Australian Aborigines

Hokitika Guardian, 23 March 1922, Page 4

Australian Aborigines

RAPIDLY VANISHING RACE

SYDNEY, March 9

At the present rate at which the aborigines of Australia are dying out, it is thought that,.in Sew South Wales at least, where they were once so numerous, the children of to-day will live to sqc the end of the last lullblooded black man and the last black woman. It. was estimated by Governor Phillip and other early authorities that the coast between botany If ay and broken Bay, and for many miles inland — roughly, the boundaries of the Sydney metropolitan area—supported about 5000 aborigines when the first settlers arrived. With 5000 in the now metropolitan district, then 50,000 or 60,000 the whole State—for the Riverimi, the Darling river and its tributaries, and the northern rivers districts carried large tribes—is probably not beyond the mark. Some have estimated the population to liavie been very much larger. No accurate enumeration of the blacks was however, made till 40 years ago, by which time scores of tribes had perished altogether. At that time the remnants of the surviving tribes numbered about 7000, and they have dwindled since to scarcely more than 1000, but while the full bloods are moving so rapidly towards extinction, the half-castes are increasing. The blacks sue simply withering away hv the blight of European contact, and it would seem that nothing could save them. Their primitive life, so like that of our own palaeolithic ancestors; their profound knowledge of beasts and birds, or herbs and trees; their complex and efficient social system; their marriage laws arid their sign language, all have gone withoht record, and apparently without regret. No scientific body or institution has a care for Australian ethnology, and there is not a single scientific student at work upon it.