Whinge of the day thread...
- Thread starter johnb
- Start date
Help Support Prospecting Australia:
Not that simple, as first as yet not even confirmed is Aboriginal and also place and date of birth is documented (twice in fact ) The info is there, just the powers to be choose to blank it out. There is pages and pages with just all relevant info blanked. I mean at least 10 to 15 pages. So as said the info is there but apparently I'm not privy to it. The reason as to why for me is the main issue?
Still not today in many cases unfortunately.
So Australia Day or Invasion Day is about Phillip arriving at Botany Bay with the First Fleet which my half brothers side is proud to claim but what does it mean for West Australians or Darwinians and what would Australia be today if it had not been settled by the British? What if it was discovered by the Chinese or Italians ?
So Australia Day or Invasion Day is about Phillip arriving at Botany Bay with the First Fleet which my half brothers side is proud to claim but what does it mean for West Australians or Darwinians and what would Australia be today if it had not been settled by the British? What if it was discovered by the Chinese or Italians ?
The only reason i can think of is if you're one of the so called stolen generation.
The privacy of your siblings if any and the privacy of foster parents.
The Dutch/French were sailing in Australian waters a century before the Britain hammered in their ownership peg. No wonder they call us the lucky country. We're fortunate the Poms ran out of prison cells for all there crims.
What I suggested doing with them is not expensive, and might answer questions that are very important to Bogger. For example, it would settle any aboriginal ancestry one way or another immediately. We all carry genetic markers of our past ancestry - for example, everyone outside Africa still carries Neanderthal ancestry (my wife would argue that I carry more). Many southeast Asians carry up to 6% Denisovan ancestry. Aboriginal ancestry is a breeze to determine.
It can work well. I mentioned all the second cousins who turned up on DNA alone when my wife spent $65. One turned out to be someone who my wife had known personally in another country (already knew was a cousin). Yet they were able to make the link on DNA alone....
Last edited:
Can be - also privacy of sperm donors although that is disappearing. Birth certificates can also be corrected at a later date. There was an example on a recent genealogy TV show where someone got his sister-in-law pregnant. Grandma later got a second certificate issued with his name as father. In another case someone got their own child pregnant. We know a number of people brought up as the children of parents who later were found to be grandparents.
Another issue not mentioned about the "Stolen Generation" is that the enquiry found that 85% of the removals were justified for welfare reasons (that needs checking but is my memory - the same as my memory is that the head of the commission later said that he wished they had not termed it genocide because he did not believe it met that definition). I think it is a bit irrelevant - for indigenous people to have had 15% of their children taken for no reason whatsoever is horrific - imagine if you were a parent, grandparent, sibling, cousin who suddenly saw a loved family reason taken without reason, never to be seen again. But of course the majority were justified for simple welfare reasons - in extreme cases a part-white child (as almost all were) could be killed by other "tribal members". In other cases children could not be cared for adequately, and of course alcoholism became an issue with societal breakdown in what had previously been quite well-run indigenous societies. And remember how we treated young white women who got pregnant if not married - the assumption that a young single mother could not care for a child (and was immoral and not deserving of consideration anyway). I remember that still occurring at my High School. I imagine indigenous women got even far less consideration. I read of a case where the mother was moved to near Bairnsdale and her children kept at Corranderk near Healesville, because one was for "full-blood" aborigines and the other "half-castes". She wrote for permission to visit her children - it was refused.
I seem to recall Uncle Jack Charles saying that he was one of the "stolen generations" - a man whose strength I admire in getting on top of a very hard past. From memory his mother was 15 when she gave birth to him and ultimately had either 11 or 13 children. So one wonders if he might have been part of a simple welfare removal. The lack of records is a major (and in later years, inexcusable) barrier to indigenous people now learning their ancestry, so we (and possibly he) never knew/know these things. For example, he thought the common incorrect history that the last of the Tasmanian aborigines were exiled to Flinders Island and died of sorrow at their re-location. In fact they mostly died from disease, having no resistance to some common white diseases. He also thought that they died out there (also common incorrect history) and that his grandmother? was the only one who was allowed to return to the Tasmanian mainland after a special appeal. In fact half of the original population were moved to near Hobart and many are fishermen now southwest of there - 16% of the population of Flinders Island are still currently aboriginal. I don't think Jack made anything up - I think he believed what he claimed, but without records how could he easily find out? I felt a bit sorry, wondering if he still had relatives near Hobart who he did not know about.
Last edited:
Glad you had a good mum and dad who loved you.Good info there Goldie and will follow up on thatFrustrating indeed but no problem with the soul
The two birth certificates in different names is the spin out for me. How can birth records record and show the birth of two people when only one was born? Looks like I'll probably die twice also then perhaps ? Maybe?
My former wife was taken at 9 yrs of age. The reason was not abuse but neglect. Yes they (7 of them) were hungry (not starving) but they were happy. They were sent to different locations all over the country and lost contact.
After 27yrs she got in touch with the aboriginal legal service to track them down and they were united.
There was much sorrow over the lost years.
My advice to Bogger is to go through the aboriginal legal service to obtain your records. That's what they're good at.
After 27yrs she got in touch with the aboriginal legal service to track them down and they were united.
There was much sorrow over the lost years.
My advice to Bogger is to go through the aboriginal legal service to obtain your records. That's what they're good at.
No issues there Goldie
Might have copped a few to many belts on the ass but one looks back as an adult and I reckon I was a fair bugger of a kid Surprised I'm not a homicidal maniac as a result It's the bureaucratic garbage that's the current and only issue and if a medical history and nationality was provided the rest I couldn't care less about. My parents informed me I was adopted long before I even knew what the word mean't So no hang ups or mental issues as a result.
Last edited:
E / B has all been done thru services available. Thats the issue as results supplied from the records are what contains all the blanked pages . I was three days old when my Mum picked me up from hospital, apparently she had a broken leg at the time and hobbled in with a cast on her leg. Once again I know who my Mum and Dad are / were and always thru growing up and even on their death was treated as equal as my natural born siblings. I only stress this as once again it is the failure to be supplied the information that I have requested. The two birth certificates ? Well makes me laugh as how accurate can the records be if one person has two? Same details and identical in every way except the name on them
Treated like a mushroom by the "powers" being my whinge of the day nothing more.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2016
- Messages
- 7,947
- Reaction score
- 16,016
Any chance you could be a twinE / B has all been done thru services available. Thats the issue as results supplied from the records are what contains all the blanked pages . I was three days old when my Mum picked me up from hospital, apparently she had a broken leg at the time and hobbled in with a cast on her leg. Once again I know who my Mum and Dad are / were and always thru growing up and even on their death was treated as equal as my natural born siblings. I only stress this as once again it is the failure to be supplied the information that I have requested. The two birth certificates ? Well makes me laugh as how accurate can the records be if one person has two? Same details and identical in every way except the name on them
Treated like a mushroom by the "powers" being my whinge of the day nothing more.
just a thought. Mate I feel for you, to be treated like you have been are being is nothing short of utterly disturbing and disgraceful 
All the best with the process, I hope you get a positive outcome sooner than later.Thanks RM and yes it's the treatment that's the issue and the only issue happy to say. Like it's pretty personal stuff and as I have said if it's not my business then I sure as hell don't have a clue who's business it is then? No twin as evidence of that and also not a name change, just clearly two birth certificates. I have never bothered to chase anything up regards this prior as felt to do so in away was an insult to my parents despite them telling me I was free to do so if I wished. It is only recent health history questions asked that made me pursue in the first place then in doing so next thing Shine Lawyers contacted me regards a class action.Any chance you could be a twin
It may well be that given the current class action pending is why details will not be released to me, as it may incriminate the parties involved in doing so? That's the most logical explanation I can come up with.
You're probably right. Class actions can take years to resolve. Don't hold your breath you may never hear. I have one going on right now that started 5 yrs ago.
Move on till you hear something.
Maybe two different people mate. More than likely a stuff-up or three along the line. How ridiculous when you can not be given all records pertaining to you. I feel everyone should have the entitlement to all records pertaining to them without having to jump hurdles.Good info there Goldie and will follow up on that
The two birth certificates in different names is the spin out for me. How can birth records record and show the birth of two people when only one was born? Looks like I'll probably die twice also then perhaps ? Maybe?
Perhaps because I was working when many aborigines were still nomads I understand that many issues were not intentional but too difficult. It is often said that aborigines only got the vote in the late 1960s referendum when they were finally counted in the census - but even in the 1950s and early 1960s it was difficult to tie nomadic people down to count them (no sick pun intended). The reality is that they were small in number and difficult to count, and quite a lot were not literate in English (it or Pidgin/Creole is a second or third language today in very remote areas). In fact, at Federation all aborigines got the vote if they could vote in State elections, but only South Australian aborigines had that right. So it was not exclusion by Federal government but State, and again I suspect the issue was mostly constructing voter rolls for nomads. There was also an additional proviso that aborigines in other States could apply for Federal voter registration themselves, if not of "bad character". A number did - once again the issues seems to have been data collection as much as anything - essentially if a record could be made you could potentially vote. However as with the "stolen generations" issues, there was a lot of difference in implementation of many things between a politician enacting laws in Canberra, and a poorly educated cop enacting them in Woop Woop North - who may have been sent there to get him out of sight of the public because of a pre-disposition to assaulting indigenous people when he felt like it (it was common to do this with such cops).
By the late 1960s the pattern had changed, with aborigines having become more urban to outer rural (now more than 90%, less than 10% are now fairly remote or extremely remote), and it would be seen as grossly racist by then not to count aborigines in the census and them automatically getting the vote (so more than 90% of Australians voted yes in the referendum for this). Make no mistake, Australians were historically highly racist, but it was not a primary aim at Federation to simply exclude aborigines (although the prevailing but incorrect belief that they would soon die out did not help any positive action on their behalf). Often the government actions were less racist than the public, if far from ideal. There was a recent comment on "Australian Wars" that no whites were hung for killing aborigines, which is false - it was rare but occurred in a number of States as a deterrent - in one case seven whites were convicted of a single massacre and five of them were hung simultaneously. Unfortunately our at times unpleasant history is becoming worse in media narration. We need truth-telling by everyone (but it will not exonerate actions of non-indigenous people at the time).
I get mildly irritated by simplistic comments like "Aborigines were not included as Australian citizens or allowed to vote until the late 1960s", that ignore history. We did not have truck-mounted transcievers for inland communications until the mid-1930s, and only from 1929 were station families able to use pedal wirelesses to contact the Flying Doctor in emergencies. I still went days sometimes before I could get through on the old DSB Traeger transceivers we used in the 1960s - I have had to wait for our helicopter to return to use its radio connection to Port Augusta control tower, keeping someone alive for six hours with one leg chopped off, because the traeger had too much static (we succeeded and he lived). We had to stop and string a 6 m long horizontal earth lead ("counterpoise") and 2.5 m whip aerial even to make a call from a vehicle. The outback was remote - to get along what were outback roads. I would sometimes get someone to sit on the roo bars to easier see the tyre tracks and indicate left and right adjustments to my steering with hand signals. People still often died of thirst in the 1960s (including indigenous people) and it continued into the 2000s. Human bones were sometimes seen along tracks in the 1930s and 1940s (I have photos - not mine).
I suspect that most older aborigines would agree with me - but most non-indigenous Australians and many young aborigines would not.
Last edited:
Just on the off chance. Was that fella with his leg chopped off from a station near Leigh Creek ?
He was working at the North Flinders talc mine at the time, I was told that he survived and actually went back to the mine with an artificial leg. I was at Mt Fitton station and we found him with his truck overturned on a track while we were sampling. Because it was now night, we dozed an airstrip for the FD plane to land in the dark, with a tall tree at the arrival area and a cliff at the other end - very short. He came in without circling, dropping steeply on to the runway to avoid the tree top. with only the lights of our vehicles angled to illuminate the strip - they would never permit that now. I was so pleased to hear that he lived - I found out talking to a client in a Ballarat barber;s shop waiting for my haircut.
In those days you were given a flying doctor medical kit in which the medicines had no names just numbers. Poor guy, he had to wait all those hours until we could find out the number for morphine and inject him.
Last edited:
Of course nothing is ever simple. The Australian constitution did say that aboriginal people should not be included in the census (a different thing to saying they had no voting rights, itself slightly different to citizenship, although each can interact on the other). For example some aborigines still had passports, most had the right to vote or could obtain it if they applied but none could be included in the census. So rough estimates were made (how can you exclude people from overall population estimates if you don’t know how many there are)? Duh!
Same as they had the constitutional (if conditional) right to vote despite not being counted, and drive - double duh!
Last edited:
If you know that area, did you know Clem Coulthard (or his sons at Iga Warta and Neppabunna, eg Vince Jr, Vince Sr, Terence)? I put in tracks with Clem in 1969 during Mt Painter uranium exploration. Clem was the last initiated Adnyamathanha (yura or "rock people") man. I remember his son Vince Sr underwent Pitjatjantjara initiation up in the Musgraves because there were no Adnyamathanha elders left to initiate him. I would walk ahead putting flagging tape on trees and Clem would fire up his clunky old dozer with a spray of aeroguard and follow doing an incredible job (eg Sillers Lookout track at Arkaroola was one of his - photo).
