Early History

Francis Garnett

Francis Garnett was appointed as Superintendent in early 1899. He had been working for many years at Point Pearce, and would return there in 1906, before going on to become a long-term Chief Protector. So, one way or another, he had an impact on Point McLeay for some thirty years. In 1899, he entered into a small but active world; Point McLeay’s income and expenditure for the year amounted to £ 3,534, or over a million dollars in present-day terms.

By the end of the decade, even though the school roll included some seventy children, there was remarkably little movement to and from the school and elsewhere. Entries on the School Register suggest that the flow was inwards, with more children coming from than going to other schools. Movement even between river and lake towns was still almost nil:

To and from Raukkan School

1890s

To	From	To and From
Freeling (service) 1 Maloga 1	Milang 1 Alice Springs 1 Poonindie 5 Goolwa 1 Pt Pierce 2 NSW 1	Brompton 2

The AFA’s troubles were by no means over with Garnett’s appointment: within months, a petition was presented, with twenty five Aboriginal signatures, asking the AFA to remove Holman. His relations with the children and their parents had deteriorated significantly, and he was using physical punishment more than parents liked. Holman continued under a caution.

New regulations were introduced towards the middle of 1900. They included:

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  Meat no longer would be part of rations – this would be offset by slightly higher wages to make up the difference in effective income. This regulation meant that men not on a wage would be worse off;
  

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  Only orphan children and girls under the matron’s control would in future be boarded at the dormitory. Children with parents at the Mission would stay with them, not in the dormitory, so this measure threw a good deal more costs onto families, not to mention increased pressure on accommodation.
  

Pressure must also have been building on the AFA’s ability to raise funds. There were more demands being put on them all the time: the Rev. Matthews, lately retired from Cummeragunga, was seeking to open up a Mission at New Residence, across the river from present-day Gerard. David Unaipon was asking the AFA for money for Sunday clothes, books, and other purposes, which was a bit cheeky since he had just been thrown off the mission for serious indiscretions.

In 1901, there were fifty three children on the school roll, but the quality of teaching to have dropped markedly: only twelve children were in Class II or higher, and Class V had been abolished. In other words, the great majority of these children, who a few years before had been described as ‘ordinarily intelligent, and if placed at a State School, would compete freely with the average white child’ were now in the two lowest grades that the school offered. Mr Holman may have had outstanding musical skills but he was serving the children very poorly. The school was open for an average of only four days each week, for less than forty weeks, which would have contributed to the poor level of education of the children. For some obscure reason, from about 1900, boys and girls had separate dining rooms.
For all that, the mission struggled on: a dairy had been opened, with a separator; the boot-shop was still operating, although without an instructor (again, it seemed out of the question to hire one of the more outstanding young men as an instructor, such as Edward Chester or Jonathan Sumner or George Rankine). Four more cottages had been completed. Seven young people had been found positions as apprentices. More families had been settled on the land, including that of Matthew Kropinyeri on Section 1079 near Wellington, where they joined the families of George Karpany, George Muckray and William McHughes. In the view of the AFA, putting families on the land was a means of ‘solving the half-caste problem’, although it is pretty certain that the families themselves did not see it that way.
At some cost, a thirty-thousand-gallon tank had been erected, served by two windmills, to irrigate crops. However, the lake water that they pumped was usually too salty by 1901. Other resources were in short supply: timber for fuel had to be brought from some distance; the jetty was badly in need of repair. On the other hand, it was not all doom and gloom: in the two years of 1900-1901, births had exceeded deaths by almost twenty.
In September 1901, a petition was circulated at Wellington to exclude Aboriginal children from the school there. The petition was forwarded to the Minister of Education:
It cannot be expected that white parents will tolerate the mixing of their children with Aborigines. If they must be schooled here then we suggest a separate room in which they are kept to themselves – But we most respectfully point out that they have a school at Pt Mcleay & to that place they should be sent. Hoping you will do something in the matter as soon as possible. I remain, etc. H.M. Cross. (GRG 18/1/1901/885)
A month or so later, the Chairman of the Wellington Board of Advice sent another letter to the Minister:
Dear Sir, We should be glad to know if you have done anything in regards to the Black children attending this school, as the parents feel very strongly about the matter, & object to have their children crowded in with the Blacks as chn have no idea of our way of living many of whom are camping & living in wurlies & those that have small huts are half their time with the others, or they are with them. We most respectfully point out that they have Pt Mcleay to go to & then to another Mission above Mannum presided over by the Mathews family where they could be taught something. (5.10.1901)
Inspector Stanton asked the teacher to provide information about the accommodation for each Aboriginal child, house or wurley and received the reply that they all lived in stone houses. The teacher added: ‘I let all the aboriginals sit together in one form to keep them from the white children as much as possible.’ The Minister advised that the children should be allowed to attend the school ‘so long as they are clean and tidy’. Two of the Aboriginal families had also been attending the Tailem Bend school.
In November 1902, Garnett demanded that both the farm overseer and Holman be dismissed: the farm overseer was ‘always looking after his fowls rather than his duties.’ In December, during his regular inspection, Inspector Smyth was so appalled with Holman’s performance that he urged the AFA to let him go. Holman was ‘persuaded’ to give up the position, with his salary ceasing at the end of February 1903. He was replaced by Mr William Chapman for the 1903 school year. The curriculum was revised to include religious education, and the dormitory was extended.

School Inspection Report, 1902 J.F. Smyth, Inspector: The School creates a distinctly bad impression. The Teacher appears to have sadly neglected his duty. Several essential subjects such as Language, Poetry, Manual Work, Drill and History have not been taught at all; while in the other branches he professes to have taught, the pupils barely scored 40 %. The children are naturally bright and intelligent, and with a conscientious teacher would have acquitted themselves creditably, in no way inferior to an ordinary Government A School. It is therefore all the more to be deplored that they should have come out of the ordeal so badly. A perusal of the Inspector’s Notes Form 1/6 will show the condition of the classes in respect to the branches of instruction. Note added by S.W. Stanton, Inspector-General, 8.12.02: ‘The Teacher sets the bad example of keeping his own children away from the Examination.’

Towards Secondary Education

‘Throughout history the middle and upper classes, through their control of the economic, legislative and administrative apparatus, have given to the working classes as little and as poor an education as possible.’ So begin Rubinstein et al. (1972: 7) in their work on English education. And as for the working class, read also women and Aboriginal people. In all cases, in South Australia, the controllers of the education system baulked at every step: should ‘they’ be given any education at all ? Okay, if so, why any more than the basic two or three years ? Okay, if more, then why any secondary at all ? If any at all, shouldn’t it be ‘different’, for ‘different’ groups: technical education for the working class, girls’ technical education for girls, none for Aboriginal people ? How do we justify inferior education for dominated groups ? By ‘adapting’ education to their ‘special needs’ ?

These were the constant dilemmas for education policy-makers, especially around the turn of the century, when it was becoming obvious in all industrialising countries that their economic, administrative – even educational – systems required many more people with more than basic education. But those systems also required vast numbers of people with minimal education: how to differentiate between those who were to receive only four years and those who were to receive eight, or ten, or twelve, years ? The middle classes, through their professional associations and links to the upper classes, strove for their children to be part of the elite private school system, since after all it was a human right for some to join the elite. Thus, in the late nineteenth century, Roseworthy College, the School of Mines and Industries, and the Advanced School for Girls were set up, all in the period 1879 to 1889.
But the bottle-neck was occurring between primary school and these institutions. Not only that, but the rapid expansion of the education system after the Education Act was established revealed a drastic shortage of teachers, even with the pupil-teacher system in full swing, whereby a bright child would be contracted for four or five years after finishing primary school to work under a headmaster, pass annual exams, and then take over their own classes. (Point McLeay School was taught by such teachers right up until 1951). This practice deprived the system of an educated class of teachers and, according to Austin, ‘starved the universities of talent’ (1961: 233-234). That is, without a workable secondary school system between primary and university education, the economic and administrative systems of society could not function. Relying on the private schools was increasingly inadequate. The questions then were: who should have access to a public secondary system, and how do we justify keeping out the others ?
After 1898 , it was compulsory for all primary schools with more than forty students to offer a Class Five. After 1909, all schools with more than forty students had to offer a Class Six. Even so, there were constant attempts to introduce technical, or industrial, or ‘practical’ subjects into the curriculum for working-class children, and of course, needlework and cooking for girls. In other words, to offer a ‘different’ curriculum for ‘different’ children, one ‘more suited to their needs’. Of course, we today can easily see through this attempt to pass off an inferior education as ‘different’, or ‘relevant’, or ‘appropriate’. But in those days, dominated groups were offered a poor choice: no education or education adapted to your needs ?
However, on the whole, the unions and working class families resisted any attempt to introduce technical education into the primary curriculum (Miller, 1986: 107-108). After the turn of the century, the demand for some secondary education for all children grew rapidly. The Adelaide Pupil-Teachers’ School, the training ground for teachers, was converted into the first public secondary school in 1908, followed slowly by a small handful of others in middle class areas, Unley, Norwood and Marion. Fortunately for South Australia’s elitism and class structure, working class areas were geographically well-defined, so a system of technical schools could be eventually introduced to which their children could be directed. Zoning also ensured that middle-class children had access to the secondary schools, while working-class children were restricted, on the whole, to technical schools.
The system of secondary education was slowly extended into rural areas, with specialised agricultural high schools at key country towns, such as Murray Bridge. For Aboriginal children, such as those at Point McLeay, distance and remoteness from even these schools made access difficult. As we shall see, other factors were introduced which made it impossible, and ensured that Ngarrindjeri children did not begin attending secondary school until the 1950s, generations after white working-class children. The different classes in white society, ruling and working class, urban and rural, made their mutual compromises throughout those generations, compromises which did not have to pay the slightest attention to the requirements of Aboriginal children.

The Federation of White Australian States, 1901

In 1894, women in South Australia over the age of twenty one were granted the right to vote on the same conditions as men, the first jurisdiction in the world to do so. Aboriginal people, on certain conditions, could also vote, men and women: in 1896, at the state elections, Point McLeay adults turned out to vote at twice the average rate of other electors.

Simultaneously, white Australians from all states were campaigning for a united Australia, a federation of Australasian states, with state governments responsible for local matters, but a federal government responsible for national matters, such as defence, foreign affairs and immigration. At conventions around the country, the arguments for and against federation were soon replaced by arguments over who would be included and who would be excluded from such a federation. Proposals for federation included both major islands of New Zealand, and white-dominated colonies such as Papua and Fiji. But since such a federation was to be democratic, with all citizens equally able to participate, the involvement of these last two states had to be ruled out. (Palmer, 1966: 143-152).
The involvement of Aboriginal people was to be avoided by the simple expedient of allowing states to keep total control of Aboriginal affairs: no Aboriginal people could vote in federal elections unless they were already enrolled in state elections, and no new names were to be added to state electoral rolls for some sixty years. Formal but substantially empty as voting in an election may well be, but the symbolic exclusion of Aboriginal people from the right to vote had an obvious relationship to the material exclusion of Aboriginal people from all significant rights.

One Racist Nation: A United White Australia, 1901 From The Age, 13 May 1858: ‘… Let us then hear no more imbecile querulousness at our rapid advances in self-government. … If we were unfit to be entrusted with honest self-government, as the degenerate Creoles and half-savage Indians and Negroes of South America are unfit, there would indeed be rational ground for objection. But, in simple truth we are far better adapted for this prerogative of civilised man than any one of the most refined nations of the Old World. Our people are as a matter of fact the picked men of Europe; and, as a consequence, intelligence, enterprise, energy and spirit are immeasurably more universal here…’ (in Manning Clark, 1957: 333). * The Worker, (Brisbane) 30 March 1901: ‘The fight is at hand – for a White Australia, the greatest and most pregnant question that has ever been placed before the Australian people…. It is the grandest fight you will ever have a chance of taking part in – the fight for a WHITE AUSTRALIA. … the sinuous movements of the deadly coloured alien biped lurking in the scrub with cane knife in his mudhook waiting to butcher the first casual white victim that comes along … It’s just as clear as figgers, Sure as one and one make two, Folks as make black slaves of niggers Want to make white slaves out of you.’ (Ibid.: 499-501). * Alfred Deakin, Liberal Protectionist, 12 September 1901: ‘… the desire that we should be one people and remain one people without the admixture of other races…. It is only necessary to say that they do not and cannot blend with us; that we do not, cannot, and ought not to blend with them…. ‘This was the note which touched particularly the Australian born, who felt themselves endowed with a heritage not only of political freedom, but of an ample area within which the race might expand, and an obligation … to pass on to their children and the generations after them that territory undiminished and uninvaded. A coloured occupation would make a practical diminution of its extent of the most serious kind … The programme of a ‘white Australia’ means … its preservation for the future…’ (Ibid.: 494-495).

End of a Century: Entering a New World

On the whole, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ngarrindjeri people were literate in English and spoke it either as a first language or a well-used second language. With their country taken from them, they had spent some two or three generations embedded unwillingly in an alien economy, dominated by an alien society. They had reluctantly come to terms with a type of living which involved a money economy, effective confinement to a small village of neatly-arrayed cottages, their children at school for up to ten years, irregular and uninspiring work, and the domination of Christianity over their lives.

From an other viewpoint, the traditional life had become barely a memory: no young men had been fully initiated for twenty years; knowledge of descent groups had become blurred or had been lost altogether; traditional forms of political organisation, such as the tendi or yanarumi, had long gone, having had no powers for a couple of generations. Even knowledge of the environment which had sustained countless generations of their ancestors was fading, as access to the environment beyond the boundaries of Point McLeay became more constrained. The various mythologies and stories brought to Point McLeay by people from different areas had been joined together to become the bits and pieces of Ngarrindjeri tradition.
Of course, most adults in 1900 would have known, even if they did not speak, the full language, a language rich in words, phrases and allusions relating to a hunting and gathering life in a bountiful environment, but one with necessarily few or no words relating to an agricultural or industrial economy. Inevitably, the young generation was less interested in a language which appeared to be irrelevant except as a marker of who was in and who was out: even the children of Albert Karloan and Pinkie Mack learnt only the bare one or two hundred words of Ngarrindjeri that a child would have known in traditional society. Even a ‘full-blood’ such as David Unaipon, born in 1872, appears to have gone to his grave in 1967 without a full knowledge of the language.
In 1900, most of the elders at Point McLeay would have had some knowledge of traditional life passed on to them in their youth. After all, an elder in 1900 would have been a young child in the 1850s and 1860s, long after the depredations of invasion had swept over their country: even by 1900, an elder would have had to be over seventy years old to remember aspects of traditional life untouched by the invasion. So all understandings of tradition were coloured by the knowledge of the unwelcome and unavoidable presence of others. At the same time, even the elders did not spurn what they needed from the modern economy to survive: liquor, newspapers, tobacco, clothes, and so on: in the absence of a traditional package of cultural artifacts to nurture them, they adopted much of the alien package and made it their own, shared it with their children and grandchildren, and without too much reflection, preoccupied as they were with getting by from one day to the next, passed it on to further generations.