SOLONEC Shared lives on Nigena country

241 Pages·2016·3.83 MB·English

by  Cindy Solonec

Shared lives on Nigena country:
A joint Biography of Katie and Frank Rodriguez,
1944-1994.

Jacinta Solonec
20131828
M.A. Edith Cowan University, 2003., B.A. Edith Cowan University, 1994

This thesis is presented for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy of
The University of Western Australia

School of Humanities
(Discipline – History)
2015
Abstract

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On the 8 of December 1946 Katie Fraser and Frank Rodriguez married in the Holy
Rosary Catholic Church in Derby, Western Australia. They spent the next forty-eight
years together, living in the West Kimberley and making a home for themselves on
Nigena country. These are Katie’s ancestral homelands, far from Frank’s birthplace
in Galicia, Spain. This thesis offers an investigation into the social history of a West
Kimberley couple and their family, a couple the likes of whom are rarely represented
in the history books, who arguably typify the historic multiculturalism of the
Kimberley community. Katie and Frank were seemingly ordinary people, who like
many others at the time were socially and politically marginalised due to Katie being
Aboriginal and Frank being a migrant from a non-English speaking background.
Moreover in many respects their shared life experiences encapsulate the history of the
Kimberley, and the experiences of many of its people who have been marginalised
from history. Their lives were shaped by their shared faith and Katie’s family
connections to the Catholic mission at Beagle Bay, the different governmental
policies which sought to assimilate them into an Australian way of life, as well as
their experiences working in the pastoral industry.

I argue that there is a significant gap in the region’s historiography that provides a
need for academic research into how mixed-descent people conducted their lives
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during the mid 20 century. While this inquiry illuminates the ways in which
European colonisers impacted on Katie’s Nigena family, her parents and their
ancestors, Frank’s experience brings a different perspective to our understanding of
migrant history which has focused on the establishment of migrant communities in
Australia and their collective experience. In the absence of his heritage in the region,
Frank did not mix with a Spanish community, so this research illuminates the ways in
which a migrant individual forged new networks, among diverse groups especially
Aboriginal people. Through analysis of archival records, secondary sources and
interviews with people who had firsthand contact with the couple, namely their
children, their extended families and associates, this thesis documents the impact on
Kimberley peoples by colonisers beginning fewer than one hundred years earlier. The
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cultural and ethnic frameworks that place the main characters as marginalised peoples
are investigated against the dominant players who are the pastoralists, government
authorities, missionaries and business people. Probed too, is the Nigena landscape to
elucidate its people’s sense of place and to understand why the extended Fraser
families have always had an attachment to the country around Willumbah, an
outstation for Liveringa Station. By exploring government policies of assimilation
and integration during the research period the value of this research is addressed from
an Aboriginal perspective.

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Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 1
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 6

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 8
Chapter 1 Historical Background ............................................................................ 37
Chapter 2 Katie & Frank to 1946 ............................................................................ 77
Chapter 3 Early days at Liveringa: 1946 – 1953 .................................................. 106
Chapter 4 Debesa: 1953 – 1958 .............................................................................. 135
Chapter 5 Debesa: 1959 – 1969 ............................................................................. 157
Chapter 6 Beyond Debesa: 1970 – 1994 ................................................................ 186
Chapter 7 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 207
Epilogue .................................................................................................................... 212
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 213

Figure 1 Katie and Frank Rodriguez (source unknown) ……..............…… 4
Figure 2 Key locations in Western Australia ……………………………….. 5
Figure 3 Kimberley Aboriginal cultural groups …………………...……….. 38

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I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and I respect the laws and customs by
forewarning, that deceased people’s names are mentioned and images depicted. I ask
that individuals exercise caution when reading this thesis.

Katie & Frank Rodriguez

Figure 1. Katie & Frank Rodriguez (source unknown)

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Drysdale River Mission
Beagle Bay Mission
Derby
Mowanjum Mission
Debesa
Willumbah
Looma
Liveringa
New Norcia

Figure 2. Key locations in Western Australia

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the time and intellect of my chief supervisor Charlie Fox in guiding
me through this study. My gratitude is extended to Andrea Gaynor and Shino Konishi
who at different times, supervised my work and helped to develop a methodology and
structure that fittingly accommodated my investigation. I am so pleased that Jane
Lydon agreed to read some of my chapters and offer useful advice and scholarship.
This project was challenging as I aimed to write from Aboriginal perspectives; now I
am relieved to have fulfilled a desire to make a scholarly contribution to the social
history of the West Kimberley.

I pay particular attention to the contribution of my parents Katie and Frank
Rodriguez. I had interviewed Katie about her school days shortly before she passed
in 1994; and Frank, as a young non-English speaking foreigner to the Kimberley in
1944 commenced a diary that became the chronological framework for this
biographical study. He died during the writing of the thesis which left me unsettled,
there is ‘unfinished business’. I have so much more to ask him. I may not have
continued without the strong support of my husband Dieter, and the ongoing
encouragement from our daughters Kylie and Tammy. Pepita Pregelj my sister read
through the biographical chapters making comment and corrections, while both she
and my brother Frank Rodriguez, who live in Broome and Kununurra respectively,
responded enthusiastically to my many emails. I am indebted to my aunts Edna and
Leena Fraser who kept me informed of relevant family history and Nigena culture.

This work would not have been possible without the oral histories gathered from
noteworthy contributors over several years: Aggie Puertollano, Gertie AhMat, Jim
Fraser, Frances Ward, Kerry McCarthy, Pat Bergmann, Cyril Puertollano, Shirley
Rickerby, Dickie and Patsy Yambo, Tony Ozies, Dora Hunter, June and Henry
Gooch, Akim and Gertrud Solonec, Fr Joe Kearney, Audrey Bullough, Keven Rose,
Marie Megaw, Pat Begley, Fr David Barry, Fr Bernard Rooney and Fr Anscar
McPhee. Relatives in Spain, Jackie Vasquez and Javier Gonzalez and from Sydney,
Manuel Gonzalez clarified my email queries. Others included librarians, archivists
and moral supporters: Graeme Rymill, Linda Papa, Peter Hocking, Roberta Cowan,
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Ann Curthoys, Anne Poelina, Azra Tulic, Christine Choo, Loretta Dolan, Patsy
Millet, Isaac Lorca Diez, Julie Andrews, Teresa De Castro and least of all my
FaceBook friends. To be able to chat to and share information over social media,
during what can be an isolating and unsociable time for PhD scholars, I am forever
grateful.

Finally, my thanks to the University of Western Australia for the Scholarships that
allowed me to study in a full-time capacity for a considerable period of my PhD
journey.
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Introduction

This thesis is a joint biography of Katie and Frank Rodriguez, my parents. Katie was
a Nigena woman born at Beagle Bay Mission in 1920. Frank, born in 1921, was a
Spanish migrant who arrived at New Norcia in Western Australia in 1937. The two
met in 1946 at Liveringa Station in Katie’s Nigena ancestral homelands 110 kms
southeast of the small West Kimberley town of Derby. They married that very same
year and six years later they bought their own small pastoral lease nearby that they
managed until 1969. My parents then spent the rest of their married life in Derby.
This thesis primarily spans their family life to 1994 when Katie passed, exploring the
life they made together in her country.

I began this thesis because I wanted to contribute to the West Kimberley’s social
history with a critical account of mixed-descent people’s lifestyles in the region. To
do this, I decided to investigate the experiences of one couple, that of my parents. My
mother’s childhood experiences at Beagle Bay Mission, and both Katie and Frank’s
enduring commitment to Catholicism especially intrigued me when I started to come
to terms with the history of Australia, and in particular the colonisation of Aboriginal
people and the role of the Catholic church in this process. In a sense then, this work
begins with an autobiographical approach as I investigate my parents’ story. In 1989
at the age of thirty-six, after having graduated from Year 10 twenty years earlier, I
commenced a university degree at Edith Cowan University through a block release
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program, studying Human Service Management. This course included units in
Aboriginal studies. At the time, I was married with two teenage daughters and we
lived wherever my husband’s employment as a communications technician with
Telecom took us throughout the north of Western Australia.

I began my studies when we lived in the historic gold mining town of Marble Bar,
where there was a high percentage of Aboriginal people, and continued on after we

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A block release is a mixed-mode study program designed for students who cannot attend
internal classes. Generally these students live in regional areas, but it also suited people with
disabilities and those in fulltime work. Thrice in a semester, we attended a one week series of
on-campus lectures; the remainder of our studies including assignments were executed
externally.
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moved to the iron ore town of Tom Price in the heart of the Pilbara where few
indigenous people lived at the time. As I learnt about the impact of colonisation on
Aboriginal peoples, it dawned on me that I knew very little about Australia’s history.
I wondered how different these histories would be if written from an Aboriginal point
of view. In reading these Australian histories, I realised that my own experiences, and
those of my family and the broader community in the West Kimberley, were not
reflected in these texts. While Henry Reynolds may have wondered about our history
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‘why weren’t we told?’, I instead pondered, ‘why aren’t we included?’

I address this question in this thesis by investigating my parents’ lives, for their story
in many respects encapsulates a quintessential social history of the West Kimberley
while at the same time reflecting an Aboriginal history that is yet untold. It must be
acknowledged that the history of the West Kimberley is very different to that of the
southern parts of Australia. This is partly due to its comparatively late colonisation.
While it was first explored in 1837 by George Grey, the region was not settled by
non-indigenous peoples until the 1880s with the advent of pastoralism and the
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discovery of gold at Halls Creek in 1885. Further, throughout its colonial history the
Kimberley remained predominately populated by Aboriginal people. Henry Reynolds
notes that at Federation indigenous peoples comprised about 40% of the total
population of the tropical North, and while the Anglo-Australian population may have
been as high as 50% across the north, outside of the European hubs of Charters
Towers, MacKay, Townsville and Cairns in Queensland the white population fell to
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approximately 10%. As recently as the 2011 census it was found that 40% of the
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population of the Kimberley identified as Aboriginal. Further, the Kimberley has
been marked by a relative multiculturalism, with a large proportion of its population
comprising single men from Asia who sought new economic opportunities as
indentured labourers in the maritime industries as well as ‘Afghan’ cameleers from
the Punjab and Sind who provided the main transport in the region by driving camel

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Henry Reynolds, Why weren’t we told? A personal search for the truth about our History,
Penguin, Sydney, 2000.
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Mary Anne Jebb, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral
Workers, Perth, WA, UWA Press, 2002, p. 4 & 27; Henry Reynolds, North Of Capricorn the
Untold Story Of Australia’s North, Crows Nest, NSW, 2003, p. xv-xvi
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Reynolds, p. xv-xvi.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘2011 Census Quickstats: Kimberley’ [online], available at
http://www.censusdata.abs.gov/census_services/getproduct.census/2011/quickstat/50804
?opendocument&navpos=220 (accessed 16 June, 2015).
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