In April l967 the Gurindji petitioned the Governor-General, Lord
Casey , seeking to gain tenure of their tribal land in the
Wave Hill-Limbunya area . The
petition carried the thumb prints
of Vincent Lingiari , Pincher Manguari, Gerry
Ngalgardji and Long-John Kitgnaari. It explained the document had been transcribed, witnessed and
transmitted by Frank Hardy and J.
W. Jeffrey, a Welfare Department officer
, sympathetic to the Gurindji cause ,
because the Gurindji had never
had the opportunity to learn
English . It read -
We , the leaders of the
Gurindji people, write to you about our
earnest desire to regain tenure of our
tribal lands in the Wave Hill-Limbunya area
of the Northern Territory , of
which we were dispossessed in time past, and for which we received no recompense.
Our people have lived here from time immemorial and our culture, myths, dreaming and
sacred places have evolved in this land .
Many of our forefathers were
killed in the early days while trying to retain it. Therefore we feel that morally the land is ours and should be returned to us. Our very name Aboriginal acknowledges our prior claim. We have
never ceased to say amongst ourselves that Vesteys should go away and leave us to
our land .
In the attached map , we
have marked out the boundaries of the
sacred places of our dreaming , bordering the Victoria River from Wave hill Police Station to Hooker Creek,
Inverway,Limbunya, Seal Gorge,etc,. We
have begun to build our own new
homestead on the banks of beautiful
Wattie Creek in the Seal Yard area, where
there is permanent water. This is
the main place of our
dreaming only a few miles
from Seal Gorge where we have kept
the bones of our martys all
these years since white men killed many of our people. On the walls
of the sacred caves where their
bones are kept are the paintings of the
totems of our tribe.
We have already occcupied
a small area at Seal Yard under Miners Rights held by three of our tribesmen. We
will continue to build our new home there ( marked on the map with a cross), then buy some working horses with which we will trap
and capture wild
unbranded horses and cattle.
These we will use to build
up a cattle station within the
borders of this ancient Gurindji
land. And we are searching the area
for valuable rocks which we
hope to sell to help feed
our people. We will ask
the N.T. Welfare Department
for help with motor for pump, seeds for garden, tables, chairs,
and others things as well . Later on we
will build a road and an airstrip and maybe a school. Meanwhile, most of our
people will continue to live in the camp we have built
at the Wave Hill Welfare Centre
12 miles away and the children continue to go to
school there.
We beg of you
to hear our voices asking that the land marked on the map
be returned to the Gurindji people. It is about 500 square miles in area
but this is only a very small
fraction of the land leased by
Vesteys in these parts. We are prepared to pay
for our land the same annual
rental the Vesteys now pay.
If the question of compensation arises , we feel that we have already paid enough
during 50 years or more, during which time we and
our fathers worked for no
wages at all much of the time and for
a mere pittance in recent
years.
If you can grant this wish
for which we humbly ask, we would
show the rest of Australia and the whole
world that we are capable of
working and planning our own destiny as free citizens . Much
has been said about
our refusal to accept responsibility in the past
, but who would show
initiative working for starvation
wages , under impossible conditions, without education for strangers
in their land ? But
we are ready to show initiative now
. We have already begun. We know how to work cattle better than any white man and we know and
love this land of ours.
If our tribal lands are returned to us, we want them, not
as another " Aboriginal Reserve ", but as a
leasehold to be run cooperatively as a
mining lease and cattle station by the
Gurindji Tribe. All practical work will
be done by us, except
such work as book-keeping, for
which we would employ white men of good faith , until such time as our own
people are sufficiently
educated to take over .
We will also accept the condition
that if we do not succeed
within a reasonable time, our
land should go back to the Government.
( In August last year, we walked away from the Wave Hill Cattle station
. It was said that we did this because
wages were very poor ( only
six dollars per week ), living conditions fit only for dogs, and rations consisting
mainly of salt beef and
bread. True enough.
But we walked away for other
reasons as well. To protect
our women and our tribe , to try to
stand on our own feet.
We will never go back there.
) . Some of our young men are working now at Camfield and Montejinnie Cattle Stations for proper wages . However,
we will ask them to come back to our own Gurindji Homestead
when everything is ready...
In his reply, Lord Casey
said the Vestey’s lease did not expire till the year 2004. Robert Tudawali also supported the Gurindji and
took part in the campaign . He was
about to go to Wave Hill on
a supply truck run from
Darwin when it was discovered he
was suffering from TB and Captain Major went in his place . Tudawali
died a terrible death in
July l967 at the age of 38 .
In a deathbed statement to police he
claimed that he had been drinking a flagon of wine with others near Bagot
when a row broke out over his 12
year old daughter. He had been knocked
to the ground and grass deliberately
ignited to burn him . He died of
burns to the chest, back and arms .
Police, however, said it was not clear what had happened. There was a
suggestion that after drinking, Tudawali
might have woken up after drinking and, feeling cold, set fire to the grass to
warm himself.
Hardy was involved in
a more light-hearted event in
l967 - the Australian Yarn
Spinning Championship , an NT News promotion .
He was pitted against a colourful
local identity, the much tattooed Tall
Tale Tex Tyrell who had won a
Talkathon in Alice Springs back in l954
, about which Keith Willey had written a lively account . There were several photographs of
Frank , he being billed as “Billy Borker” Hardy . Hardy
boasted a “secret weapon ”-his pipe, which he jabbed to emphasise a point. Judges included
Cec Holmes and Doug Lockwood .
The event was staged in
the Hotel Darwin and eventually won by Hardy
after Tyrell collapsed following
more than three hours of earbashing.
A subsequent Swan Brewery advertisement in the NT News carried drawings of
Hardy and Tyrell which were probably
done by Frank. A lengthy article by Hardy explained how he had become involved
in the contest -Bowditch and others in a
pub had urged him to enter . NEXT : A quiet place to write a book
