Russell McGregor

‘Breed out the colour’ or the importance of being white

This article examines inter‐war proposals to ‘breed out the colour’ of Aborigines of mixed descent. Positioning these proposals in the context of contemporary Australian nationalism, scientific discourses and administrative practice, the article concludes with a discussion of their alleged genocidal intent.

From Old Testament to New: A. P. Elkin on Christian Conversion and Cultural Assimilation

The Australian anthropologist A. P. Elkin has attracted recent academic interest for his role as simultaneously advocate of Aboriginal assimilation and critic of official assimilationist programs. His promotion of a reformed missionary policy in Australia in the early 1930s, in line with a worldwide shift toward a cultural integrationist mode of missionary work, has received far less scholarly attention. This paper seeks to retrieve Elkins role as missionary reformer, and to demonstrate the underlying congruencies between his missionary and his assimilationist policies. In doing so, it adds a vital, but hitherto largely neglected, dimension to our understandings of Elkin as both advocate and critic of assimilation. Beyond that, it extends recent scholarship on the complexity of assimilationist discourses and contributes to an appreciation of the shifting, and frequently ambivalent, relationship between the missionary enterprise and the assimilation of indigenous peoples.

Another Nation: Aboriginal Activism in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s

Abstract The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the emergence of Aboriginal nationalism and an associated decline of activist interest in securing Aboriginal inclusion in the Australian nation. This article positions these changes in the context of disillusionment following the 1967 referendum, the advent of black power and land rights, the radicalisation of youth and the rise of identity politics. It argues that the Aboriginal nationalism of this period was a predominantly cultural nationalism that sought to transcend the colonial subordination of Aborigines through a rejuvenation of Aboriginality.

Develop the North: Aborigines, Environment and Australian Nationhood in the 1930s

[Extract] Develop the north had been a cry of Australian nationalists since the prefederation era. It was part of a larger demand to develop the nation, to provide Australia with the economic and demographic resources requisite for prosperity and defence.1 However, the north (within which term I include the contiguous areas of arid central Australia) had particular pertinence to this national project, since it was there, facing the source of the feared invasion, that the emptiness of the continent was most starkly displayed. Northern development was not just a national ambition but, more importantly, a nationalist myth: beyond pragmatic matters of economic productivity and military preparedness, it embodied an aspiration for national unity and an incentive for collective action to remedy the supposed deficiency — even disgrace — of vast lands lying empty and unused. Like other nationalist myths, northern development inspired some extravagant visions of the future: the desert transformed into endless grain-fields and abundant orchards, worked by millions of sturdy independent farmers whose produce would be shipped out through numerous bustling ports along the northern coastline or via the network of railways that would crisscross the continent. Australians then could be proud of their national achievement and confident in their national future, for they would have validated their possession of the land by peopling the empty spaces and transforming the wilderness into farmland.

The Divisive North

Soon after Menzies was elected prime minister in 1949, a story began to circulate that his government had strangled the NADC. This was part of a larger narrative that gathered force over the postwar decades, extolling Labor as the consistent champion of northern development while damming the Liberal-Country Party coalition as negligent. Taking an extraordinarily rosy view of the achievements of the NADC, J.H. Kelly claimed that its era of “dynamic organisational co-operation” came to an end when Chifley lost office to Menzies.1 In fact, the NADC was defunct before the 1949 elections were held. Labor Deputy Leader Gough Whitlam advanced an equally inflated assessment of the NADC and its achievements under Prime Minister Chifley.2 According to Whitlam, “Chifley regularly conferred with the Premiers of Queensland and Western Australia on northern development.”3 He neglected to mention that when Chifley conferred with the premiers on northern development, it was usually to quash the ambitious plans of the latter.

A Dog in the Manger: White Australia and its Vast Empty Spaces

Abstract Between the world wars Australia was commonly characterised as a dog in the manger for failing to utilise vast tracts of its territory while refusing to relax its stringent restrictions on immigration. This article examines interwar responses to the dog-in-the-manger accusation, particularly their implications for the environmental representation of the supposedly empty spaces. I argue that Australians’ increasing acceptance of the aridity of their continent over this period was substantially driven by a need to project abroad an image of a nation acting responsibly in a world of escalating population pressures.

Excursions through emptiness: interwar travel writing on Northern Australia

ABSTRACT During the interwar years, Australians grew increasingly anxious about their sparsely populated north. They had moral qualms about leaving land idle; they felt uneasy about international criticism of their lacklustre efforts in the tropics; they feared a stronger, more resolute nation might rob them of their under-utilised heritage. While anxieties intensified, there was an efflorescence of travel writing on northern Australia, as cars and aeroplanes made this part of the continent a little more accessible. Like other travel writers, those on northern Australia in the interwar years did not confine their narratives to what they did and what they saw. They commented on the burning questions of the day: on what the future of the north might hold and whether Australia’s northern lands could sustain a prolific white population. This article explores a range of representations of northern Australia in the travel literature published between the two world wars, with particular attention to the varied assessments of Australia’s tropical environments and the racial misgivings that disconcerted attempts to envisage an all-white north.

Coloring the Empty Spaces

Throughout the interwar years, a vocal minority of Australians and a larger contingent of overseas observers argued that Australia could avoid the dog-in-the-manger accusation only by admitting colored immigrants into its tropical regions. Usually, this was associated with the assumptions that colored races were exceptionally adept at tropical cultivation and the white race unfit for manual labor under a tropical sun. Those assumptions were eroded in the early decades of the twentieth century, but neither in Australia nor overseas was the notion that the tropics were inherently inhospitable to the white race completely repudiated. In any case, white Australians were demonstrably failing to settle their tropical lands while only a little further north lay multitudes supposedly seething with envy.

Vulnerabilities Laid Bare

Shortly before ten o’clock on the morning of 19 February 1942, a Japanese aerial armada appeared in the skies over Darwin. Aiming their attack against the harbor and adjacent parts of a town, the Japanese met little resistance from the ill-prepared Australian and American forces. Eight ships were sunk, including the destroyer USS Peary; numerous other ships were badly damaged; the Darwin wharf was destroyed; and the town center devastated. At 10.40 am the all clear was sounded, but the raid on Darwin was not yet over. Eighty minutes later, a second wave of attackers, flying from bases in Ambon and the Celebes, pattern-bombed the air-force base, reducing it to ruins and destroying most of the American and Australian aircraft on the ground. Only two Japanese planes were shot down by the defenders. At least 243 people were killed in this first raid on Darwin, along with massive damage to both military and civilian facilities.1

Downgrading the North

Over the course of the interwar years, the assumption that the north held vast tracts of rich land came increasingly into question. Even while anxieties about emptiness still nagged, many Australians came to doubt the capacity of the north to sustain a plentiful population. This chapter charts the declining environmental expectations of those decades.