`I reckon they should keep that hut': reflections on Aboriginal tracking in the Kimberley.

Balme, Jane ; Toussaint, Sandy

Introduction

In this article we discuss responses to the threatened destruction of an Aboriginal police trackers hut in Halls Creek in the East Kimberley, Western Australia (Figure 1). These responses were recorded by us in late 1996 when we were commissioned by architects working for the Western Australian Building Management Authority to assess the social and historical significance of the hut to Aboriginal people, especially members of local language groups such as Jaru, Kija and Gooniyandi. The Halls Creek Shire Council asked the authority to commission the assessment as plans for a new police station indicated that the hut would be demolished and some councillors believed that it might be culturally significant because of its association with Aboriginal trackers.

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The hut is significant because purpose-built accommodation for police trackers is rare in Australia. It is a physical symbol of the early relations between police and Aboriginal people. However, our investigations revealed divergent views both within and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups of people about the importance of the place. Here we firstly provide some historical background to Aboriginal tracking in Western Australia and a physical description of the hut before turning to varied responses to news of its possible destruction.

Aboriginal trackers in Western Australia

In Western Australia, Aboriginal men were appointed as `trackers' under the 1916 Regulations of the WA Aborigines Protection Act of 1905 (Haebich 1989, 204-05). Such men were regarded as `trusties' or `trustees' by the police, that is, as men who had committed a non-violent crime and were regarded to be `trust worthy'. Trackers, often recruited when prison inmates (Chief Secretary's Office 1921), were mostly engaged as `casual workers' who were attached to, and employed by, individual police constables rather than contracted to the Police Department (Bohemia and McGregor 1995, 57). Provided with food and clothing rations by the Department of Police, trackers were allowed certain liberties denied other Aboriginal people. Bohemia and McGregor (1995, 63) point out that being associated with the police gave trackers greater powers in relation to whites, including the freedom to travel over the countryside and to kill cattle as the need for food arose. Many trackers were privately employed; by 1953 some earned a wage of 1 [pounds sterling] a week. Despite this modest remuneration, there is little evidence to suggest that Aboriginal trackers were treated as equals by the police or the colonisers (see Haebich 1989, 204). The role of the trackers was formally replaced by `police aides' in 1975 (through the implementation of Act 18 of WA Statutes 1975).

Aboriginal trackers in the Kimberley

In the first 50 years (from about 1885 to 1935) of European colonisation of the Kimberley, Aboriginal trackers were crucial to the work and well-being of local police and settlers. Expected to undertake a variety of tasks (Bohemia and McGregor 1995, 58), trackers were required to navigate and lead patrols; follow the tracks of sought-after individuals (including alleged criminals, lost people, and locating Aboriginal victims of diseases such as leprosy); act as intermediaries; tend horses and mules; perform physical labour such as digging for graves and water; attend to the needs of prisoners; take command of the plant; and interpret in court. Aboriginal people who had worked as trackers at Halls Creek told us that they were also expected to carry out domestic duties at the police station, such as cooking for the police and inmates, tending police grounds (gardening, sweeping), and caring for livestock attached to the police station (goats and cows used for milking purposes).

Primary police work took the form of patrols which, in the inland parts of the Kimberley, were to prevent Aboriginal attacks on the flocks, herds and teamsters of the colonists' properties, and to conduct surveillance on the Halls Creek Wyndham telegraph line (Gill 1977, 5). Trackers as accomplices in the execution of Aboriginal people who killed stock owned by Europeans were clearly associated with acts which helped quell resistance to colonial `outsiders'. Perhaps the most well-documented resistance fighter was Jandamarra, a Bunaba man also known as `Pigeon', who tried to resist the impact of colonisation in the Kimberley in the late 1880s. Jandamarra, who had been a police tracker, evaded the police for many months but was eventually killed by another tracker (Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995).

The police in particular, and non-Aborigines in general, could not have prospered without the assistance of Aboriginal people who were prepared to undertake an `insider' or `middle-man' role (Durack 1967; Rowse 1987). Without the significant skills and familiarity with the country shown by the trackers, the police would have been unable to successfully carry out their duties as required by the colonial government and settler families.

Bohemia and McGregor (1995) discuss the relationship between police and trackers and between trackers and local Aboriginal people. As apprehenders of alleged offenders, conflicts often arose, but there were also examples of trackers who participated fully in Aboriginal Law and were highly respected (p 69). While not discussed in detail, there is also a hint in Bohemia and McGregor that present-day Aboriginal people have mixed attitudes towards trackers. This ambiguity is illustrated by the comment that many Fitzroy Crossing Aborigines describe Jandamarra's capture by another Aboriginal tracker as evidence of the superiority of Aboriginal knowledge and sorcery over whites and their weapons (p 69).

Halls Creek and the trackers hut

Halls Creek was originally established in 1885 following finds of rich gold deposits. In 1955 the town was relocated to a site 15 km west of its original location. A new police station was constructed in 1959 and the trackers hut was built a year later. As far as we could establish, this is the only purpose-built tracker accommodation in the Kimberley. More commonly, trackers lived in tents or in other buildings associated with the police buildings, such as the shed at Fitzroy Crossing where Jack Bohemia lived (Bohemia and McGregor 1995, 270-71). When trackers were replaced by police aides in 1975, the Halls Creek trackers hut continued to be used as a place for `trustie' prisoners during the day. This continued usage retains its association with Aboriginal people, especially because most of the town population (and therefore most of the prisoners) are Aboriginal (Crough and Christopherson 1993, 23).

A search of the photographic and documentary archives at the Battye State Library in Western Australia revealed no information on the Halls Creek trackers hut. However, we were able to examine photographic records held by an amateur historian in Halls Creek, and additional information was obtained from police files and an unpublished history of the Halls Creek police station held at the station. We also conducted interviews with local people who had lived in the region for many years, and with two trackers who were associated with the hut, Andy Dimai and Jack Jugari.

When it was decided to move the township of Halls Creek to its present location in the early 1950s, tenders were called to build a new police station. Construction began in June 1959 and the transfer from the old to the new station occurred on 24 December 1959. In 1959, tenders were called for the construction of trackers' quarters which were completed in late 1960.

The Halls Creek trackers hut provides rare physical evidence of police tracking. It stands as a modest, rectangular structure, is approximately 4.75 m wide by 7.5 m long, and has three rooms (kitchen, washhouse and toilet) with a covered front verandah (Figure 2). A shaded back porch provides an open passageway to which doors from each of the rooms open. The kitchen and front verandah are built on wooden beams supported by cement pylons, while the remainder of the hut is built on a raised cement slab.

[Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

All external walls and the roof are made of corrugated iron. The rooms are lined with painted fibreboard. The floor of the kitchen consists of pressed cement sheets, while at the rear of the hut the floor is cement. The hut is in fair condition, but there is some notable damage on the western wall where a large gaping hole resulted from the removal of an outside wood stove.

Two ashy patches containing charred and fragmented bone as well as smoke-stained large rocks are evidence that some of the cooking at the hut has occurred outside. This, in addition to a photograph held by the Shire Council which shows two wire-framed made-up beds outside that hut, indicates that occupants of the hut slept outside and that many of the activities associated with the hut may have been out of doors.

Some people with whom we spoke believed that the hut was moved from another location. One suggestion was that the kitchen and verandah were moved from the Australian Inland Mission Hostel for school children where it was used to house Aboriginal people who worked there. It is also possible that it was moved from Old Halls Creek as quarters for trackers at the old police station. If the front of the hut did derive from one of these locations, the back washhouse and toilet were added to the building when it was moved to the present-day police station site. An aerial photograph taken in 1960 and oral testimony from ex-tracker Andy Dimai suggest that both the front (kitchen and front verandah) and back (washhouse, toilet and back porch) were erected at the police station at the same time.

The suggestion that the front section of the building may have been moved from somewhere else is also supported by the physical evidence. The back section is constructed on a concrete slab, whereas the kitchen and verandah are supported by wooden beams and both originally had a wooden floor. The peak of the roof is well forward and centred over the kitchen, suggesting that the original roof line may have been shorter. Old nail holes in the front verandah boards may be further evidence that the hut was moved from an earlier location, or that they were recycled from another building. Alternatively, they may have become loose and needed to be re-attached to the floor beams, possibly at the same time that some of these beams were replaced.

The hut has had a number of alterations since it was first built. According to an ex-tracker, the rooms were originally lined with tin rather than fibro, leading to its vernacular name `the hot box'. Remnants of this tin are still present in the washhouse. It is difficult to determine when this might have happened but, as all of the internal wall graffiti post date 1991, the re-lining may have occurred around about that time. Most of the graffiti relates to the time when the hut was used by `trusties' rather than by trackers who preceded them. It documents the length of prisoners' sentences, or the places from which prisoners were brought (Plate 1).

[Plate 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The original oven was a wood stove inside the kitchen. This was later replaced with a gas oven and the brick gas-bottle housing on the outside eastern wall was also probably added at this time. An additional wood oven was attached to the outside western wall. The internal wood oven was probably replaced after a fire (evidenced by the burnt barge boards on the eastern roof line). A recent inmate told us that the outside oven was present in 1987 when he first used the hut.

Stainless steel sinks in the kitchen and washhouse had replaced the older kitchen sink and concrete laundry tubs. The original shower rose on the eastern wall of the washhouse was replaced by the current rose and plumbing in the present shower screen. This alteration may also have occurred at the time of the re-lining. It is probable that the `SolaHart' hot water system was erected on the roof at this time. The modern design of this hot water system dates it to within the last 20 years.

The first tracker to live in the hut was Piper or `Dil-Yarie' who, with his wife, moved there in November 1960. Piper was hired to replace Barney, a tracker who moved from the police station at Old Halls Creek. Barney left in July 1960 to take up the more lucrative business of droving (15 [pounds sterling] a week). As the hut was not complete while he was attached to the new police station, he was accommodated in a tent on the grounds.

Piper only lasted a little over a month when another tracker and his wife moved into the quarters. That tracker left at the end of January 1961 because he took offence at being reprimanded by police constables for not keeping the quarters clean. Andy Dimai was hired in February 1961 and took up residence in the hut. He had had previous experience as a tracker in Old Halls Creek during the mounted patrol times, probably in the 1940s or early 1950s, as in 1961 he was estimated to be about 40 years old.

Andy Dimai told us that he did not live in the hut permanently but moved between it and his own accommodation elsewhere. Others occupied the hut at the same time, including an `off-sider'. While living there, the trackers were expected to look after the cattle owned by the police. Cows were also cared for and milked there. The trackers cooked their food outside on an open hearth. They slept at the hut but usually outside or on the verandah, if raining. One photograph held by the shire shows two made-up wire-frame beds outside the hut.

When police trackers were replaced by police aides in 1975, the hut began to be used for `trustie prisoners'. These prisoners were given privileges and allowed to move around the police property during the day: they often cooked for other prisoners, sometimes took showers there, received visitors and cooked on campfires around the hut.

Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal responses to the proposed demolition

The hut's social significance was assessed through extensive discussion with representatives from interested community groups, including the local police, the Halls Creek Shire, and a variety of Aboriginal organisations, such as the Puranyangu Rangka Kerrem radio, Ngoonjuwah Council, Kimberley Language Resource Centre and, as mentioned above, individual Aboriginal people such as two ex-trackers and several inmates.

Given the mediating role of Aboriginal trackers in European occupation of the Kimberley, we were initially unsure of how Halls Creek Aboriginal residents might receive news of the hut's possible demolition. This was especially the case as relationships between Aboriginal people and police in the Kimberley have often involved conflict (Dodson 1991; Gill 1977). It also happened that our fieldwork in August 1996 took place shortly after a night of street violence between sections of the police and a number of Aboriginal groups who were visiting the town at the time: `race riots' in Halls Creek became the focus of media attention (Hughes and Wilson 1996). Such circumstances encouraged us to speculate that there might be a complete lack of interest or a negative attitude towards anything to do with the police, including the trackers hut. We found quite the opposite.

While many people were critical of police action, most were passionate about the need to preserve the hut. It was clear that it had the potential to symbolically, and actually, remind Halls Creek residents, and visitors to the town, about the work of the trackers. A particular theme was the belief that it represented Aboriginal tracking skills which were found wanting in Europeans. It was also the case that many people (including members of the Halls Creek Shire) believed that individual trackers should be `honoured' for their police work, just as non-Aboriginal police were. Demolition of the hut threatened to denigrate their memory.

A few comments (from Toussaint and Balme 1996, 16-18) illustrate the diversity of sentiments we recorded: I reckon they should keep the hut there [in the place where it was located]. It's part of the history of Halls Creek from 1888. Lot of the old trackers used to live there, like Charlie, Nipper, Jack. Old Andy Dimai was the first one to use that hut. Jack Jugari came after him. It could be used to honour the work of the trackers ... their work should be recognised and honoured, like the work of other police. I know that place, I was one of the trackers who worked there, after Charlie. I've been tracking all my life. In the olden days, I had to help the kartiya [white] police; I had to track people who went missing. I remember one time when a kartiya went missing from Halls Creek. I had to look for him. I found him at No. 3 Bore. I found him lying there. I said to him, `it's all right mate, I'll take you back'. Trackers weren't given police houses like the police were. Trackers had to find their own place ... [but we] ... used the hut sometimes. The old trackers used to spend time in the hut, and it's been used for the trusties. Families cooked for them there. They slept outside and played cards there. I reckon they [meaning the Police Department] should keep it. Many people [are] attached to that place. The police usually only stay for three years, but Aboriginal people are here all the time. They should keep that place, fix it up. Reminds people of how the trackers used to work. Maybe we could have more stories about the trackers, the young people should know about how the trackers worked. If they have to move it, shouldn't be too far. It shows everyone that they [the trackers] worked for the police. They should fix it up, eh? They should keep it, tidy it up, maybe shift it if it has to be moved. One time, there used to be heaps of people there. We shouldn't destroy it all together. First house here was built by Aboriginal labour ... they knocked it down a few years back. I wouldn't like to see that happen to the trackers place. It needs to be kept for the trusties, and to remind people about the trackers, how they worked for the police. One thing I remember, that a lot of people don't know about, is that the trackers used to work on those leprosy patrols. They used to pick up all the people with leprosy and take them in to Derby [to the leprosarium]. Trackers used to save a lot of kartiya [white people] too ... people should know about that ... [When I lived in the trackers hut] I used to look after the place and work for the police. We cooked there, outside. I caught a goanna and cooked it. I cooked it on coals outside the hut. I gave some to the police and all the visitors. Lot of memories 'bout that place. I looked after the cows there. I remember old Bruce ... he was the boss of police one time. I don't know who's there [now]. I tracked one man to Wyndham when I was working for the police ... we used guns to shoot dogs, dingoes for the police. I know that hut. What for they want to knock it down? You should keep that place, like souvenir. Reminds people about the trackers, how they worked for the police. It shows how people used to live. We know all the people who were living there, trackers and trusties, their families are living here in Halls Creek. That trackers hut in the police yard? They should keep that place, but change it. Fix it up. If they're building a new place for the police, why not build the trackers hut? They're building new police yard for women and men. The should build a new trackers hut too. They used to live there, trackers and trusties. They should keep that place like it is, keep the stories about the trackers. I think they should keep it [the hut]. It would help with deaths in custody and all that, like Aboriginal/police relations if we had something done. I wasn't too sure when we first talked about, just hadn't thought about it before but I reckon they should keep it. It's part of our history. I'd like to know more about it, now that I'm thinking about it. The hut should stay where it is. If you move it, people will forget how the trackers worked for the police. Yeah, I think it should stay there, that's how people learn and remember. They could have photos and stories of the old trackers there, if that's OK with their families.

A number of other Halls Creek residents did not share such historical, political and cultural sentiments. Comments from non-Aboriginal police officers, for instance, included the following: `I'm not sure what all the hoo hah is about ... I can't see the point of keeping it [the hut] at the police station. Look at the place!' (Toussaint and Balme 1996, 19). Yet others, in particular members of the Halls Creek Shire Council who had initiated the assessment of the hut's significance, were adamant that it should not be demolished. Regarding it as part of Halls Creek history, one officer reported: Of course the trackers hut should be retained ... If it was fixed up it would be a sign of the positive relationship between Aborigines and police. That's what we need here. It could be really interesting, a good tourist attraction. In our view, the hut should be preserved.

Conclusions: `I reckon they should keep that hut ...'

There is no doubt that a majority of Aboriginal people in Halls Creek wished the trackers hut to be retained at its present site on police grounds. The most common reason given was that it provided a reminder of Aboriginal trackers' work. Although the hut is associated with only the last years of Aboriginal tracking in the Kimberley, it is one of the few remaining symbols and physical evidence of the `tracking industry'. Among the Halls Creek Aboriginal community today, trackers are thought of in heroic terms. Fears about the hut's demolition stemmed from the belief that `Aboriginal honour', which involved known individuals who were trackers, would be diminished. People with whom we spoke believed that the hut had the potential to remind both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people of the skills used by the trackers, skills which most non-Aborigines did not and do not possess. Tracker complicity in European expansion was not a dominant issue. What mattered most was the protection of Aboriginal heritage in a climate and context where many continue to struggle for positive recognition and signs of reconciliation.

Non-Aboriginal people, including some police officers, were aware of, and had regard for, `the Black trackers'. However, in contrast to Aboriginal people, most did not see the need to protect the hut as, among other things, they regarded it as unaesthetic because of its somewhat flimsy construction and current poor condition. These contrasting views lie at the heart of diverse perceptions about the hut. Apart from library documents which are not always accessible to local Aboriginal people, there are few physical reminders of the work of Aboriginal police trackers. The Halls Creek trackers hut provides symbolic documentation of the work undertaken by trackers in which Aboriginal people continue to have pride. `The hut' plays an important part in demonstrating Aboriginal history and honour.

Postscript

Despite recommending in our report that the hut be retained on site and reconstructed in accordance with local wishes to `honour' the work of Aboriginal police trackers and to provide rare physical evidence of past policing practices (Toussaint and Balme 1996, 22), the new Halls Creek police station has been built around the hut, which remains standing but in urgent need of renovation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people contributed to the findings of our original research. We are especially indebted to Halls Creek residents such as Bonnie Deegan, Andy Dimai, Josie Farrer, Jack Jugari, Mona Green, Bill Atyeo, executive members of the Kimberley Language Resource Centre in Halls Creek, and Jean Hobson, Archivist for the Western Australian Police Department Library Services. Rodney Harrison drew Figure 2.

[Plate 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

REFERENCES

Australian Film Commission 1997 Black Tracker, ABC Television, 4 September.

Bohemia, J. and B. McGregor 1995 Nyibayarri Kimberley Tracker, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

Chief Secretary's Office 1921 Services of Natives as Police Trackers, File No. 2612, State Archives, Battye Library, Perth.

Crough, G. and C. Christopherson 1993 Aboriginal People in the Economy of the Kimberley, North Australia Research Unit, Australian National University, Darwin

Dodson, P. 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: Regional Report of Underlying Issues in Western Australia, AGPS, Canberra.

Durack, M. 1967 Kings in Grass Castles, Corgi, London.

Gill, A. 1977 Aborigines, Settlers and Police in the Kimberleys 1887-1905, Studies of West Australian History, 1, 1-28, University of Western Australia.

Haebich, A. 1989 For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia 1900-1940, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, for the Charles and Joy Staples Publications Fund.

Hughes, J. and N. Wilson 1996 Aboriginal Group Blames Police for Riot, The Weekend Australian, 17-18 August, 3.

Pedersen, H. and B. Woorunmurra 1995 Jandamarra and the Bunaba Resistance, Magabala Books, Broome.

Rowse, T. 1987 `Were You Ever Savages?': Aboriginal Insiders and Pastoralists Patronage, Oceania 58(1), 81-99.

Toussaint, S. and J. Balme 1996 An Anthropological, Archaeological and Historical Assessment of the Significance of the Halls Creek Aboriginal Trackers Hut, report prepared for Darryl Way and Associates, Architects, Perth. Jane Balme Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Western Australia Sandy Toussaint Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Western Australia