113
CECIL NGAKA' EBSWORTH
Wangkumara Man of the Corner Country
by David Huggonson
In the early summer of 1919 Rose Hines gave birth to a son on
the banks of Ngakanuru Waterhole situated along the watercourse
of Cooper Creek in South-West Queensland. This was Rose's fourth
son to the stockman and drover, Albert Ebsworth. The midwife at
the birth was a tribal woman known affectionately as "Mum Hagar".
She spoke little or no English, but could relate stories in Wangkumara
about her childhood memories of the Victorian Exploring Expedition
led by the Police Superintendent Robert O'Hara Burke. Genealogical
calculations by Janet Mathews and Lorna Dixon show that Mum
Hagar, Ngaka's great-grandmother, would have been a centenarian
when she died in 1936.'
Little is written in school history books about Wright's supply
column to the expedition, particularly their killing of a score of
tribesmen at Koorbatta waterhole on the BuUoo in 1861 because they
appeared hostile.^. The tribesmen were Albert Ebsworth's people,
although his biological father was a European bookkeeper who
worked on the BuUoo Downs Station for a time.^
The Wangkumara people who, according to the anthropologist,
R.H. Mathews, included the KuUalli, Bunthamurra, Yanderawantha,
Yowera, Warrika, as well as the Wangkumara, not only had the same
names for the two intermarrying divisions, but spoke dialects of the
same language.'*.
During the pastoral occupation of their tribal lands the
Wangkumara people suffered at the hands of the Mounted Native
Police. In June 1877 a detachment of native police under SubInspector Cheeke was stationed at William Campbell's Chastleton
Station. The property is now known as Baryulah outstation at the
junction of Cooper Creek and the Wilson River. Ngaka's birthplace,
Ngakanuru waterhole, is located near this outstation.'.
Documents show that the killings of Welford, on the Barcoo River,
and John Dowling, at what is now Wangetta Station, led to a number
of punitive expeditions during which massacres took place under the
official euphemism, "dispersal"*. Ngaka knows of a massacre site
on Mt Leonard Station halfway between Windorah and Birdsville,
where he was able to examine skulls with lead bullets still embedded
in them. George Farwell also refers to this massacre in his book "Land
of Mirage"^
Rose, like Albert, was of mixed parentage, her natural father being
a white, blade shearer and her mother a Wangkumara woman.
114
Charlotte Hines from Nappa Merrie Station. The lack of European
women in the outback, coupled with the dominant position and
attitudes of the itinerant pastoral workers and property owners, often
lead to exploitative relationships characterised by the coUoquial
expression "Black Velvet" for Aboriginal women.^
Albert Ebsworth was employed as a stockman on A.C.
MacDonald's property "Naryilico" at the time of Ngaka's birth, and
was later to have his own droving plant and 8 c^i E cattle brand, but
he never owned any property in the European sense.
In the year of Ngaka's birth the "Spanish" influenza epidemic
decimated the Aboriginal people of the corner country and the
economic recession of 1921 put added strain on the Ebsworth family,
living by this time on Naryilico's Piehuppa Lake outstation in a pise
house with a thatched roof of cane grass. Like many Aboriginal men
in the 1920's, Albert Ebsworth was forced to work for rations and
some pocket money at Christmas time.
The Australian Workers' Union was unable to have even white
station hands included in the Pastoral Award until 1917. The award
gave boundary-riders 40 shillings per week, and "found", but the
claim to limit working hours to 48 hours per week was rejected. The
union tried for years to have "full blood" Aborigines included in
the award but was unsuccessful with this claim until 1966.
The sons of Albert Ebsworth were to develop a reputation in later
years for demanding equal conditions with white workers. "Alby",
who died in 1983, was notorious for his fight on this issue. It was
below "Alby's" dignity to eat his meals on any station's wood
heap.'
The Queensland Government had introduced a compulsory saving
scheme for Aboriginal workers in 1915. Under this scheme the meagre
wages of Aboriginal workers were deposited in saving accounts
controlled by the local police, who were also deemed the district
Protectors of Aborigines. The writings of Frank Stevens spell out
in meticulous detail how the Trust Account system was used to
defraud Aboriginal workers of their wages.'" A mysterious fire at
Noccundra Police station which destroyed all the saving books was
one instance which directly effected the Aboriginal stockmen of the
Channel Country. They were never fully paid the amounts recorded
in their saving accounts.
The Queensland Labour Governments of the 1920's forcibly
removed many Aborigines, who had become expert stockmen, from
cattle stations in their home territories to Cherbourg reservation, on
the generally erroneous contention that they were depriving white
men of jobs."
Parliamentary records show that the explorer Augustus Gregory,
by then Surveyor General and a Conservative Member of Legislative
Council in Queensland, was one of the few opponents of the policy
115
of concentration. He fully appreciated the impact that the policy
would have on Aboriginal people because of the spiritual attachment
to their tribal country. Augustus Gregory had passed through the
country of the Wangkumara during his 1858 expedition.
To enable Ngaka to attend school, Albert and Rose left him in the
care of Charlotte Hines and Scottie Clayton at their camp on
Thompson's Creek on the southern outskirts of Tibooburra. Scottie
was a former Police tracker from Nocundra, west of Thargomindah,
and was respected because of his ability to read and write English.
During this time Ngaka acquired many mythological stories, but in
particular the legend relating to the Three Brothers rock formation,
which is a sacred site of the Wangkumara at Tibooburra.'^
Ngaka managed to obtain a few years of schooling with the
sympathetic teacher of Tibooburra Public School, Mrs Gaiter.
However, economic necessity forced Ngaka to start work as a station
hand on Wonaminta Station before he completed Primary School.
During his early 'teens', Ngaka obtained cash by trapping dingoes
for scalp money and riding as a jockey for station owners at bush
race meetings.
After weathering the hard times of the depression years, disaster
struck the Wangkumara people of Tibooburra in 1938. Due to
constant petitioning by a sole white parent, the Aborigines Protection
Board forcibly removed the entire population of the Thompson's
Creek camp to the Board's Aboriginal Station at Brewarrina.'^ It
appears that Aboriginal children were not regarded as worthy
classmates for white children at Tibooburra school and so they were
required to attend the segregated Protection Board School operated
by the Aboriginal Station manager and his wife.'"
The N.S.W. Education Department officially aUowed Aboriginal
children into public schools in 1944; and then it was conditional on
their parents obtaining honorary white status by being granted a
certificate of exemption from the conditions of the Aborigines
Protection Act."
The concentration of Aboriginal people of different tribal
groupings onto centraUsed reserves may have been cost efficient for
the Protection Boards of N.S.W. and Queensland, but the
psychological impact on tribal customs and practices was
devastating.'*
The forced removal to Brewarrina was made easier for the
Government officers, because the majority of Wangkumara men were
working on outlying stations and only the old people and young
children were in the camp at the time. They were loaded onto a large
truck for removal to the State controlled reservation. The men
followed their families when word reached them of the unannounced
actions of the Government officers. The administration of Brewarrina
116
Aboriginal Station left a lot to be desired as the 1938 inquiry into
the Aboriginal Protection Board demonstrated.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald of 8th January 1938 stated
that the Manager admitted he habitually carried and fired a revolver
to frighten the 'blacks'. The Manager also broke any strike action
by stopping all rations to Aboriginal men and their families who
refused to work or carry out his instructions. Historically, the
conditions on Brewarrina Aboriginal Station had more in common
with the Nazi concentration camp than a government operated reserve
for the "protection of Aborigines". The powers and duties of the
Aborigines Protection Board of N.S.W. in 1937 are listed in the N.S.W.
ParUamentary Papers, Volume 7 of 1938-39-40. The informed and
concerted attack on the Aborigines Protection Board by BiU Ferguson
of Dubbo at a Parliamentary Select Committee of Inquiry, which
heard evidence from 17 November 1937 to 17 February 1938, as weU
as the newspaper coverage of the Day-of-Mourning demonstration,
which coincided with the 150th anniversary celebrations of British
settlement, secured the leading members of the Aborigines Progress
Association a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Minister for
the Interior.'\
In February 1939 the Commonwealth Government announced a
new policy towards Aborigines. Aborigines were to be educated for
full citizenship, and, through training and welfare, were to be given
equal opportunities wherever possible. These equal opportunities were
to extend to "nomadic or dependent natives", because they were
excluded from the benefits of the ChUd Endowment Act when it was
passed by the Federal Parliament in 1941.
The N.S.W. Government changed its poUcy from segregation to
assimilation. The change was embodied in the 1940 amendment to
the Aborigines Protection Act. Under the new policy Aborigines,
especially those on reserves or stations, were to become selfsupporting members of society.
In light of this policy shift the forced removal of the Wangkumara
from their largely self-sufficient niche at Tibooburra to ration
dependency at Brewarrina, in hindsight, seems mystifying. However,
the new policies allowed the Ebsworth family to leave Brewarrina and
the family obtained droving contracts with the Rice brothers in
Bourke, supplying cattle to the rail head, and the Rice brothers',
butcher shop.
During the two years the Ebsworth's spent at Brewarrina
Aboriginal Station, Ngaka's sister, Una Hartnett, died in chUdbirth,
and a number of elderly Wangkumara people also died because of
what Ngaka attributes to "homesickness".
The shortage of rural labour, which resulted from the outbreak
of World War Two, meant that all able-bodied Wangkumara men
117
found employment on stations, particularly as it was Army policy
to discourage recruitment of men of obvious Aboriginal descent.'^
An Aboriginal Reserve of 25 acres was gazetted at Bourke in 1946.
Ngaka married Betty Knight in 1942 and for the next eighteen years
undertook a variety of station jobs. At one stage in the 1950's Ngaka
had his own fencing plant consisting of a five ton Bedford truck and
the necessary sundry equipment. His crew of five men fenced much
of Salt Lake Station at the cost of sixty pounds per mile.
Ngaka's skill as a dingo trapper led to him gaining employment
with the Wild Dog Destruction Board when the fencing "cut out".
Ngaka's record of over fifty dogs in a six month period in 1959 is
yet to be bettered in the corner country. Property owners would often
place special bounties on rogue dingoes which other trappers had
failed to catch. These cunning dogs could kill between thirty and
forty sheep per night.''^
The Wanaaring Police Officer, Andy Coglin, encouraged Ngaka
to obtain a Certificate of Exemption so that he could legally drink
in the Wanaaring Hotel without placing the Police Officer in the
embarrassing position of having to arrest a friend. Aborigines were
not legaUy allowed to drink in public bars in N.S.W. untU 1962.
Ngaka also rode horses at country race meetings; hence he was
a weU-known and popular personality on both sides of the state
border which bisected the tribal territory of the Wangkumara.
During the drought of the mid-sixties, Ngaka ran a camp of scrub
cutters who spent eight months with chain saws attempting to keep
feed up to 60,000 sheep on Denna Downs Station. By this time
Ngaka's son, Cecil, was employed in the Meat Works at Bourke and
his other son, Malcolm, was gaining a reputation in the Channel
Country as an excellent stockman. In later life, Ngaka has contracted
asthma and has been forced to curtail his beloved bush work. Since
1980 Ngaka has been involved in recording and publishing books in
the Wangkumara language.
In 1981 the Commonwealth Schools Commission provided an
innovation grant to David Huggonson to assist in the recording and
publication of material in the Wangkumara language. Ngaka and his
late brother, 'Alby', were the driving forces behind the project. With
the Assistance of linguists Gavan Breen and Carol Robertson, a 334
page Wangkumara Teaching Program and Dictionary was published
and launched at the N.S.W. Parliament House on 28 February
1985.'°
While the Delhi-Santos consortium taps oil and gas deposits in
the now deserted Wangkumara tribal country,^' remnants of
Ngaka's people live a largely welfare dependent existence in Bourke;
and the Wangkumara children are taught a white curriculum which
makes little mention of the war of occupation and the Wangkumara's
subsequent struggle for survival. Ngaka's great hope is that by
118
recording his language and life story, some enterprising teacher may
include some of the Wangkumara history and culture in his or her
teaching program, thus giving Aboriginal children a greater respect
for their elders and culture.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
See Chapter 7 on Lorna Dixon by Janet Matthews in Fighters and Singers:
The Lives of some Australian Aboriginal Women, edited by Isobel White,
Diane Barwick and Betty Meehan, published by George Allen and Unwin,
1985.
Papers of the Warrego and South-West Queensland Historical Society, 1969,
Volume 1, p.2.
The personal history details contained in this article were obtained from
notes made during interviews with Ngaka Ebsworth in Bourke in 1981.
Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of Queensland. Queensland
Geographical Journal, Vol. 2, 1904-05 p.51.
Ngabiradika is Ngaka's tribal name, but his nickname is Ngaka (Knocker),
taken from the name of the waterhole where he was born Ngakamuru.
See Page 45, Keith Willey The Drovers, Macmillan 1982 and Page 6, History
of Bourke, Vol. 8 1980-81, Bourke District Historical Society.
George Farwell, Land of Mirage, Seal Books, p.l60.
A.P. Elkin, The Remaining Aborigines of N.S.W., Australian Board of
Missions Review, July 15, 1932, p.66.
Dawn May, From Bush to Station, James Cook University 1983, chapter
4, The Treatment of Aboriginal Labour.
Frank Stevens Aboriginal Wages and the Trust System in Queensland, Paper
at Cairns conference 1968.
Hector Holthouse, Illustrated History of Queensland, Rigby 1978, p.226.
Minute Book, Board for the Protection of Aborigines, Archives Office of
N.S.W. Reference 4/7127, 6 April and 4 May 1938.
In 1915 the Aborigines Protection Board combined the offices of teacher
and manager on smaller Aboriginal stations. See Sydney Morning Herald
10 August 1915, Education of Aborigines article.
David Huggonson, "Towards a History of Aboriginal Education in New
South Wales", in Aboriginal Child at School, Vol. 12 No. 15 Oct/Nov 1984.
Report of Howard Creamer and Ray Kelly, Sacred Sites of the Wangkumara
People, Investigation and Report, N.S.W. National Parks and Wildlife
Service.
See Ngaka Ebsworth's comments: report in Sydney Morning Herald 28
February 1985 p.5.
Jack Horner, Vote Ferguson for Aboriginal Freedom, ANZ Book Co. Sydney
1974.
A Military Board memo, of 6 May 1940 stated that the enlistment of persons
of non-European origin or descent was neither necessary nor desirable. For
a full account of Army recruiting policies see: R.A. Hall, Aborigines and
the Army: the Second World War Experience, Defence Force Journal No.
24, Sep & Oct 1980; and D. Huggonson, "Too Dark for the Light Horse",
Land Magazine, 3 November 1988.
Jeff Carter, People of the Inland, Rigby Books Adelaide, 1966, chapter 3.
Michael Beach, "A Language According to Knocker", Daily Telegraph,
Sydney, 28 February 1985 p.20; Adrienne Truelove, Wangkumara: A Living
Australian Language, Education {N.S.W. Teachers' Federation Magazine)
11 March 1985.
Sydney Morning Herald, 28 March 1985 p.20.