“That is a lie.” – John Curtin, Hansard, 2 April 1935
In the years leading up to World War 2, the
British and German governments were engaged in a lively propaganda war. The
British attacked the Nazi’s brutal persecution of political opponents, Jews and
other “non-Aryan” groups. In reply, the Nazis turned their attention to the
treatment of indigenous people in the British Empire. They found much to
criticize about the plight and “enslavement” of Australian Aborigines. As
history would soon demonstrate, the goal of Nazi propaganda was not the improvement
of native people’s rights but an undermining of democratic ideals. They wanted
to debunk those cherished notions that British justice and democracy guarded
the interests of all British subjects and that the British were better and more
humane colonizers than the Germans had been before World War 1 stripped them of
their colonial possessions. What was happening in Australia proved to be an embarrassment
for the British. At the time, it was generally believed by white Australians
that the Aborigines were destined for extinction. “They must die out, leave them alone” was a
commonly held view. Aborigines were not counted as citizens of Australia and
responsibility for their welfare was shared between the Federal Government
(which administered the Northern Territory) and the various state governments. All
Australian governments, however, were highly sensitive to criticism in this
area, automatically treating it as an attack upon “the national character of
the Australian people.” Caught in the middle of this propaganda duel were those
Australians – led by an unlikely alliance of outspoken clergy, missionaries,
anthropologists and left wing activists - who were agitating for fairer
treatment of Aborigines. It was often their statements and arguments that were repeated
by the Nazis to attack British colonialism. Whereas criticism in German
newspapers could be dismissed as state propaganda, the same could not be said
of critical articles published in the free presses of neutral, democratic countries
like Sweden and Norway. These were progressive, peaceful countries of high
repute around the world. It is completely understandable, therefore, that the
governments of Australia were particularly sensitive to criticism emanating
from Scandinavia. In 1935, a Swedish newspaper article headed “The Law of the
Jungle in Australia” raised the ire of the Australian government and its author
was denounced at length in the Federal Parliament for misrepresenting the
Aboriginal issue. The Scandinavian journalist immediately hit back, making
explosive allegations about the work of missionaries in central Australia and
the sexual mores of frontier whites. Until now, the true identity, background
and motivation of this phantom Scandinavian were lost to history. My aim here
is to fill part of that void by telling his amazing life story, one of
privilege and destitution, virtue and vice. It is a story that cannot help but
unmask an ugly side to Australian and Swedish culture; dark muddled undercurrents
denied acknowledgement by the new breed of American-style “patriots” who paint
their faces with national colours, flock to national day celebrations and do
their best to liven up two of the dullest national anthems known to man. On such
proud occasions, neither the little
Aussie battler nor medelsvensson
have any appetite for memories of bygone days when Australia prepared to dance
on the grave of its indigenous people and Sweden flirted with the numbskull racial
theories of the Third Reich.
The real background to “The Law of the
Jungle in Australia” begins with articles published in Britain and Germany in
1934. On 3 June 1934, Lord Beaverbrook’s Sunday
Express newspaper in London published an article “The Black Man’s Burden”
by Sydney Morrell. The article contained scathing criticism of the treatment of
Aborigines in Australia. Four days later, on 7 June 1934, a remarkably similar
article appeared in the German newspaper, 12-UHR
Blatt, entitled “The Slavery Disgrace of Australia – Men are Hunted – Boys
Languish in Prison – Frightful Massacre Among the Natives.” The Australian
Department of External Affairs was alerted to the German article via the
British Embassy in Berlin. A secret memorandum dated 9 August 1934 from London
to Canberra described 12-UHR Blatt as
“one of the less important German papers.” A translation of the article was
provided to the governments of Queensland and Western Australia for comment
before the Minister for External Affairs, Senator Sir George Pearce, responded
to the German Consul-General in Sydney.
Both articles drew special attention to
three shocking episodes involving Aborigines in the recent past. In order to
understand how galling these articles were to the Australian government, it is
necessary to know something of the background to these three episodes.[1] The
first was the indiscriminate massacre of some twenty to thirty Aborigines by
police at Forrest River in the Kimberleys in 1926. The police action had been
organized as a “punitive expedition” following the fatal spearing of William
Hay, part owner of Nulla Nulla station, by an Aborigine called Lumbulumbia. The
bodies of the slain Aborigines – men, women and children - were burned and witnesses
warned to remain silent. Due to agitation by the Superintendent of the nearby
mission, Ernest Gribble, a Royal Commission was established to look into the
matter. Faced with widespread non-cooperation, the Commission struggled to find
evidence but ultimately condemned the police action nonetheless. As a result,
two police officers were charged with criminal offences. However, a magistrate
dismissed the charges due to insufficient evidence. The police officers were
transferred and promoted. This incident caused a storm of protest in both
Britain and Australia.
The second episode occurred at Conistan in
Central Australia in 1928. The region was suffering drought conditions and
tensions were high between the local Aborigines and whites. A dingo trapper,
Fred Brooks, had taken an Aboriginal woman and refused to return her or offer
compensation. He was murdered and his body mutilated. In response, a “punitive
expedition” was sent out under the command of Gallipoli veteran, Mounted
Constable George Murray. The expedition killed over 30 Aborigines, possibly many
more. The Federal government was embarrassed into holding an inquiry that
resulted in inertia. Another public uproar ensued.
The third episode took a different course. In
1932, five Japanese fishermen were killed by Aborigines at Caledon Bay, Arnhem
Land, after a dispute over the taking of Aboriginal women. Police were unable
to find the killers. In the following year, a policeman was fatally speared on
Woodah Island. Fearing for their own safety if the Aborigines were not speedily
“taught a lesson,” white Australians in the Northern Territory put tremendous
pressure on the Federal government to respond by dispatching a “punitive
expedition”. Government officials were supportive and early preparations were
made. However, protestors in Australia and Britain were determined not to see
another Forrest River and Conistan. They deluged Prime Minister Bruce with such
opposition that the government finally agreed to abandon the “punitive
expedition” and instead allow missionaries to visit Arnhem Land and negotiate a
peaceful surrender of the murderers. The missionaries returned with five
Aborigines, four who apparently confessed to killing the Japanese and Tuckiar
who had apparently speared the policeman. As soon as they arrived in Darwin, the
defendants were seized and imprisoned. They were tried and given severe
sentences. Tuckiar was sentenced to
death. Late in 1934 (after
publication of the 12-UHR Blatt
article), the High Court of Australia quashed Tuckiar’s conviction and was
highly critical of his trial. He was released and never seen again. There was a
popular belief at the time that he had been murdered by the police.
Australia’s international reputation was so
tarnished by the massacres at Forrest River and Conistan and public lobbying to
see an end to old-style “frontier justice” was now so organized that the
Federal government had been compelled to follow a different course with the Caledon
Bay crisis. Instead of receiving praise for scuttling the “punitive expedition”
into Arnhem Land, the government now faced renewed criticism in the Sunday Express and 12-UHR Blatt over the 1926 and 1928 massacres and a fresh attack
upon the biased treatment of Aborigines in that most lauded of British
achievements, the common law justice system. Modern historians can look back
and identify Caledon Bay as a true watershed – the deathblow to the “punitive
expedition” as an acceptable response to black-white problems. But, of course, it
was by no means clear at the time that the era of the “punitive expedition” was
over. White Australians in outback and remote regions continued to argue that such
violence was essential to keep themselves safe from Aborigines who “didn’t know
their proper place.” This viewpoint had considerable support within the police
and government bureaucracies. So the public debate was anything but over and
neither side could claim a final victory.
The articles in the Sunday Express and 12-UHR
Blatt raised many issues apart from the massacres and Caledon Bay. A
statement prepared by the Department of the Interior in reply categorically
denied that Aborigines were being hunted like kangaroos, that Aborigines could
not give evidence in court against a white man and that Police were paid a
reward for arresting Aborigines. It
agreed, however, that Aborigines were not represented in Parliament, noting
that “very few natives have any education and large numbers of them are quite
uncivilized.”[2]
They were not so uncivilized, however, that
they could not be put to work. 12-UHR
Blatt alleged that a “slave licence” costing ten shillings a year entitled
a European to recruit Aborigines for unpaid work. The Department of the
Interior’s statement confirmed that, in “country districts” of the Northern
Territory, a licensed employer could employ Aborigines without paying them cash
but was required “adequately to feed and clothe” the employees and all their
dependants who invariably “camp in large numbers in the vicinity of the station
buildings.” The Acting Premier of Western Australia confirmed the existence of
a permit system in his state and noted that “the permits ensure that employees
shall be provided with the necessaries of life, including clothes and medical
attendance, and in numerous cases payment as well.”[3] The
Queensland Government insisted that wages were paid to Aboriginal workers
although those wages were “controlled” by the authorities to protect them from
abuse.[4] Sixty
years later, the Queensland Government would face multi-million dollar law
claims for Aboriginal wages that were never paid or accounted for. So large was
the debt that the Government would pass special legislation to limit the amount
of compensation that could be claimed by descendants of the unpaid Aboriginal
workers.
Without waiting for replies from Queensland
and Western Australia, the Minister for External Affairs wrote to the German
Consul-General on 2 November 1934, referring to the 12-UHR Blatt article and requesting correction of the allegations
and “gross misrepresentations.” The Minister also complained about state
control of the media in Germany. In his reply dated 19 November 1934, the
Consul-General, Herr Asmis, referred to four Australian newspaper articles that
had been published in September 1933, each presenting allegations of the murder
and mistreatment of Aborigines. He also cited a reference to the extermination
of the Tasmanian Aborigines in the Official
Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Number 17. He flatly denied
that there was state media censorship in Germany. If the German Government was
to be asked to correct 12-UHR Blatt,
Herr Asmis suggested that in future the Minister should direct his attention to
“the articles appearing again and again in the Australian press which offend
the German people and the German government.”
Although the Australian government had
defended itself against the adverse publicity generated by Sydney Morrell’s
article in the Sunday Express, the response
was generally low key. For whatever political reasons, the Nazis had published
Morrell’s criticisms in one of their “less important” newspapers. It was not
until Morrell’s allegations were repeated in the Swedish press the following
year that the government was forced into tackling them with full vigour.
On 5 January 1935, the respected Swedish
newspaper, Göteborgs Posten,
published on page 2 an article entitled “The Law of the Jungle in Australia” by
Eskil Sundström. The second half of the article was effectively a presentation
of Sydney Morrell’s Sunday Express
allegations. Morrell and the Sunday
Express were openly acknowledged as the source of the allegations and the
argument was put that the newspaper’s owner, Lord Beaverbrook, would never
allow his papers “to paint caricatures of British colonial policy.” In due
course, the article made its way to Brisbane where it was read by Thorsten S. Gedda
of the Swedish Australian Trading Company. He provided comments and a
translation of the second half of the article that were then published in the
Brisbane Telegraph on 7 March 1935. Gedda
asserted that the article was proof of “the abysmal ignorance of Australian
conditions that prevailed in England and on the Continent.” He also brought the
article to the attention of Sir Donald Cameron, the federal Member for Lilley
in Queensland. Gedda, who appears to have been currying favour with the
Australian authorities, requested that he be provided with information for a
rebuttal to be published in Göteborgs
Posten.
On 27 March 1935, Sir Donald Cameron gave
Thomas Paterson, the Minister for the Interior and Deputy Leader of the Country
Party, a copy of Gedda’s translation and then asked him in Parliament what
steps would be taken to refute the article’s allegations.[5] Paterson replied that “a cursory glance
convinces me that very grave misrepresentations indeed” occurred in the article
and he assured the House that “steps will be taken immediately to refute the
allegations and protect the good name of Australia.” On 29 March 1935, the Melbourne Herald reported Sir Donald
Cameron’s remarks and published a substantial portion of Gedda’s translation
under the heading “Fantastic Stories of Our Cruelty to Blacks.” Before the
Government’s response could be arranged, however, The Sun in Sydney reported allegations made by “Mr T Anderson, a
Norwegian journalist, who has just returned from a seven years’ study of
conditions in the Interior.” According
to the article dated 31 March 1935, Norwegian Anderson admitted to being the
writer of the Göteborgs Posten
article (published under the very Swedish name of Sundström) and he had
regularly contributed articles to the Swedish newspapers Vidi and Dagens Nyheter
and to German newspapers. Impossibly, Anderson claimed not to have seen Sydney
Morrell’s Sunday Express article
before he wrote “The Law of the Jungle in Australia.” This, of course, makes no
sense at all as Morrell had been openly acknowledged as the primary source by Sundström.
The Sun article was headed “White
Men, Black Women: Grave Charges” and Anderson made a series of explosive
allegations about the work of missionaries in Central Australia. His language
was unrestrained. Some of these missionaries were “the lowest [type] on earth.”
Mission blacks were “often treacherous, dirty, and, in 90 per cent of cases,
diseased.” Many were “absolutely ruined” by the missionaries in the sense of
being unemployable. When the missions were officially inspected, the blacks
would be tidied up and made to sing hymns “until the cows come home.” The
enthusiastic singing was not caused by religious zeal “but because they are one
of the most musical races living” and enjoy “anything with a swing in it.”
Anderson alleged that a white female
missionary was openly living with a full-blooded male Aborigine. He claimed to
have had several conversations with her and to have asked her why she was
living with “this blackfellow.” Her reply was, “If I had ever met a white man
before who was such a perfect gentleman as ___, I would not be living with a
blackfellow.” Anderson summarized the situation as “when a man loses all hope
of making good, he can always become a missionary in Central Australia.”
He was highly critical of missionaries
forcing European customs onto the Aborigines: “The missionaries, with mistaken
solicitude, are killing [the Aborigines] off by degrees. They give them clothes
and the blackfellow is very proud of his clothes. He will wear them until they
nearly fly off him. He gets diseased and, when he takes them off, he gets a
cold and then consumption and dies.”
He went on to claim that “sixty per cent of
the prospectors in the Interior are living with gins” as were many railway
fettlers. He alleged that, at Jay River Mission Station near Alice Springs, 13
to 14 year old half-caste boys and girls were sleeping in one dormitory. He was
particularly concerned that a “half-caste breed” was being generated that would
be “a burden upon the nation, because no one cares to give a half-caste decent
employment in or near the cities.” Although he found it “hard to say”, he
suggested that all half-castes should be sterilized. The article also included
a call by Alice Springs solicitor, Beecher Webb, for a Royal Commission into the
“rotten” administration of Aboriginal affairs.
Anderson’s allegations were so sensational,
they could not be ignored. On 1 April 1935, the Sydney Morning Herald reported “profound surprise in official
circles in Canberra.” The Adelaide Advertiser recorded Minister Paterson’s
response as “Until the statements are substantiated by giving names, places and
details, I cannot believe that they represent a true picture of what is happening
in the Northern Territory.” Bureaucrats tried to find out who this Norwegian
journalist was and whether he was known in the Northern Territory. Others such
as Professor T Harvey Johnston and Pastor Albrecht rushed to defend the work of
the missions.
Minister Paterson rose in Parliament on 2 April
1935 to refute the allegations.[6] He began
by confirming that the Government was aware of a white female missionary who
lived with Aborigines in Central Australia for a time but noted that “there has
never been any previous suggestion as to immorality.” Like Anderson, he did not
name her. It is likely they were referring to Annie Lock who, according to some
historians, witnessed the aftermath of the Conistan massacre but was somehow
intimidated into not giving evidence about it.[7] Paterson
next read out Anderson’s allegations about prospectors and railway fettlers
“living with gins.” At this point, future Prime Minister, John Curtin, interjected
with “That is a lie.” Paterson conceded that there may have been “spasmodic
instances” of prospectors living with Aboriginal women in remote areas in the
past but those days were apparently over. It was now against the law for a
white male to “habitually consort” with a female Aborigine or half-caste. The
Minister had a very high opinion of railway fettlers whom he described as “a
body of decent, clean-living, well-conducted Australian citizens.” Indeed, he
pointed out that most of them were married men. He then made an utterly
extraordinary claim that “the railway authorities have no knowledge of any
single case of employees consorting with aboriginals.” Yes, he was aware that
some of the fettlers on the Commonwealth payroll were themselves half-castes
but he felt it important to point out that they were married to other
half-castes or, in one case, to a full-blooded Aboriginal woman. It seems that,
as far as the Canberra bureaucracy was aware, white male fettlers and
prospectors were fastidiously obeying the law by not consorting with Aboriginal
women. It is interesting to reflect that, at that very time, writer and
pharmacist, Xavier Herbert, was operating a gonorrhea clinic in Darwin. He had
returned to the Northern Territory early in 1935 after failing to have his
novel, Capricornia, published in
Sydney. That novel, following the life of a half-caste railway fettler, would
eventually be hailed as a great work of social protest and would focus the
nation on the pursuit of “black velvet” (a colloquial expression meaning sex
with Aboriginal women) in northern Australia. Capricornia, published in 1938, was by no means the first Australian
novel to deal with white-black sexual relationships.
Thomas Paterson’s reply to Anderson’s
allegations of a unisex dormitory at the Jay River Mission Station was feeble. It
was never actually a “mission station”, he said, but was purely temporary and
was closed down at the end of 1932.
On the same day as the Minister’s speech,
the Adelaide Advertiser reported
disbelief on the part of the Protector of Aborigines, Mr McLean, concerning
Anderson’s allegations: “it was news to him that fettlers on the
trans-continental railway were living openly with female aborigines.” In the
same article, the Chairman of the Finke River Mission Board, Rev. Reidel,
dismissed Anderson’s criticisms of missionaries as “a pernicious slander.”
All this criticism did not cow the argumentative
“Norwegian.” He gave a spirited follow-up interview to the Melbourne Herald, published on 3 April 1935. To
counter the Minister’s innuendo that he was unknown in the Northern Territory,
he provided a detailed description of his movements in Australia since 1927
from Oodnadatta to Kalgoorlie to Alice Springs and Mt Isa. He said that he had
traveled by camel and vehicle in the guise of a prospector and dingo scalp
hunter and had met hundreds of people who took him as one of their own. If the
Minister wanted to find out what was really going on in Central Australia, he
would have to travel in a like manner “without pomp or ceremony” or “a fanfare
of trumpets.” Indeed, he issued a challenge to the Minister: “I would be
prepared to pay my own expenses on a trip to Central Australia with Mr Paterson
to prove conclusively every statement I have made, but such a trip would have
to be accomplished quietly to gain its objective.” Citing the Commonwealth Year Book population
statistics for the Northern Territory (4,360 whites and 19,196 half-castes), he
challenged Paterson to explain where the half-castes came from. If the whites
were “models of virtue and propriety”, where did the half-castes come from? “I
refuse to believe in the stork yarn,” he added. And he demanded an explanation
for “the rapid decrease in the population of full-blooded aborigines.” Anderson
claimed that the only unbiased people involved in this debate were himself and
the young solicitor, Beecher Webb – everyone else had a vested interest in
making the claims they made.
In Parliament on 4 April 1935, Thomas
Paterson responded to only one of Anderson’s claims.[8] He
disputed the population count of half-castes in the Northern Territory saying that
“the population of 19,500 referred to by the Year Book really includes full-blooded aboriginals as well as
half-castes.” He then stated that “some 80 per cent” of half-castes were the
progeny of half-caste parents and “only a very small percentage are the progeny
of white and black.” The Adelaide Advertiser
next day carried a report stating that there were only 781 half-castes in the
Northern Territory and “only 13 per cent of the half castes born during the
year ended 30 June last were from the mating of Europeans with aborigines.” These
figures were attributed to Paterson although they do not appear in Hansard.
It is likely that Xavier Herbert was
following this debate in Darwin and had experienced similar criticism. He may
even have worked some of the details of the debate into the already completed text
of Capricornia. Both Anderson and Herbert were aware that
inter-racial breeding was a very strong taboo subject and a rich source of fear
and hypocrisy. Most Australians, urbanites like the character Oscar Shillingsworth, knew it
went on in remote areas and understood why, but – when pressed – would denounce
it wholeheartedly.
After Paterson’s further denunciation in
Parliament on 4 April 1935, Anderson fell silent and the public debate over his
allegations went cold. Thorsten Gedda, however, continued to write to Harry
Hjörne, chief editor of Göteborgs Posten,
in an attempt to discredit “The Law of the Jungle in Australia.” Hjörne forwarded
Gedda’s material to Eskil Sundström who replied with a combative letter dated
29 June 1935. A translation of this letter was provided by Gedda to Sir Donald
Cameron in August and forwarded by him to Thomas Paterson in September. Sundström’s
letter appears to have emanated from an address in Stockholm (Skeppargatan 27).
It accused Gedda of disseminating tourism and commercial propaganda and of having
“had an attack of the complaint common to the Transatlantic Parishioner
(meaning nationals living on the other side of the Atlantic) of being more Kingly
than the King himself.” Sundström suggested that Gedda find out why Sydney
Morrell’s article had been left unanswered and noted “the English race (sic) rare common sense includes among
other things a sensible feeling of when silence is golden.” He posed the
following question: “Why should the policy of Australian internal affairs be
guarded from criticism any more than Germany (sic) or Russia’s? What have we done to the Lapps to justify any
international indignation?” Hjörne, a highly respected journalist, appears to
have been satisfied that “The Law of the Jungle in Australia” was a fair
article and the matter went no further.
The clash between Paterson and
Anderson/Sundström raises some intriguing questions. Were T. Anderson, the
Norwegian journalist stationed in Australia, and Eskil Sundström, the writer
with an address in Stockholm, one and the same person? Anderson asserted that
they were. If the assertion is true, who was he? Why didn’t he use his real name
and nationality? What motivated him to write “The Law of the Jungle in
Australia”? Why did he break part of his cover to publicly challenge the
Australian government on a subject he must have known was explosive? What made
him then fall silent?
These questions cannot be answered without
first examining that half of the Göteborgs
Posten article that was never translated for the Australian Government. It
would appear that Thorsten Gedda did not think it held much relevance for the
Australian authorities and his judgment was not unreasonable. That part of the
article, however, does contain some valuable clues as to the identity of the
author. The article begins by pointing out that the white pioneer in the
European colonies is rarely an angel-like creature but more often a “hard,
ruthless if not rough-mannered figure” who leaves a trail of “tragedy and
annihilation” in his wake. The author then dabbles in racial stereotypes:
Anglo-Saxon, other European races, coloured races and blacks. Mixed or coloured
races are presented as being able to pick up and use western ideals in a way
that the black native cannot. Indeed, it was suggested that coloureds often
“misuse” those ideals. The author recounts hearing an Arab speaker on a street
corner in London who was able to use rhetoric with “demonic virtuosity”
notwithstanding that English was not his mother tongue. The article then makes
a dramatic switch. It refers to recent English linguistic research on native
African languages that found them to be, not primitive as expected, but really
quite sophisticated and rich. This causes the author to question the superiority
of European thinking. He concludes: “The systematic eradication of natives as a
blow against humanity’s vermin has begun to be rightly seen as a shocking
wrong.” The article then proceeds to Sydney Morrell’s Sunday Express allegations about the treatment of Australian
Aborigines.
Sundström’s article is a very mixed bag. It
includes all the usual racial stereotypes of the age but then has the courage
to question them. The author is well-traveled. He has been to London and seems
familiar with African conditions. More importantly, he claims first-hand
knowledge of Australian Aborigines and actually seems to have a negative impression of them. Near the
end of the article, he wrote:
Mr Morrell
describes [Australian Aborigines] as peaceful and simple and good at heart. It
may be thought that an outsider who has not himself tried and seen a settler’s
conditions and fight for existence, is ready to sentimentalize with his black
brothers. He does not know their murderous instincts and that they cannot be
trusted. He sees only the best sides in these natives under death sentence.
The clear suggestion here is that Sundström
was an “insider” who had experienced the tough conditions facing white settlers,
including the untrustworthiness of the Aborigines. Nevertheless, he goes on to
conclude that exterminating people is wrong and that “British administration in
Australia is a challenge to the conscience of the Christian world.”
And what of Mr T Anderson? He, too, claimed
first-hand knowledge of Aborigines - from seven years spent roaming the outback
as a prospector and dingo scalper. His view of them was equally cold and
unsentimental – particularly the treacherous, dirty and diseased “mission
blacks.” Indeed, he proposed that all half-castes should be sterilized lest
they become a “burden.” His savage criticism of missionaries was not presented
as an attack upon Christianity itself but rather the failure of its flag-bearers
to be true to their calling. Considering these similarities, it is conceivable
that Anderson and Sundström were one and the same. What cannot be explained,
however, is Anderson’s reported assertion that he had not seen Sydney Morrell’s
article when he wrote “The Law of the Jungle in Australia.” Morrell is openly
acknowledged in the article and one of the leading arguments presented is that
Lord Beaverbrook would not have allowed Morrell’s article to be published in
the Sunday Express if it had been without
foundation. Could it be that Anderson had indeed been submitting articles to a
range of newspapers in Sweden and Germany and had simply forgotten which was
which?
Whilst we can read Sundström in Swedish,
Anderson left no writing in either Swedish or Norwegian for stylistic
comparison. Some of the sentiments expressed by Sundström and Anderson are reminiscent
of Sweden’s most prolific travel writer of the early twentieth century, Willy
Andersson Grebst (1875-1920). It was Grebst, in fact, who founded Vidi, one of the newspapers to which
Anderson claimed to have contributed articles. Grebst, whose travels included
Australia, once wrote on the topic of colonization:
There is no use anyone denying that the white race is a cruel race. The
whole history of discovery gives witness to this. The whole world colonisation.
The white man has beaten his way through with the sword. A wide river of innocent
spilled blood marks the pathway he trod to spread his civilisation. Then, when
it was too late, he shifted to more gentle exploitative methods. The issue
needs examination and I come back to what I suggested before: what is it about
a civilisation that acts by demanding that all races should adopt its customs,
its clothes, its mindset whether they fit the conditions or not? When one knows
the consequences, can it be called anything other than murder?[10]
This similarity
in point of view between Grebst and Anderson/Sundström is not coincidental. It
is now clear that Anderson/Sundström were indeed the same person. That person
was born in Gothenburg in 1906 and was christened Lars-Olof Grebst. He was the nephew
of Willy Andersson Grebst. Some nineteen years after the death of his beloved
uncle, crushed by a lifetime of disappointment and strife and with World War 2
newly begun, Lars-Olof Grebst would change his German-sounding name to Hans
Erikson. But changing names is like dyeing a stained cloth: the stain still
shows through. And the stains of the Grebst family were not easily washed away.
In 1964, many years after the controversy had blown over, he published his
memoirs, The Rhythm of the Shoe. In
them, he reminisces:
When I returned from the interior in the early thirties I felt rather
strongly about the ill-treatment meted out to the blacks. Stupidly, I said so
to one of the newspapers in Sydney. Next Sunday there was a front-page story
headed by, ”Swede criticizes Australia’s treatment of the blacks”. The rest of
the page was devoted to my allegations, all of which were true. I told of how
nearly all the male members of one tribe had been shot down by a punitive
expedition authorized by the local police. This was in retaliation for the
spearing by the blacks of one white man. The fact that the white man had raped
one of the black-gins and was speared by the blacks in consequence, was not
taken into consideration. They had to be taught that they could not do that
kind of thing to a white, no matter what kind of a white man he may be. I told
them of the bad influence of some of the missionaries and how some of them were
living in open adultery with the blacks. I soon realized that I should never
have opened my big mouth. The then Minister for the Interior denied all my
accusations. There was talk of a royal commission. The only concrete and
practical suggestion that came out of it was that I should be deported.[11]
This passage is not entirely accurate and
can only be seen as a somewhat sanitized recollection of what he had argued at
the time. One thing is certain, however: Hans Erikson was not deported!
[1] These issues are dealt with in Henry Reynold’s This Whispering in our Hearts (Allen & Unwin, 1998).
[2] The statement was sent by H C Brown, Secretary of the Department of
the Interior to the Assistant Secretary, Department of External Affairs,
Canberra under cover of a memorandum dated 11 October 1934 [National Archives
of Australia].
[3] Letter, Acting Premier of Western Australia to the Prime Minister
of Australia dated 15 January 1935 [National Archives of Australia].
[4] Letter, J Bleakeley, Chief Protector of Aboriginals, Brisbane, to
Under Secretary, Home Department, Brisbane dated 8 December 1934 [National
Archives of Australia].
[5] Hansard, 27 March 1935, pp 316-317.
[6] Hansard, 2 April 1935, pp 552-553.
[7] Henry Reynolds, This
Whispering in our Hearts op. cit. pp 193-194.
[8] Hansard, 4 April 1935, p. 727.
[9] Xavier Herbert, Capricornia
(Publicist Publishing, Sydney, 1938)
[10] W A:son Grebst, En bröllopresa i Eldslandet (Göteborg Förlagsaktiebolaget Västra
Sverige, 1913) p. 184.
[11] Hans Erikson, The Rhythm of
the Shoe (Jacaranda Press Pty Ltd, Brisbane, 1964) pp 46-47. This pivotal
book will hereafter be cited simply as TROTS.
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