AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1922, Page 10

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 New South Wales at least, where they were once so numerous, 'the children of to-day will live to see the end of the last full-blooded black man and the last black woman. It is estimated by Governor Phillip and other early authorities that the coast between Botany Bay 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 new metropolitan district, then, 50,000 or 60,000 for the whole State—for the Riverina, 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 have 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 toward extinction, the half-castes are increasing. The blacks are simply withering away by the blight of European contract, 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, of herbs and trees; their complex and efficient social system: their marriage laws and their sign language, all have gone without record, and apparently without regret. No scientific body or institution has a care for Australian ethonology, and there is not a single scientific student at work upon it.