In this thesis I have examined aspects of disease, health and healing among indigenous people in Western Australia and Queensland between 1900 and 1940. I argue that the natural history of disease was an important element in shaping and influencing the interaction between the indigenous people and the various members of the settler community most concerned with them- government protectors, missionaries, pastoralists and health workers. I conclude that in the history of contact between the indigenous peoples and outsiders such as Asians, Pacific Islanders and Europeans in Western Australia and Queensland, diseases were a major influence on indigenous people and on the way governments intervened in socialising indigenous groups.

Prior to contact with outsiders, indigenous groups had harboured a range of infectious diseases, the most important of which was yaws. Indigenous peoples possessed a system of ideas of sickness and health based on the reverential awe of sorcerers. As far as we are able to discern, sorcery was probably no match, in pre-contact times, for infections such as yaws and syphilis, and customary methods of healing were certainly unable to cope when outsiders began breaching the isolation in the past century or two. When western medicine was combined with official State protection policies and practices, they became part a set of powerful social processes within both Aboriginal and settlers social relations, which resulted in the incorporation of indigenous groups into rural life in both States.

Disease forced the governments of Western Australian and Queensland to introduce measures to control the spread of infections by creating strict management regimes in an attempt to limit contact between settlers and Aborigines. Despite these limits, contact proceeded and with it diseases which caused sicknesses, crippling bone disorders and premature ageing. These effects coupled with widespread hunger forced governments and religious missionary societies to develop policies of protection. In turn, they created a network of institutions which began to change Aboriginal relief depots into permanent settlements. In the meantime, however, some diseases became endemic and spread widely and speedily throughout Aboriginal groups. Protectors, health workers, missionaries and pastoral employers were forced by the protection policies to concentrate Aborigines in particular, into centralised depots, settlements and reserves, from which they were unable to escape diseased, sickness and death. These became the means through which people„s physical and social well-being were destroyed by introduced diseases.

The growth of the indigenous population created problems for the government, missionaries, settlers and Aborigines themselves because it intensified the effect of disease on populations concentrated on relief depots, mission stations and reserves. People of full-descent doubled their numbers while the population of peoples of mixed-descent more than trebled. The sex balance began by favouring males, but gradually protection policies corrected the imbalance.

Contrary to contemporary popular thinking, there was no protracted dwindling of the Aboriginal population but a resurgence to levels possibly higher than ever before. These circumstances, in contrast to present conventional wisdom, were both created and assisted by the policy and practice of protection. Aboriginal females of both full and mixed descent benefited most, but so did the aged males of full descent. Changes to official criteria for classifying indigenous people created problems of access to medical practitioners and hospitals. Confusion arose over who could or could not use „native„ hospitals and mission clinics. Those who failed to gain such access drifted to the fringe of society where a new type of missionary, who specialised in proselytising the peoples of the fringe-camps, helped them gain access to health care by other means.

Segregated programs and facilities such as government reserves, ration depots, „native„ lock-up hospitals and missions did offer limited access to medical treatment, but outside the segregated structures the fee-for-service, user-pays medical system on which most white citizens relied always presented barriers to Aboriginal people seeking access to hospitals and doctors„ surgeries.

Aborigines did not, nor could they, realise the threat from diseases. Settler society, too, was ignorant of indigenous people„s thinking regarding illness and the power of sorcerers. Missionaries were also ignorant of some of the indigenous social organisations and of the diseases from which the mission inmates suffered. Settlers had limited knowledge of the threat of poor hygiene in the camps of the workers they employed. This ignorance resulted in Aborigines living on missions, depots and fringe-camps polluting their own living sites. When governments began attempting to attend to these new health threats the solutions led to other social, economic and cultural problems.

Although no data was collected in Western Australia to reveal the extent of mortality created by the Spanish Influenza pandemic in that State, the protection system did limit it impact. In Queensland, however, the Spanish Influenza pandemic did highlighted the inadequacy of government and missionary approaches to health care had become obvious. The reforms which followed brought primary and public health closer to indigenous people. Nevertheless, these reforms brought their own administrative problems, by introducing professionally trained staff from outside the mission and protection agency workers„ backgrounds and more open settlements. The rise of greater self-interest among Aborigines themselves meant that depots and settlements had to account more for the needs of inmates. The lack of access to medical practitioners and to hospitals remained a barrier to good health and hygiene. This in turn primary and public health problems caused the maintenance and spread of infections, in different ways in both States.

In Western Australia, blindness, crippling bone disorders, hunger and sickness forced the government to create a role for protectors to feed, care for and remove the sick to within reach of medical treatment. Temporary locations such as telegraph stations and camps on the fringes of mining towns became so overcrowded with people seeking relief that depots, reserves and church missions were created to solve the problem. Soon these locations became permanent living places, and later developed into established Aboriginal settlements.

In Queensland sick Aborigines in distant rural and bush settings had to be escorted hundreds of miles by police who acted as unwilling surrogate health workers. Police officers confronted by diseased people lacked the proper administrative support from their department in dealing with sick and diseased Aborigines. Under these circumstances they devised ad hoc solutions which conflicted with departmental directives.

The relief depot clinics were not able to deal with the disaster imposed on the southern institutions. The deficiencies which were exposed highlighted the need for reform, and subsequent reforms were intended to shift health care from the model based on compassion to one based on professional care. Meanwhile, government and mission relief depots began gathering permanent populations during the 1920s. Many groups with incurable infections brought their families with them, and this process transformed depots into permanent settlements. Due to the inability of indigenous patients to access mainstream medical and hospital services, this administrative strategy meant the development of clinics and hospitals which exclusively serviced indigenous people.

When protection was instigated around 1900, in both Western Australia and Queensland, hopes were high that the ravages the stresses of encroaching settler society and the diseases suffered by indigenous people would come under control. The enthusiasm with which protection began in 1900 had faded by 1910. Indigenous populations did recover under the protection policies in place during the study period. Subsequent constraints of segregation of the sick on remote islands or on government and mission reserves, failed to halt the diseases affecting the indigenous population in the extremities of both States. Poor hygiene in environments occupied by indigenous people, even in traditional bush camps, meant that almost all suffered from infectious diseases. The bush dwellers and hunters did not escape either the pre-contact endemic infections which they brought with them to their dwelling places or the new types of diseases nurtured in the new social circumstances on the fringes, missions and government reserves. Similarly, as relief depots, government reserves and missions were transformed into modern indigenous settlements, even more exotic diseases emerged to threaten their future. Indigenous people must have been aware from the beginning of the promise of western medicine, but they could hardly have been expected to appreciate that the promise would never be delivered.

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