of Aboriginal descent who began migrating away from government and mission controlled institutions to take up residence on the fringes of white society. The tensions among fringe-camp groups manifested themselves in injuries from fighting, disrupted relations between males and females, and daily disputes between extended family groups. Moreover, destitute children, and couples sometimes with too many children, were forced to live in over-populated camps. Such circumstances also existed in the fringe-camps on the outskirts of Perth. In addition, white townsfolk held deep seated fears about the Aboriginal campers due to the heavy consumption of alcohol and squabbles between camp residents, after dark. In some cases Aboriginal camp groups feared white townsfolk who sometimes asked for the camps to be removed. The fear by campers was particularly acute when sick and dying Aborigines were in the camps.

In 1930 the southern parts of Western Australia, despite years of concern, disease remained unchecked due to government policies that encouraged unhygienic fringe-camp social and economic groupings. Similar problems of hygiene persisted throughout the 1930s, as Paul Hasluck, the journalist, historian and later federal politician, reported in a series of articles for the West Australian newspaper. Throughout the 1930s, the Health Department had responsibility ‘to provide the medical service care of indigent Aborigines.’ The lack of cooperation aggravated the lines of demarcation on who held the responsibility to guarantee that the diseased, sick and injured received care. Hasluck believed that during the early 1930s the Health Department openly refusing to fulfill its duties towards destitute camp people. Furthermore, he claimed that these conditions provided the circumstances that proved so critical both to the lot of the southern ‘half-caste’ and to the health of the northern ‘full-blood’. The Chief Protector of Aborigines, A.O. Neville, and a missionary, Mary M. Bennett, provided a common perspective in support of that viewpoint. Bennett and Neville were antagonistic towards one another but in their criticism of the Health Department they appeared united.

In the north, most medical people felt that venereal disease had come under medical control, except in the bush districts of the Kimberley. Dr Albert Davis showed that the numbers of people affected by granuloma had fallen slightly from 32 in 1928 to 27 in 1930. The incidence of other forms of sexually transmitted disease such as gonorrhoea fell also, from 17 in 1928 to 3 in early 1930. Davis wrote of the work he did in coping with the disease,

the method of treatment...[remained the] same as last year....Some of the cases were recurrences and reinfections; others from remote parts of the district had so neglected themselves that a cure seemed hopeless.

Bad hygiene in the bush and fringe-camps provided the reason given by Davis for why a cure had become so difficult for some people. Hygiene problems, which persisted throughout the 1930s, appeared as the most obvious cause. Still another cause was resistance to change among the Aborigines of the bush, fringe and pastoral camps. Their inertia was caused by the strength of these bush people clinging to their own customs and a general ignorance of western ideas of hygiene and disease under such conditions of change. Similarly, the cause existed in not only economic change caused by expanding white settlement but also toward political and cultural changes imposed on their customs and manners. Another factor was the parsimonious State and the frugality of missionaries who saw it as their responsible to care for Aborigines. The Western Australian government, according to the Protector’s records, was aware of what was taking place in other States where more deliberate attempts were made to raise the health standards of the Aborigines.

Although fringe-dwellers did live in squalor, this was partly their own preference. Others may certainly have chosen another cleaner environment, but camp people firmly believed that certain conveniences existed in occupying living sites of their own choosing: such as the absence of authoritarian reserve managers; different foods people were compelled to eat, new uncomfortable customs of bathing daily, sleeping on beds and the use of blankets. Similarly, their propensity to spend quickly what they earned through labouring meant that little money remained to pay for health care expenses. Moreover, this was something most fringe-camp people firmly believed was a responsibility that belonged to the government.

The Western Australian government was also influenced by how the Aboriginal agencies in other States and the Northern Territory were taking Aboriginal customs into account. The Churches had begun taking more seriously the ideas about ‘culture’ that came from anthropology, and endeavoured to adopt such ideas in their management of the Aborigines transition away from their customary practices. In Queensland a conference in the early 1930s

made representations to the Commonwealth Government on [developing] general policy for Aborigines [in which] ‘full justice’ required ‘full consideration[of] tribal traditions and customs’ with field officers to interpret these.

Meanwhile, in areas south and east of the Gascoyne, Aborigines continued to leave the old style missions in large numbers. The Chief Protector’s strategy for preventing Aborigines from moving between government reserves and places of employment worked in one sense but failed in others. He thought this strategy would encourage Aborigines in the south of Western Australian to integrate economically and socially into the surrounding society. These social forces, together with the rising tide of disease among Aborigines in the south and the north, helped to create the conditions under which most fringe-camps remained in squalor.

The reduced level of government care for Aborigines living in temporary camps in the south allowed missionaries with less formal attitudes to fill the gap. As the number of Aborigines living in the camps rose so did the prevalence of diseases caused by poor hygiene and by social arrangements – such as lack of order which promoted heavy drinking, trauma from fighting and break-down of marriage arrangements – which exacerbated poor health practices. In the north, unhygienic living sites created the conditions from which the leprosy epidemic emerged in the 1930s. In 1934 the mounting Aboriginal health crisis played an important part in forcing the Western Australian government to appoint a Royal Commission, discussed later in this chapter.

The growing Aboriginal population made relations between some missionaries and government even more uneasy. The missionaries, who came face to face with camp dwellers, were the first to appreciate the full extent of the Aboriginal health problem. When Fredrick James Boxall, the Church of England Rector of Narrogin and a local protector of Aborigines, travelled between Kalgoorlie, Albany and Perth, he noticed that the number of half-castes had increased substantially. South of the goldfields railway line and west to Coolgardie-Esperance track there were 900 half-castes in 1905. By June of 1932, they had increased fourfold to 3,715. Immediately south and east to the South Australian border the number of people in the camp totalled 50 in 1905. This number had increased by 1932 to 1,536 residents, an increase of 1,486 (or an increase by 30 times) in 27 years. In Boxall’s district he had observed an Aboriginal family which contained 20 children from the one father. This rise in the number children surviving into adolescence had a domino effect in that there were too many children for camp people to care for adequately. This caused chaos in these small camps because social rules belonging to rural white society had to be practised, such as sending people to schools, and work arrangements established by employers. Other families consisted of 14 members, Boxall wrote and added that there were also at least two families with nine children each. The bulk of this population lived not in houses but shacks, tents and ‘Wurlies’ (a Western Desert Aboriginal word for wind-breaks made from tree branches). These structures had little to no furniture and people lived and slept on dirt floors covered only by sacks and old rugs. Some of these temporary dwellings had some utensils, and a bush fire-place for cooking outside the sleeping area.

From 1931 to 1932, the great majority in the of Narrogin district existed on rations costing the government, Boxall said, ‘56 cents per week per adult.’ A few received clothing and a blanket and the rest begged for clothing cast off by local white farmers. The State was not at all liberal with its rations, Boxall claimed. At one location called Geeraling he counted between 70 and 100 natives on the roadside camp and the land was never declared as an Aboriginal reserve. On this land no sanitary conveniences existed, and in the summer the water in the well turned brackish. At the Narrogin camps the occupancy levels fluctuated from between 25 and 150, in 1930. The people at this camp lived on a reserve adjoining and overlooking the sanitary depot with no water for bathing and their drinking water came from a tap at the depot. The site here and elsewhere were completely devoid of sanitary arrangements.

At Wagin, Aboriginal casual workers camped on a traveller’s resting place alongside the road. In addition, Boxall told the Commissioner that at Katanning Aborigines were living beside the rubbish pit and at Williams only two portable toilets serviced between 70 and 120 people. As at other places no water existed on the reserve and was supplied from a nearby property. Boxall took an officer from the Department in September 1931, when the reserve was completely under water.

Boxall angrily described the camp people’s predicament arguing that society should not allow these ‘half-castes to pig it in wurlies in which father, mother, children and dogs curl in together’. He pointed out that there was no privacy; the children see and know too much. In this regard they were worse off than the bush natives, and the morals of the latter were certainly higher than those who lived in the fringe-camps.

Dr Keith McGinn, who treated Aborigines in the Quairading district, described their health circumstances. He claimed there was a serious problem, and that it had been that way for many years. McGinn saw three major difficulties. The first problem was that of hospital accommodation. The local hospitals were supposed to take in sick people of any colour, creed and station in life, but McGinn added that if Aborigines were taken in ‘we would soon have only native patients.’ The second problem for McGinn was that

in cases of severe illness, we have to admit them, but our hospital accommodation is limited, and admission of these cases often presents as awkward. We have a small wooden structure, large enough for one bed only, at the rear of the hospital, and where possible a sick native is kept there.

Finally, McGinn mentioned that the habits and health of the natives was so bad that people presented with infections such as ‘scabies...lice...colds, influenza, bronchitis and pneumonia in winter.’ Venereal disease, however, was not among the ailments McGinn observed here. The Aborigines he serviced lacked physical exercise and he argued that the camp should be stocked with surgical and medical supplies for dressing wounds, particularly at ration depots. The protectors tried to provide some first aid equipment. In addition, proper sanitary conditions plus water and shower facilities should have been provided to guard against skin and intestinal infection. The conditions described by McGinn were fairly typical in the south, but in the north the circumstances were even less under the control of the health and protection agencies.

In the early 1930s Beagle Bay, a Roman Catholic mission north of Broome, had a stable population of 282 people. In this population there were 134 children under the age of 14 years. There were 167 males and females of full descent, and the remaining males and females totalled 115. The staff comprised 2 priests, 5 brothers and 6 nuns. The mission could have been regarded, even then, as a small township with church, cottages for the missionaries and a series of maintenance buildings, one of which was a blacksmith shop and another a brick-kiln. Livestock grazed in nearby fields and the beef cattle holdings normally totalled 3,500 head. Tropical fruit trees lined the perimeter of the vegetable gardens which provided fresh food for the whole mission population for most of the year. Many Aborigines worked, and the skilled jobs in the tannery sheds and the boot-maker’s shop were held by the ‘half-castes’. The children worked in the gardens supervised by six adult Aboriginal women.

Care for the sick was the responsibility of the Sisters of St John of God, most of whom were trained nurses. The sisters conducted clinics for out-patients from a surgery constructed of locally made brick. There was also a special isolation ward for leprosy patients ‘awaiting transportation to Port Darwin.’ It was this religious order, through the agency of Sister Joseph from the Convent of St John of God in Broome, who wrote to the Prime Minster in November of 1933. This religious community offered the services of their Sisters to work at the proposed leprosarium planned for Channel Island near Darwin. Sister Joseph acknowledged that the hospital was a government institution and that they would have to carry out all the duties for treating lepers as instructed by the Chief Medical Officer. In this role they asked only for their ‘food, medical treatment, and a yearly allowance for clothing and other little incidentals, also their fares to Darwin, …[and] a fare south’ for those who became sick.

The offer was for four Sisters to go to the Darwin Leprosarium. One was from Perth and the others from Beagle Bay, and the latter had extensive experience ‘nursing the blacks on the Beagle Bay Mission.’ The Commonwealth replied to Monsignor W.M. Henschke in Broome, who in turn wrote to Sister Joseph, the head of the community. The letter to Sister Joseph relayed the message that ‘the Government …[was] unable at present to accept their offer’. Cecil Cook, now an adviser to the Commonwealth and directly involved in giving advice about the Sisters, had prepared a report in 1925 on the suitability of establishing a joint lazaret facility in Commonwealth Territory. As Chief Commonwealth Medical Officer in Darwin in 1934, he advised the Northern Territory Administrator that he

wholeheartedly opposed...[the Sisters’] method of staffing however economical it may appear to be unless they accepted full responsibility for the leprosarium including the management, providing medical attention and arranging transportation is undertaken by the Order.

Further out in the bush, towards the southern tip of King Sound near Sunday Island, another Catholic mission was operating at Lombardina, and this mission fulfilled similar functions to the one at Beagle Bay. The total population of 82 males and females, contained a larger proportion of ‘full-bloods’, and there were similar numbers of people above and below the age of 14. The staff at the mission consisted of one priest, one brother and three sisters. The walls of the building were made of local timbers and the roof consisted of local brush thatching. At Beagle Bay, only the Sisters normally cared for the sick, unless an epidemic occurred, and then everyone helped.

When working in the clinic at Lombardina the Sisters treated mainly coughs and colds, but sometimes gave out medicines. Other more serious diseases (for example hookworm infestations and eye infections) made up the rest of the illnesses. Even though the mission faced the ocean and sea bathing was a local custom, some communicable diseases persisted. Hookworm became endemic due to the contaminated soil on which the camp and mission people lived. Trachoma was usually present in the creche and among the older youth. The boys and girls of school age slept on bunks in huge dormitories with dirt floors, and close body contact was unavoidable. Leprosy was a problem at Lombardina and as those patients were identified and diagnosis verified by analysis in Perth they went to the lazaret at Beagle Bay.

Among northern bush-dwelling Aborigines, leprosy spread from contact with Asian mining labourers from the Northern Territory and from other Aborigines migrating across the border region for customary contacts. Many of these people had almost no contact with the outside world, and consequently knew little about sanitary habits under sedentary living conditions. Although hunter gatherers prevented the propagation of some parasites by low numbers and constant movement, as they began to settle in one location they began to experience new health hazards. Close body contact by bush people resulted from sleeping close to each other and also the group slept close to their hunting dogs to keep warm, which allowed transfer of parasites. The circumstances changed once people became fixed in the one locality. Once leprosy was introduced, it was thought that wearing clothes which became filthy, and bathing in stagnant water, all became possible vectors. In the late 1920s leprosy infection among Aborigines increased sharply. As a result of its spread the transportation of patients to the Northern Territory began in earnest and although it was never an easy procedure, the practice continued well into the mid-1930s.

The treatment of leprosy patients became chaotic as the number of cases increased. In Western Australia the Health and protection agencies developed a number of temporary holding compounds. The transportation of these patients to Darwin was a particular difficulty. Moreover, residents in towns such as Roebourne, Broome, Derby, Wyndham and Fitzroy Crossing and local white pastoralists expressed fear and loathing about the way authorities placed diseased Aborigines on the outskirts of ‘their’ towns. Discussions between the Western Australian and Commonwealth Governments went on incessantly from the mid-1920s until they could both agree on the terms for the transportation and management of lepers arriving at the Commonwealth leper station in Darwin. Eventually, after long bargaining and discussion 14 leprosy cases from Cossack and three Kimberley Aborigines were taken by a coastal lugger to Darwin. Captain Scott contracted his ketch the Colarmi to the Commonwealth. The first ‘shipment’ of lepers occurred on 18 September 1931 and the ‘cargo’ arrived in Darwin on 10 October.

The Broome Road Board’s concerns, as expressed to the Health and the Aborigines departments, suggested that Road Board members believed leprosy was infecting Aborigines in large numbers in their local region. A couple of surges in new cases occurred in the late 1920s and threatened to rise once more in the early 1930s. The Road Board told the Minister for Public Health on 20 July 1932 that five lepers would soon be removed to Darwin. One year later the Board wrote to the Minister indicating that more cases had been located and that one, a fifteen year old boy, was at a school in the south (possibly Perth). The following year the Board protested that dormitory arrangements meant bedding down leprosy patients in the same room regardless of sex. The Minister wrote back highlighting his view over problems of accommodation of lepers in transit. The problem lay with the Commonwealth, the Mister thought, rather than with his own administration.

The Broome Road Board’s fears were largely confirmed as leprosy numbers rose in the Kimberley. This fear was not lessened by a contemporary article entitled ‘Australia’s Problems in Tropical Areas’. In 1932, Dr Raphael Cilento, a Queensland medical and public health official, emphasised that tropical and sub-tropical areas were of interest because of their industrial resources. Cilento argued that since successful development was essentially a matter of applied public health, medical services were an important part of all developmental activities. He argued also that the tropical portion of Australia made up the largest tropical possession within the British Empire, and that both hookworm and leprosy were the aftermath of the use of ‘coloured labour’ in Queensland. These maladies, he claimed, represented the most serious outbreaks of tropical disease in Australia’s medical history. Across the north of Australia the two diseases had become endemic. Leprosy, he claimed ‘had been introduced by the Chinese, who when the country was opened poured in’ uncontrollably. (This was not entirely true.) He went on to say that the conditions Australia confronted had occurred within a period of twenty years and that the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine had been opened at Townsville to deal with the problems incidental to the establishment of a healthy white population in the tropics.

Early in January 1933, discussions progressed between the federal Department of Health, the Aborigines Department and the Western Australian Public Health Department regarding the transportation of lepers from the north-west of Western Australia to the Northern Territory. During these discussions a launch was purchased for this purpose, but no action was taken. Soon after, an offer was submitted to the Minister for Public Health from a Mr F. Redfern of Broome to transfer the lepers from all ports in the north to Darwin for £1,250 per annum. One month later the Broome Road Board wrote to the Minister for Public Health in Perth, drawing to his attention the prevalence of leprosy in the district. They urged the Minister ‘to provide periodic inspections by a medical man of the Kimberley area.’ The Board recommended that Dr Hayes, the Broome District Medical Officer, be appointed to undertake the task. Dr Atkinson, the Chief Medical Officer, replied immediately asking him if he would ‘accept responsibility to undertake the examination of the natives’.

Later that year the Minister wrote to the Broome Road Board saying that his Department had spared no expense in attempting to cleanse the Kimberley, and Western Australia, of lepers. The department’s efforts, however, were hampered by Captain Cockrane’s early departure from Broome on his way to Darwin. Dr Hayes was notified that the launch could only take eight patients and that Cockrane did not call at Derby. Dr Cecil Cook, now the Director of Commonwealth Health in the Northern Territory, was asked to get an explanation from Cockrane of why he failed to stop at Derby. One reason for the concern was that there was a build-up of leper patients at towns specified as transit points for collecting lepers. The Chief Protector wrote to the Under Secretary for Health on 26 October 1933 advising him that five lepers and a number of suspected lepers had camped outside the native hospital fence at Derby and he feared that others would be attracted to the site. The boats took months to collect their human cargo, travel to Darwin and return, sometimes with a different cargo altogether. This meant an uncoordinated build-up of patients which in turn exacerbated townspeople’s fears. While all this occurred leper suspects and patients had to be managed in the small over-crowded disease compounds.

Other combinations of events made life in the north more complex. The local Aborigines Department employee who managed the leper transit depot at Derby, Franz Luyer, attended to the new leper patients as they came in from the bush. He made a request to the Chief Protector for an increase in wages for feeding and generally keeping the lepers under surveillance in the compound awaiting transit to Darwin. He also asked for more money to look after the growing camping population. The Aborigines Department thought it would be better if the Health Department could handle the matter. Dr Hodges of the Health Department was reluctant to move either on the wages or accommodation question, and argued that funds would be wasted if diagnosis did not confirm the infection.

The job of feeding, sheltering and securing lepers never proved to be easy. Luyer often became the object of derision among local townsfolk for attempting to provide comfort to the compound inmates. They also demanded that he secure the compound to protect town residents. On 27 November 1933 Luyer wired the Commissioner for Public Health for permission to erect a shed at a cost of £10, to shelter prospective leper patients. His request was for urgent action because some patients were sure to escape. The Chief Protector had already notified the Aboriginal adviser in Derby, a few weeks earlier, that all the camp people would be transferred to an island lazaret near Darwin and this made the Aboriginal suspected lepers uneasy. One man named Yama was among this group awaiting transportation and Dr Webster of Wyndham reported that Yama had been tested for leprosy earlier in November. Unfortunately, like many anxious Aborigines before him, Yama’s tests proved positive. He would soon be transported to Darwin.

No improvement occurred either in the coordination of the screening of leper patients or the quality of their transportation. The two governments hesitated partly due to the costs, but also because of their underlying philosophies. The problem lay partly in the way responsibility was divided among a number of government departments. The transport of patients nevertheless continued and on 26 January 1934 the Department of Public Health received a letter from Mr R.A. Bourne quoting for the transport of 25 lepers to Darwin at a cost of £350 per month. The Department asked Dr Hayes to inspect the lugger for its suitability and seaworthiness. By 30 January another offer came from Gregory and Company for the schooner Eva at a cost of £30 a month plus insurance on the vessel plus a per voyage cost of £1,500. While the two governments hesitated about the direction they would follow, other problems persisted.

On 14 March 1934, the Perth newspaper the West Australian made an effort to allay the concern of northern townspeople. It published an article which made the point that while people in the towns were naturally concerned about Aborigines contracting the disease, from the outset while it was usual for them to speak ‘about leprosy as a "foul... and a most loathsome disease" in actual fact the terms...[were] only applicable when, to the disease itself was added, the dirt and septic processes of uncleanliness, and the squalor of the leper’s surroundings forced upon the victim.’ The writer went on to say that ‘leprosy was no more foul or loathsome than syphilis and a number of other diseases’ and just as science had swept away our fears of syphilis ‘so it would do the same for leprosy.’ This article appeared at the same time as the detection of a leprosy case came to light in Perth.

Not all lepers were Aborigines. White patients were confined to Wooroloo infectious diseases hospital near Perth but Aborigines were confined north of the 25th parallel, or what some called the ‘leper line’. A comparison of the living conditions of the two types of patients is instructive. In Wooroloo the small comfortable rooms had fireplaces where the patients could read, sew and entertain friends and family members. The food was described by an elderly woman patient as excellent and staff did most of the cleaning while also providing a wide range of services. The sanatorium was near the sea. Patients were able to do things for themselves such as their washing and ironing and, in 1934, the consensus was that they were contented.

Aboriginal conditions in the north-west were vastly inferior. Many patients were left stranded in either bush and cattle camps or were not picked up by medical screening. Travelling protectors or disease patrols conducted by police on contract identified cases and were paid by the number of suspected Aboriginal lepers they brought in from the bush. Aborigines would sometimes emerge from the bush to confront horrified pastoralists, protectors, police or local residents of peripheral country towns. In one instance, near Mount Shadforth, there was

a male native with his face eaten away, who looked like a horrible skeleton. There was no flesh on the face and no skin on the forehead and for some inches below the chin, and the ears were...missing. There was only bare bone to be seen. The jaw and teeth were exposed owing to the absence of the lips. The eye lids were exposed, and when the eyes were moved the strings (muscles) could be seen working. There were sores all over the neck, scalp, arms and body.

When Aborigines did get attention they were normally chained by the neck and, even in the late 1930s, were walked or taken by wagon for long distances before they received treatment.

In towns patients crammed into very small shelters or compounds which they were not allowed to leave, sometimes for months on end while awaiting transport to Darwin. On 9 January 1935 the Broome Road Board informed the Health Minister that lepers diagnosed near Broome had ‘no place to be put’. The real cause rested with the Broome hospital’s refusal to admit leprosy patients, and as a result leprosy patients were kept at a distance from other hospital patients. The Secretary of the Road Board at Wyndham, a town further north from Broome, and located on the Cambridge Gulf, notified the Health authority that a number of lepers had been seen there. The Broome Road Board received the information that an Aboriginal woman held at the Wyndham hospital for six months had contracted leprosy and later transferred to Darwin. Two Aboriginal males from the Wyndham gaol were also diagnosed as having leprosy but they both escaped to the bush. Such events left white townsfolk uneasy.

The local member for the Kimberley in Legislative Assembly, Aubrey Augustus Michael Coverley, had expressed local peoples’ unease. Born in the south-west of the State, Coverley had migrated north some sixteen years earlier. In his evidence to the Commission Coverley stated that

events have proved that leprosy is gaining ground...in the Kimberley. Six or seven years ago the Road Board members resigned in a body as a protest against the inactivity of the Government towards leprosy....To prove that the disease is increasing, there are about 30 cases awaiting transport to the Darwin leprosarium at the moment.

Coverley observed that one of the difficulties was that no medical practitioners travelled around inspecting Aborigines, and that the medical clinics had to be built to support them. In addition, the ‘native hospital’ at Derby lacked sufficient room to take lepers. Many diseased natives in the Derby area lived along the coast and did not come in contact with townspeople, and no effort was made to do anything with them. When medical attention was provided, the white town residents wrongly assumed that they were running a risk of infection. Medical authorities informed those who would read or listen that leprosy was not as contagious as people believed. Many townsfolk were less than public minded and believed that the sooner the business was cleared up, the better it would be for the white people. Aboriginal concerns were dealt with by keeping them out of the town limits. Coverley feared the possible escape of lepers from the disease patrols. He was critical of the Chief Protector’s Department on the grounds that suspected lepers were allowed to camp near the town awaiting transport to Darwin, and their control was so lax that many did escape.

White and Asian town residents held a deep seated fear of Aborigines, particularly of those who escaped from the compounds who were all thought to be diseased. Government neglect stirred resentment as did the idea of mission development. White residents’ fears were intensified by the bottleneck of suspected leprosy patients living in the town compounds. An article, ‘Silent Menace Of The North’ by the novelist Ion L. Idriess appeared in the Melbourne Herald. It captured the townspeople’s fear. What really mattered to the whites was that they might become infected. White townsfolk also harboured the fear that leprosy could be spread by the bush and house fly, mosquitos and the flea.

Such rumours inflamed townspeople’s attitudes towards the missions, which they felt propagated the disease. At Kunmunya, the head missionary, the Reverend Love, a Presbyterian, rejected such beliefs. Love thought that the most serious medical complaint they had was granuloma. Love, like most other commentators about Aborigines, believed this form of venereal disease was peculiar to Aborigines. As far as Love was concerned there were no cases of syphilis or gonorrhoea at the Kunmunya mission. To Love the existing system of missions was the only way of providing ‘philanthropic work’ to tackle the health problems faced by the resident and nearby Aboriginal population. The missionaries were appointed by the Church and not paid for their work and their whole object was to benefit Aborigines. The Church, Love said, had a reservoir of qualified and educated men and women on whom they could draw. The first duty of the mission was to care for the sick.

The Presbyterians serviced several populations in the Kimberley, including Fitzroy Crossing, where they began building a hospital. The Australian Inland Mission had been planning to introduce its flying doctor services to Western Australia. Although this was a popular idea with isolated missionary bodies such as the United Aborigines’ Mission, this body was in conflict with the Chief Protector. As such, local protectors of Aborigines discouraged direct contact with the broader Christian evangelism of Inland Mission.

In spite of the Chief Protector’s prejudices against mission expansion, so great was the demand for medical services that in the 1930s the United Aborigines’ Mission pushed ahead with the provision of hospital services for the pastoralists. Greater levels of illness certainly arose from the concentrations of indigenous people on the missions. These institutions unwittingly helped spread communicable diseases to both cattle property and town fringe-camp populations. White and Asian settlers already had a public health structure in the towns but the isolation of cattle properties caused a demand for primary care which in turn needed an Aboriginal hospital system. The Mission moved to meet the social as well as the religious need. Mr F.S. Bray of the Chief Protector’s office received a letter from them on 20 July 1934 indicating that the United Aborigines’ Mission at Morgans had begun erecting a bush hospital. The mission sought financial help from the Chief Protector, and asked ‘whether the Department would assist on a pound for pound basis.’

In any event, the hospital had already commenced when the Mission Superintendent wrote saying the building consisted of a two ward hospital measuring 40 by 14 feet. The plans included nurses’ quarters of three rooms and a maternity labour ward. The Mission itself intended spending £250, and wished to employ only trained nurses. The need existed because of the three hundred natives who now lived within the sphere of the Mission’s influence, and 200 of them were already consuming supplies from the Protector’s ‘indigent rations and medicines.’ The Protector wrote that ‘serious cases are sent to Leonora and the Aborigines Department usually meets any transport expenses. He acknowledged that the Mission at Morgans did good work, but relied too heavily on the Aborigines Department’s support. His department carried in the bulk indigent food supplies and medicines, and monetary assistance in attending to individual needs. The Mission would be in serious straits if it was not for the work of the Protectors. Missions seldom give credit to government contributions to its success.

Mr Bray described the Mission in a note on file as ‘persistent beggars and the more it gets from the Government the more it wants’. He cited the case where the Mission received a large consignment of medicines from Neville, which the missionaries had used without any acknowledgement of the Department. The Mission, according to Bray, ‘unblushingly asked for more medicines and drugs far beyond the generosity of the Department.’ This conflict between the Chief Protector’s Office and the missionaries in the field centred on the question of who was to decide the question of what way Aborigines should perceive themselves, and what they believed – the Church or the State?

Bray recorded on file that the Chief Protector’s Office was working to solve this problem, and there was little reason for the missionaries to act so defensively. He intimated that no earlier instance existed where the Government had approached missionaries to fulfil a normal function of the State, and he saw no reason to create a precedent for assistance in this instance. The Aborigines Department had already appealed to the Lotteries Commission of Western Australia for financial assistance for a settlement hospital at Moore River. Bray indicated further that the Lotteries Commission had responded with a cheque for £500. On the question of the hospital development at Morgans he was certain that the local Member for the Legislative Assembly, Mr Nulsen and other friends of the mission, would make favourable recommendations on the mission’s behalf. The staff at the mission had already risen to 16 missionaries and there would be pressure to expand further eastwards if more support was given.

Expansion of the mission’s sphere of influence over the daily lives of Aborigines proceeded without the slightest encouragement from the Aborigines Department. But their activities were soon to came under the spotlight when, on Friday 23 February 1934, the terms of references of the Royal Commission were published. The Western Australian Parliament established the Royal Commission to investigate ‘the social and economic conditions of Aboriginals and persons of Aboriginal origin in or from native camps.’ The government appointed Henry Doyle Moseley as Commissioner and requested him to report on the social and economic conditions of Aborigines, the laws relating to Aborigines and persons of Aboriginal origin, their administration and, finally, to investigate allegations appearing in the Press since 1 July 1930 about the ill-treatment of Aborigines in Western Australia in general. The missionaries in the southern areas of the State felt victimised by the Aborigines Department. At least, this was the view they presented to Commissioner Moseley as they tried to convey their attempts to fill the gap left by a receding State in caring for camp-dwellers. That Moseley did pay some attention to their views was apparent in his report in which he wrote:

there is one aspect of the native’s life which require[s] attention–the question of medical treatment. Those in charge of pastoral properties and Missions do all they can to care for sick natives: it is obvious, however, that their ability is limited. Each of the stations and missions which I visited carried a supply of medicines suitable for the treatment of ordinary every-day ailments, but serious epidemics occur when something more than household methods are necessary....

One East Kimberley pastoralist of 34 years residence described Moola Bulla as the pulse of the native situation...and urged...that...medical services should be provided at this centre....Coming further south....Although it is not quite clear as to the meaning of the term "Native Settlement"....I have inspected– the native camps of the Southern Districts...

The condition of southern native settlements, he wrote, displayed a level of squalor that had been generally overlooked by Western Australian society.

Moseley observed that government-operated establishments could not be praised. For example, the ‘compound’ at Moore River consisted of a set of dormitories which had become dilapidated, and so over-crowded that people slept on the verandah. ‘Dr Maunsell, of New Norcia, who frequently visits...agreed....that the dormitories are vermin ridden...making disease eradication impossible.’ The hospital, Moseley wrote, ‘is a substantial building, but two additional wards are necessary.’ The nursing sister told him that a labour ward was necessary, there was no isolation ward for children with syphilis, who were allowed to mix freely with other children. In addition, the main ward housed both men and women. Moseley responded to Neville’s suggestion

[that] in order to provide for proper medical, surgical, and hospital treatment for Aborigines and half-castes who become ill or injured or affected by any disease while in the service of employers, it be made a condition of every permit that a fee, to be fixed by regulation, be paid by the employer into a special fund to be controlled by the Minister, and that the proceeds of the funds be utilised to provide the cost of such medical, surgical, and hospital treatment.

Moseley suggested a permit system to supply rations, clothing and a reform relating to providing medical treatment to sick bush people.

The health of Aborigines featured prominently in Moseley’s report. During the inquiry he had questioned the Commissioner of Public Health and the Principal Medical Officer, R.C.E. Atkinson, about a number of problems outlined by others witnesses during the Royal Commission hearings. Dr Atkinson’s evidence spelt out his Department’s difficulties in dealing with the problems rased by the local Member of the Legislative Assembly. Atkinson expressed a commonly held view that many difficulties arose because of the way the bureaucracy managed the buisness of the Government. This had a direct effect on the way leprosy patients were treated. The transportation of lepers out of teh State was conducted by the Chief Protector, his own and the Commonwealth Department of Customs and Shipping: all played a part in transporting lepers to Darwin.

Atkinson tried to convey to Moseley the reality of the lepers’ isolation and their transportation in small boats. Similarly, he criticised the missions and protectors for the isolation methods adopted in treating lepers. In anwering the Commissioner’s criticism Atkinson felt his department was humane, but wanted to speak about shifting the responsibility from his State to the Commonwealth, as it was a question of the ‘national interest’. Atkinson indicated that he had raised the matter at a recent meeting of the Federal Health Council in Canberra, where he argued that the Commonwealth should do something in the national interest to assist. In spite of what Atkinson had attempted it was clear that the Commonwealth was being used as a scapegoat for the State’s intractability in caring for Aboriginal leprosy patients.

Chief Protector Neville was in his element in giving evidence on 12 March 1934. He indicated that the health of Aborigines in the south-west of the State had ‘deteriorated very much.’ In his view, ‘the natives had learned to enjoy certain amenities of life and they wanted to be near the centres of civilisation.’ He added that pastoral activities took all the land and no land has been left for Aborigines to camp. In the southern part of the State, despite the fact that the Department had catered for campers by creating 50 camp-sites, many of these camps lack basid health facilities such as ablutions, fresh water supplies and toilets.

The Department, he said, was

not in a position to install such supplies on account of the financial situation. We do our best. In some of the areas we are carting water to camps. Sanitation is another difficulty. We have had certain structures erected, but very often the natives do not use them, and [they] are few and far between.

From the departmental point of view it is...adviseable to have natives near town in order to avoid costs of transport of supplies when we have to feed them...to ensure medical attendance to be applied if possible, to arrange for expectant mothers.

Neville also explained that the physical fitness of Aborigines in all parts of the State was ‘a gloomy picture.’ But, he said, ‘in the north, except where introduced diseases are evident, the bush natives are a healthy virile people. Their condition varies according to whether the seasons are good or bad.’ On cattle stations the condition of Aboriginal workers was generally good. The wives and children of workers are also fed by the majority of stations, and their diet consisted ‘of meat, bread, tea and sugar.... At least one medical man in the north [had] informed...[him] that the majority of the natives in his district...[were] suffering from malnutrition...due to the sameness of the diet.’ Some stations provided cooked food and others the basic ingredients for workers’ families to cook their own meals. One major problem was that while people worked the cattle, they would not hunt for food but happily ate what the station provided. When they moved back to the bush, however, they did eat their customary bush foods.

In southern areas of the State such as the Goldfields ‘we find that most of the Aborigines are reduced to dependence on government rations.’ The people who issued rations to Aborigines are either rural white people trusted by the Department, protectors or police officers. Throughout the State there were 74 government ration depots. On reserves and cattle stations owned by the government the diet was better than elsewhere because stock and gardens provided more balanced nutrition on a continuous basis.

In southern regions the monthly rations normally amounted to two kilograms of meat, five of flour, two of sugar and 400 grams (about three packets) of tea. The issue included tobacco, mainly to smokers, but, Neville was quick to point out that this was carefully watched because it was a cost to the Department which Aborigines themselves should shoulder. He added that rations were intended as ‘a standby and were never meant to develop as a ‘hand-out’ as well as replace bush foods as the staple food of the people.’ Although reliant on advice from outside, Neville had no hesitation in putting the view that the natives throughout the south-west and goldfields area suffered from malnutrition and weakness brought about through poor diets and their low resistance to powerful diseases.

Neville told Moseley how, even on reserves operated by the government, airborne transmission of infection proved unavoidable. In his view, the cause was the way Aborigines were forced to live too close together:

The children in the southern areas,...suffer[ed] from the effects of cold and sickness, probably brought about by the lack of clothing....This has the effect of making the whole family huddle together in a small ten feet by six...structure with probably every crevice closed up, their heads under the blanket and in those conditions the whole family are breathing in filth and germs all the time.

Under the circumstances the medical costs to the Aborigines Department always remained considerable.

Neville explained what his department had done to restructure primary health care arrangements. Doctors subsidised by the Aborigines Department were expected to attend to indigent natives, and ‘where they do we have to pay them for their services.’ In the past ‘native wards’ had existed but now these have all been absorbed by hospitals. ‘As for hospital accommodation, there is practically none for natives in the south.’ The Moore River reserve hospital was expected to cater for all the sick Aborigines in the Midland region. In the southern and eastern goldfield areas no hospital was available for natives. There were only a few government hospitals left and they were nearly all operated by committees hostile to allowing Aborigines to enter as patients, even though the hospital was subsidised by the Medical Department. According to Neville the hospitals run by committees were

loath to accept native cases and it is, in fact, impossible to find accommodation for maternity cases. There are in the country certain good women, matrons and nurses, who are willing to, and who, go out into the native camps and look after those cases. The native today is not the native of 50 years ago, and some of the native women suffer intensely from childbirth. They have lost all the old stamina of the black and they have considerable difficulty in bringing children into the world, possible because of their mixed blood.

Neville never explained this speculation, but he did have considerable experience in observing his clients.

Even worse for the well-being of camp people was the disruption to their lives because ‘camp life as it existed was bringing them lower and lower....The old tribal laws have broken down and there is nothing to check the [actions of] young men and women.’ The social erosion was the cause of two problems for the Department’s policy, Neville put to the Royal Commission. First he claimed there was a problem in encouraging young Aboriginal bushmen to leave the main group to follow work in other parts of the State, without which Neville implied factionalism and lawlessness would result. Second was the problem of maintaining a level of camp morality as seen through the eyes of the department. Ironically, it was the same morality which had subjected the younger camp members and many women to incest, brutality, fighting, factionalism and a breakdown of social order.

Neville’s opinion about the cause of such dysfunction was aimed partly at Aborigines, but more particularly at the parsimonious State and its institutions. The State institutions displayed prejudice towards the plight of Aborigines both in the past and more recently. Neville’s main complaint was that he reported to government each year about the problems his department confronted, but lacked funding and support for changes to the legislation. On both counts he was right because his departmental funding had been systematically reduced since 1920 and no changes had been made to the Aborigines Protection Act, since 1906 apart from various structural rearrangements to the Department.

The period from 1935 to 1940 represented the aftermath of Moseley’s Royal Commission. The period was characterised by the Government’s response to Moseley’s recommendations, the prevalence of leprosy, and the further deterioration of relations between the missionary bodies and the Aborigines Department. One of the government’s first responses was to appoint Dr Albert P. Davis, a specialist in public and tropical health, who became the first District Medical Officer assigned exclusively to attend to the health of Aborigines. He had graduated from Melbourne University with medical and science degrees in 1923. In 1934 he had qualified in tropical health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. By 1935, soon after his term as district medical officer at Port Hedland had ended, the Commonwealth appointed him as a travelling medical inspector. His new responsibilities consisted of surveillance and inspection of Aborigines in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions. One of his first tasks involved approving the establishment of the two hospitals at Broome and Wyndham and the construction of the leprosarium near Derby.

Another early task for Davis was to travelled through the Kimberley towns, cattle and sheep properties, missions and government reserves to inspect the health of Aboriginal groups. He took with him Reverend Love of Mowanjum, because of his knowledge of Aboriginal customs, habits and language. Davis and Love commenced a leprosy survey of the coastal regions between Derby and Wyndham. When they visited Kunmunya they

found an alarmingly high proportion of venereal disease, as well as leprosy. Love was thankful to learn... that the leprosarium was shortly to be built near Derby and all the natives contracting the dread disease would be able to be treated and kept until they were free of it.

When Love had given his evidence to Moseley a year earlier, he had been adamant that no leprosy existed at Kunmunya, but he feared it might come. Davis’s inspection uncovered large numbers of people with venereal disease at the missions that Loved managed. Once leprosy was diagnosed in a mission the local Road Boards together with the country hospitals and district medical officers became involved. As some idea of the incidence of leprosy among Aborigines became known to the public, fears of a leprosy epidemic gripped the white townsfolk in the entire north of the State.

The main reason for this terror about leprosy was that Aboriginal lepers were being brought into the coastal towns in growing numbers from a wide area of the Kimberley hinterland. Large groups were left for long periods in towns. Patients came into the rural outposts and towns and remained there exposed to the gaze of townsfolk. There seemed to be large numbers of lepers concentrated in the transit towns of Broome, Derby and Wyndham but this was largely an illusion driven by fear. For instance, in the four years from 1936-40, for example, the Kimberley region contributed 133 new leprosy patients out of a total of 192 new patients Statewide. So in effect the numbers involved in the epidemic were low but the epidemic appeared to be much greater. Social, economic and cultural arrangements in the northern towns made infection of prospective new cases seem much easier to townspeople than in reality it was. A further reason for the continued unease of the white and Asian townspeople was that the situation at the ‘native hospital’ at Derby as described by Davis was ‘chaotic’. Moreover, Davis’s criticism of the Aborigines Department staff was further adding to the alarm. He had pointed out that the hospital operated under Aborigines Department management, and that the manager Luyer and his wife were not medically trained. Their brief appointment at the Cossack quarantine facility was hardly experience enough to manage a lazaret under epidemic conditions. Davis was angered by the staff’s lack of experience in managing lepers, but the Department was powerless in such an isolated region to attract trained staff. The increase in the number of leprosy patients at the time appeared to confirm the urgency of the situation Davis was depicting, but even he could only hope things would improve.

While these northern Western Australian activities were unfolding, an event of international significance for those involved in leprosy treatment occurred in Sydney. A view had developed that the Commonwealth should encourage States to develop segregated centres for treating of Aboriginal lepers, isolating them from the rest of the population. This became part of the Commonwealth’s approach when Cumpston, Cilento and Cook addressed the International Pacific Health Conference in Sydney from 3-6 September 1935. The continuation of such a policy appeared odd, considering Sir Leonard Rogers’ long-standing criticisms, and Cecil Cook’s own well-known objections. In Western Australia, meanwhile, the Government continued to expand the number of lazarets in the north as the number of lepers mounted.

Political opportunists who contributed in one way or another to the complexity of the health and politics of the Kimberley region continued to criticise the Chief Protector and the government. On 11 June 1936, a Member for the Legislative Assembly, J.J. Holmes, wrote a report which he sent to the Minister for the North West, Mr F.J.S. Wise. This report referred to the increasing numbers of patients being received at the Broome hospital. Holmes also said that

all governments – National, Country and Labour were equally liable for the alarming spread of leprosy in the Kimberley....The Commissioner of Public Health was charged with the care of the white residents in this State, and the Chief Protector of Aborigines is charged with the care of the Aborigines.

Holmes complained to the Minister about the Broome Road Board, which held responsibility for general health services to the Kimberley region. The Road Board’s failure to act resulted from the fact that no common understanding existed between health workers and the Board about what health really meant. Holmes hinted at this when he claimed that

the local health authority...the Broome Road Board, have definitely set their face against persons suffering from leprosy being allowed to remain within the boundaries of the Broome township. The district Medical Officer at Broome is opposed to having them in the hospital which is situated at the centre of the town, and where white and coloured patients, and out-door patients, receive medical attention....The departments referred to say that the Broome hospital grounds is the place for leper subjects to be held until moved to Derby or elsewhere.

Leprosy, Holmes mistakenly implied, prevailed only among Aborigines and he expressed his concern that all patients used the same seats and conveniences while waiting for treatment. This, he remarked, would spread infections. Furthermore, maids and cooks were all employed from the Aboriginal compound across the road from the hospital and that, he implied, was a health hazard.

An appreciation of the legislative changes which sprang directly from the Royal Commission are crucial to understanding why the Western Australian government and the mission bodies were unable to agree on the strategy to attend to the health problems faced by indigneous groups and their conditions of life. The first important change, as mentioned above, was the appointment of inspectors. As we have seen, Dr Davis took the role as the travelling health inspector. The second change came as the State modified its legal understanding of who it now regarded, officially, as an ‘Aborigine’. The new definition created by the revised legislation considered all people of Aboriginal descent as Aborigines except ‘quadroons’ over twenty one who neither associated with nor lived after the manner of Aborigines. However, any person could lose that ‘exempt’ status through designation by a court. The other important section in the legislation was the inclusion of the right of the government to compulsorily detain for an ‘examination and treatment’ any Aborigine ‘afflicted with disease’. Neville argued painstakingly before the Royal Commission for all these legal changes, and he explained to the Commissioner why they were needed. Similarly, he explained that he needed wider powers, and that the old Aborigines Department should become a commission administered by commissioners. With the passage of the new legislation Neville gained all the powers he wanted. These enabled him not only to regulate mission development but also to deal with the problems posed by an expanding white rural industry and deteriorating Aboriginal health. Such powers nevertheless proved difficult to exercise.

Without elaborating on the growth and development of the Flying Doctor Service, it is sufficient here to observe that the Australian Inland Mission was a prime mover in its development. The service declared that it had a specific role, which was to provide a health service for rural white farmers and isolated pastoralists. The antagonism between the smaller mission societies and the Chief Protector may be understood better if it is appreciated that Neville concurred with that role, and resisted mission views that the service should also cater to Aborigines.

The Royal Commission had proposed a special arrangement covering the costs of medical fees for Aborigines and their families working in the pastoral and coastal marine industries. The new Native Administration Act 1936, provided powers for the Government of Western Australia to issue periodical ‘regulations’. In July of 1937,

the government gazetted further regulations on the Natives’ Medical Fund, and requiring employers to contribute £2 annually with respect to every Aborigine permanently employed....At the same time the British Medical Association agreed to lower the doctors’ fees ...[for] Aborigines covered by the fund and the Medical Department reduced hospital charges for members of the fund.

Neville was generally without criticism by pastoral interests until the scheme came into force when the regulations struck opposition both inside and outside of Parliament.

Finally, the Chief Protector wanted also to licence mission workers, a proposal which antagonised individual missionaries and their entire missionary organisations but it also rallied the support of local political representatives. So great was the reaction to Neville’s proposal that, as Biskup commented, ‘the missions and the churches must have taken the department by surprise, for it decided not to enforce the regulations.’ The conflict between the government and missions persisted. A year later the government throught its protection system reasserted itself, with continuing detrimental effects for its relations with both Aborigines and the missions. These were to last well beyond 1940, when the period for this study ends. Western Australia occupied almost half the continent and although both natural and social history were influenced by infection and human action its size too was a factor. I now turn to a discussion of mainland Aborigines in Queensland and discuss disease health and healing as it affected them in the same periods.

 

Synopsis || Contents || Intro || 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || 10 || Conclusion || Bibliography