Description |
ix, 153 pages, plates : illustrations |
Contents |
Publisher's note -- Illustrations, list of -- Introduction by the author -- Chapter one: The camp of the fringedwellers of Swanbourne - 1938 -- Chapter two: Dickson's Bridge reserve, the late 1930s -- Chapter three: Camp life at Caversham -- Chapter four: Camp life at Eden Hill and life around the Eden Hill Tips -- Chapter five: Living in camps at the River Bend, Brunswick Junction -- Chapter six: Opening up of Allawah Grove -- Chapter seven: Living conditions at Moora Reserve when it existed -- Chapter eight: Breaking up Allawah Grove and bulldozing Aboriginals out into white society -- Chapter nine: Living in old tumbledown shack on the west, north and east sides of Perth -- Chapter ten: Kenmure Avenue, Bayswater, and white neighbours -- Chapter eleven: The journey of the forgotten across continent to Parliament House, Canberra, from Perth -- Chapter twelve: Being neglected 150 years -- Chapter thirteen: living like dingoes in open-cut mines in winter - the Aboriginal problem in Kalgoorlie, May 1979 -- Chapter fourteen: Using-up-Jacky and Mary who still live in Mia-Mias. Living conditions at Yalata missino, may 9, 1979 -- Chapter fifteen: the forgotten people living on the seashores at Ceduna like rabbits on the side of the hill -- Chapter sixteen: creation of fringedwellers -- Chapter seventeen: a black man's cry for help from the desert for his forgotten community -- Conclusion: final words of a neglected race of people |
Summary |
"Fringedweller" describes the life of Robert Bropho, but as well that of nearly all Aboriginals in Australia. They live on the fringes of large and small communities in all the states under conditions of deprivation and almost unimaginable humiliation. Robert Bropho in this work takes us with him across the length and breadth of Australia, from Broome in the Kimberleys to the outskirts of Perth, to Ceduna in South Australia, and to Alice Springs and beyond in the centre. We experience what it is like to be an Aborigine, and we learn how they react to their circumstances and to the white people, and white officialdom, with whom they have to deal, and who have the power to decide the most detailed conditions of their lives. Bropho lives and breathes the wrongs of his people, and in this book we are able to grasp how such a man, with utter singleness of purpose, pleads cajoles and, sometimes, threatens, in order to bring their condition to the attention to their fellow white Australians. It is not a unique life, but what is exceptional is that for the first time we have the story told in the unembelished often ungrammatical words of one such sufferer. The book is, consequently unlike any other. The problem, Bropho says, won't go away - "We'll always be here, more numerous than ever". (Inside cover) |
Analysis |
Fringe dwellers: Australian Aborigines. Social conditions. Australia, 1938-1980. Personal observations |
Notes |
Fringe dwellers: Australian Aborigines. Social conditions. Australia, 1938-1980. Personal observations (ANB/PRECIS SIN 0490903) |
Subject |
Bropho, Robert.
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Aboriginal Australians -- Housing.
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Aboriginal Australians -- Social conditions -- History.
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Aboriginal Australians -- Social conditions.
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Aboriginal Australians -- Australia -- Western Australia -- Social conditions.
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Aboriginal Australians.
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Squatter settlements -- Australia -- History.
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Genre/Form |
Conference papers and proceedings.
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Author |
Australia Council. Aboriginal Arts Board.
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LC no. |
93113029 |
ISBN |
0909188351 |
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