2011 - Theses - Flinders University

White Lives in a Black Community: The lives of Jim Page and Rebecca Forbes in the Adnyamathanha communityTracy SpencerVolume One Creative Writing Component: Excerpted Chapters from Volume Three Appendix OneSouth Australian Annual Meeting of the UAM, Adelaide, May 1935Violet feels somewhat displaced, sitting amongst the congregation in Grote St churchwatching the business of the Annual Meeting take place up the front without her. She barelyblinks, watching over the rims of her glasses as young Miss Jones fills in as secretary. And,believing Miss Jone’s shorthand can’t possibly be keeping up, she begins taking her ownnotes as Dr Duguid begins to speak. She doesn’t want to miss one word. After all, he is sucha nice man, and her own doctor to boot. 157Dr Charles Duguid is a lay Presbyterian and a fine speaker, filled with the zeal of therecently converted. It has been six years since a nurse from Goulburn Island urged him to goand see the situation of Aborigines for himself, and he is still shocked by what he discoveredin Central Australia when he took her advice. During three weeks at the AIM Hostel in AliceSprings, the facility treated none of the disease-ravaged natives he saw about the settlement.In dismay at his own church, he quotes John Flynn’s padre to this sympathetic audience:‘Oh you don’t want to worry about the niggers, the sooner they die out the better.’ 158Describing the medical conditions, inadequate rations, and violation of Aboriginal women,Duguid concludes:Our name is already dragged in the mud at Geneva every year for our treatment of theaborigines, so we must remove the slur from the name of Australia and of Britain... Whatis wanted is a change in the heart of the whole continent, so that the white man ceases todespise the black. 159Violet beams. She couldn’t say it better herself. And then the dear children Dr Duguid caresfor join him on stage and begin to sing. 160 Not one eye is dry in the whole church.100