Alexander Donald (Pwerle) Ross

468 Pages·2006·6.02 MB·English

TELLING SOMEONE ELSE’S STORY:
the life history
of
Alexander Donald (Pwerle) Ross
(1915 – 1999)
Terry (Anne) Whitebeach M.A. (Edith Cowan University)
Thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in History
Faculty of Law, Business and Arts – Charles Darwin University
June 2006
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
Page
1. Alexander Donald Ross circa 1994 1
2. Map of Kaytetye Country 13
3. Sketch map of Barrow Creek 173
4. Barrow Creek Telegraph Station circa 1900 174
5. Staff and others at Barrow Creek Telegraph Station 175
6. Scale plan of George Hayes’ and ‘Jim’Pepperill’s pastoral lease,
Neutral Junction station, Central Australia, showing adjacent
pastoral leases 181
7. Map of Central Australia and northern South Australia,
showing George Hayes’ and W. (Jim) Pepperill’s original pastoral lease,
also other pastoral leases held in 1918 182
8. George Hayes’ original house at Neutral Junction Station
with recent additions 185
9. Alec Ross, Frank MacDonald and George Hayes
outside the original homestead at Neutral Junction station 192
10. George Hayes’ Garden on Neutral Junction station 1927 262
11. Don Ross and companion circa 1989 355
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ABSTRACT
This thesis is focused on the life history of Alexander Donald Ross, a Kaytetye
senior man, of both Kaytetye and European ancestry, jointly authored by
Alexander Donald (Don) Ross and Terry Whitebeach, a Tasmanian writer with
European and Aboriginal family connections.
Don Ross was born in 1915, approximately half a century after the first contact
between Europeans and Aboriginals in the Northern Territory, and worked most of
his life in the developing Northern Territory pastoral industry. He owned a cattle
station, Neutral Junction Station, near the Barrow Creek Telegraph Station, on
Kaytetye land, in Central Australia, between 1947 and 1952. During a lifetime
spanning most of the twentieth century (he passed away in April 1999) Don
Ross’s life was influenced greatly by changes in the pastoral industry and by
social and political changes related to the rights of Indigenous people, which
affected both the family lives and the employment conditions of Indigenous
pastoral workers in the Northern Territory and throughout Australia.
The thesis employs Don Ross’s narratives of his childhood, relationships and
working life, which were compiled from interviews and conversations with a
series of people (including the author of this thesis) to explore aspects of the
period and region in which he lived. Relevant archival and other historical
material are also employed as part of this investigation of the ‘life and times’ of
Don Ross. Two significant aspects of Don Ross’s life, his skill as a stockman, and
his ambiguous legal and social status as a man of both European and Kaytetye
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parentage, and the concomitant limits and freedoms his classification as ‘half-
caste’ awarded him during different decades of the twentieth century, are crucial
to this investigation.
The thesis also investigates the processes whereby a life history is mediated
through, and affected by, the perceptions and cultural position/s of the researcher,
writer and receiver of the story, the perspectives revealed in the historical
documents and records of the time, and successive interpretations of this material.
Thus, it addresses the complex and contested historical, historiographical, literary,
cultural and cross-cultural and personal processes of receiving, researching,
compiling and narrating, from another time and place, and through the
multifaceted lenses of memory and history, another person's life history; the
implications and responsibilities of telling someone else’s story.
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DECLARATION
I certify that this thesis does not incorporate without acknowledgement any
material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any university; and that
to the best of my knowledge and belief it does not contain any material previously
published or written by another person where due reference is not made in the text.
Signed:
Date:
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My greatest debt of gratitude is to Alexander Donald Ross for his friendship, his
patience and good humour and for the amazing stories he told. I appreciated
deeply the opportunity given me to participate in documenting both his personal
story and aspects of the history of the Kaytetye people of Central Australia.
I am grateful to all those people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who also
agreed to record their history and their memories, and who permitted these
narratives to be included in this thesis.
I thank Graham Ross for actively encouraging me to write his father’s life history,
and I thank him and other members of the Ross family for sharing their memories
of their father and grandfather and for providing support, advice and valuable
feedback on drafts of the manuscript. Particular thanks to Alec, Dawn, Donna,
David, Jenny, Ginger, Ronda and Chris Ross for their vision and participation.
Institute for Aboriginal Development linguist Myfany Turpin began the recording
of Don’s stories and invited me to continue. She provided linguistic information,
translations of Kaytetye documents and oral histories she had recorded with other
Kaytetye people, feedback on subsequent drafts of the manuscript, and access to a
variety of relevant documentary material as well as to information given her by
Kaytetye colleagues and friends. I offer my thanks to her and to her colleagues in
the Kaytetye Dictionary program.
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I sincerely thank my supervisor, Professor David Carment, both for his initial
acceptance of a former literature student as a History candidate and for his
impeccable supervision of my research. He has given me significant scholarly
guidance, provided me with ongoing and efficient administrative support and
encouraged me to persevere during periods of illness and protracted
convalescence. He has been a more than generous mentor.
I thank Dick Kimber, Central Australian historian, for his intelligent and cordial
participation, his close and exhaustive reading and editing of an early draft of the
text, and for giving me access to his wide knowledge of the characters and events
of Central Australian history.
I also thank colleagues at the Institute for Aboriginal Development and Batchelor
Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in Alice Springs for discussion on
cultural and historical matters. I owe a particular debt to Rosie Riley for her
support and cultural guidance.
Heartfelt thanks to the librarians in the Off Campus library service of Charles
Darwin University, who were painstaking and efficient in their efforts to supply
me with books and articles. (And thanks are due also to our rural mail contractor
in Tasmania who, once I had left the Northern Territory, delivered an endless
stream of book parcels to my door for more than two years.)
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Thanks are also due to the staff of the National Archives of Australia in Canberra
and Darwin, in particular, Phyllis Williams in Darwin, and to the Northern
Territory Archives and Northern Territory Library staff.
I thank Francis Good, the manager of the oral history collection at the Northern
Territory Archives, for his friendship, discussion and assistance.
Thanks also to the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies in Canberra for funding the recording of the oral histories and for giving
me access to their photo archive. Thanks to staff member Grace Koch for advice
and support and for permission to reproduce her photos.
Thanks to the librarians in the State Library of Tasmania in Hobart, and to my son
and daughter-in-law in Alice Springs who responded to my frantic pleas from
Tasmania to track down local history references in the Alice Springs Library for
me, who reported their findings by mobile phone, then copied and sent me the
material I needed.
My deepest thanks, finally, to my dear partner, David Collins, for his intelligent
interest in my work, his ongoing support and good humour and his patient
navigation of the IT software and hardware glitches over the last several years!
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Figure 1: Alexander Donald Ross circa 1994
Photograph supplied by Dawn Ross
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