NORTHERN TERRITORY.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 May 1922, Page 9

NORTHERN TERRITORY.

PITCHED BATTLES AND BARBARITY,

Darwin, April 23. Startling disclosures, matching the worst feature of uncivilised communities, are reported from Darwin. The general conduct of affairs by the department in charge of the Northern Territory is described locally as an open scandal. Since 1917, when proper official inspection was abolished, natives have been neglected and uncared for. They have been constantly drunk and disorderly, and regular pitched battles have been frequent near the compound and on the outskirts of the town. A correspondent of the Standard, the local newspaper, publishes terrible revelations concerning the treatment of natives on far-'back cattle stations. He gives names, dates and places, and says that he and others saw the manager on one station order a black boy to be tied to a post. He then hogged him with a stockwhip until he (the manager ) was exhausted. Because a Chinese cook hit

a boy on the head with a bootlast, causing a nasty cut, the 'boy retaliated and knocked the Chinaman down. The manager coVered the boy with his rifle and made two other boys tie him up. Then he flogged him. Further along the road he met- the head stockman of the same station on horseback, driving two boys before him with a stockwhip. The boys said the station would not feed o.r clothe them, so they were forced to run away. They had called at a neighbouring station, and found another black boy, their mate, in a wretched way. His young wife had been taken from him by the station cook, •who would not let him speak to her. The wife then joined the other boys and ran away to live in the bush, where they were caught and brought back. All four were chained up and flogged. The two were kept in chains until the stockman called to drive them back.

The writer asserts that the natives are enslaved and flogged, the women are ravished, and many acts of fiendish cruelty are perpetrated. The correspondent further complains of the shocking insanitary conditions of most of the. stations. Sickness is rife. One station manager was called out at night to see a cook, who was sleeping on a kitchen table with a lubra. He said he had always done so, as there was no other accommodation. “Some stations,” said the correspondent. in conclusion, “can be smelt before being seen—the worst offenders being the largest pastoral stations.” Some revelations are too disgusting to JBMJBtion.; others are pitiable.