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Alyawarre Country (2001)

play May contain names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
clip The grinding stone education content clip 3

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Reggie Camphoo Pwerl and Donald Thompson Kemarre tell us about what Indigenous people used to carry with them when they travelled everywhere on foot – the main tool being the grinding stone. Images show the grinding stone being used to crush seeds. Two men survived – Lame Tommy and George Wickham. Their bush names were Alupathik and Arralta (whiskers). Still photographs of Indigenous people fade in and out of frame. We hear about how the white men took the Aboriginal women as wives, and the Aboriginal men would watch from the hills and not come down for fear of being shot. The two elders tell us about how the Indigenous people used to eat the introduced animals – horses, donkeys, and bullock – and how they developed a taste for cattle because it has more fat.

Curator’s notes

by Romaine Moreton

We hear about the history of the Frew River area and the conflict between Indigenous people and the Europeans who settled in the area. The conflict described in the stories is often over women and resources.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This subtitled clip shows Reggie Camphoo Pwerl and Donald Thompson Kemarre speaking in the Alyawarre language about grinding stones and about colonisation, including Aboriginal men being shot by European pastoralists for spearing cattle in the Frew River area of the Northern Territory. The clip includes sepia-toned re-creations of the past and disturbing archival photographs of Indigenous men in chains. A narrator describes the arrival of a police presence in the area.

Educational value points

  • The clip reveals that the grinding stone, a stone slab, was an important tool for Indigenous Australians. It was used to crush, pound or grind foodstuffs, such as seeds, bulbs, berries, small mammals and reptiles, for use in cooking. Some of these foods are poisonous unless they are first crushed and washed. Grinding stones were used to crush leaves and bark to make medicine, or soft rocks and clays to make pigment for rock art and other decorations.
  • The clip indicates that there was conflict between Aboriginal people and European pastoralists and that some pastoralists shot Indigenous people or placed them in chains when they speared cattle for food. Pastoralists felt they had a right to defend their property against what they saw as attack, and their sometimes brutal treatment of Indigenous people often went unpunished. The inhumane practice of placing Indigenous people in chains, shown here, did not cease until the 1930s.
  • Pwerl and Kemarre describe conflict between European pastoralists and Indigenous people that arose in the Frew River area from the 1880s. Conflict occurred in many parts of Australia because pastoralists established sheep and cattle stations in the most fertile areas, often denied Indigenous people access to their traditional lands and sacred sites, and prevented them from hunting and from access to often scarce water sources.
  • A police officer was stationed in the Frew River area in 1918 to protect European pastoralists’ property and prevent Indigenous people from spearing cattle. The Central Land Council says that by the 1920s Indigenous people ‘had been hunted away from their waterholes “with whips and guns” by pastoralists wanting the water for stock. Police Station waterhole on … Kurundi station was the launching point for police raids and reprisal parties against local Aboriginal people’ (http://www.clc.org.au).
  • Alyawarre Country is from a documentary television series called Nganampa Anwernekenhe, produced by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association since 1987. Nganampa anwernekenhe means ‘ours’ in the Pitjanjatjara and Arrernte languages, and the series aims to preserve Indigenous languages and cultures. It gives a voice to Indigenous people by enabling people such as Pwerl and Kemarre to tell their stories in their own language.

This clip starts approximately 6 minutes into the documentary.

Two Indigenous men, Pwerl and Kemarre, sit under a tree and speak in their native language. English subtitles appear throughout the clip which is accompanied by footage of Indigenous people using a grinding stone to prepare food and photographs of Indigenous men in chains.
Two men in conversation The main tool that they carried around with them was the grinding stone. This was used for preparing food, such as crushing seeds. Aboriginal people left this place alone for long periods so the land could recover. Only two men from this entire area survived. Something happened! Yeah, the two men who survived to tell the story were Lame Tommy and George Wickham. Their bush names were Alupathik and Arralta (whiskers). You and I remember those two old people and they told the story to us. This place here is where all the white people came first in the olden days. The white men had all the Aboriginal women here as wives. The Aboriginal men used to look at them from the hills. They just couldn’t come down without risking being shot. If a couple of Aborigines killed a cow, everyone would have to run. Aboriginal people used to eat everything: horses, bullocks, donkeys – everything. They liked those new animals, they tasted good. Those first white people left when there was a drought here. And that was when policemen arrived. Aborigines really got to like beef. They used to kill cattle with spears in the early days. Aboriginal people stopped eating kangaroo because cattle had a lot more fat. When they’d finish eating they would cover themselves in the fat. That’s the story of this country that those two old people told us.

Voice-over Mounted Constable Jones arrived here on December 19, 1918, and a police station was built early the following year on the site of the old Frew River cattle station. A police presence on the Davenport Ranch had been mooted since the troubles in the 1890s, and a mining warden was needed for the Hatches Creek area.