STUDYING ABORIGINES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 106, 1 November 1933, Page 7

STUDYING ABORIGINES

AN AUSTRALIAN FAMILY

"The name Central Australia, to most city women, still conjures up a vision of gibber plains and desolate sandhills (states a writer in an Australian paper). "Only the other day I met a family from Central Australia whose lives seemed to me incomparably fuller and more , interesting than those of thousands in the city. Their homo is far beyond Alice Springs, near the Queensland border. The two girls at the family help to muster cattle and study natural science with equal enthusiasm. Both can talk fluently in the language of the aborigines of thai country, and are acquiring a wealth of valuable knowledge about native myths and customs. One of them, who is only 15, collected the specimens, of edible native seeds that made a most striking exhibit at the recent Wild Flower Show held in Adelaide. During a recent scientific expedition to study the native tribes the two girls acted as interpreters for the scientists, and the elder was responsible for arranging for a most interesting film showing the lubras collecting and preparing food in their wild state. • "KIND OF KINDERGARTEN METHOD." "All,the ( children of this family originally acquired.their knowledge of native lore through a kind of kindergarten method which is surely unique in Central Australia. The small boys of the family, on arrival at the station, entered into a kind of educational alliance with the little black shepherd boys. Between them they concocted a new game, which consisted of a group competition in the knowledge of native trees and shrubs. Sides were taken, and each challenged the other to recognise scraps of bark or leaf and to describe the properties and uses of the tree to which it belonged. Wild blacks travelling farther out were commissioned to bring back 'specimens' and to impart their knowledge to one of the'groups, who would then challenge the other to describe them. Before very long the boys knew the aboriginal names and the' uses of every tree and shrub throughout the vast expanse of bush, and they naturally shared their knowledge with their sisters. '. "The natives who come1 and go on this station are not the dctribalised_ blacks of civilisation's ; fringe, arid, all' their own1 customs are retained,, so that

there is a unique field for research. Of native skill and intelligence, on their natural lines, this family has formed a very- high estimate.■'■■- I was .assured that bark and rock drawings, in which,' the work has to be 'on the flat,' do scant justice to -the aboriginal artist, who is at.his best drawing on sand, where form can be suggested in three dimensions. A little black1 boy, imitating the tracks of some animal in the sand, can shov whether the track is one, two, or three days old, so remarkably well, are his powers of observation developed. His kindergarten, as a piccaninny, is the whole bush, in which his mother will take infinite pains to teach him the ABC of Natuvc."