“What do you mean?” Alex asked as Michelle took over the laptop.
“Hang on,” Michelle said, beginning to click away. “Here, like I said. It’s all on Wikipedia: the god who answers your questions,” she said, pointing to the beginning of a paragraph and grinning.
In April 1789, however, twelve months after the departure from Botany Bay by the French expedition led by Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, a catastrophic epidemic of smallpox (or possibly chicken pox) spread through the Eora people and surrounding groups, with the result that local Aborigines died in their hundreds, and bodies could be seen in the water in Sydney Harbour and lying on beaches and in adjacent caves.
Author and First Fleet officer Watkin Tench, whose accounts are primary sources about the early years of the colony, never suggested that the epidemic may have been caused by Aborigines disturbing the grave of a French sailor who died shortly after arrival in Australia (supposedly of smallpox) and had been buried at Botany Bay. However, in his memoir A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales, Tench wrote that he had never heard of the existence of smallpox among the French sailors.
“Aborigines disturbing graves?”
“Exactly. Why would they dig up a dead soldier? So what that’s saying is, something killed the Aborigines and something killed that French sailor. He wasn’t sure, but Tench didn’t think it was smallpox from the French,” Michelle said. “Did you know the early settlers, the few who knew the truth from the Aborigines or just from their surroundings, had a method of killing vampires? It’s a practice that lives on today.”
“And that is?”
“Burning them alive. But it has to be a huge blaze so there is no chance of them recovering before nightfall,” Michelle answered. “They used to dig up graves or storm into houses during the day. If they found people asleep and unresponsive, they would drag them out into the bush and light them on fire, as many as they could find in one go.”
“Why is that so shocking?”
“Have you ever thought about how many suspicious bush fires there are?”
“Oh god. I always wondered why some sick piece of shit would want to destroy bushland. Having the heat do it is bad enough. So any time I hear about a bushfire being suspicious…”
“More than likely it’s a mass burning.”
Alex played with the last of her food idly. “Have the Aborigines always known?”
Michelle shrugged. “I’m not completely sure. The settlers had no idea what the hell they were bringing here, but the Aborigines did. They knew what was killing them. The Europeans just called it smallpox because they had no other explanation. But how the Aborigines knew already, no one’s certain, and they’re not talking,” Michelle said gravely. “Anyway, for years and years vampires and Aborigines fought night after night with Europeans in between, none the wiser. Aborigines knew the land, they knew how to hunt just as well as the vamps did. The vamps were actually out manoeuvred in a lot of ways, but the vamps hit back. I’m of the firm belief they were the instigators of the Stolen Generation.”
“What? How?”
“It’s just a theory. But I happen to agree with it. At the time, vamps were trying to gain members of parliament to create new laws to help them win the war and ultimately conquer the Great Southern Land. The Aborigines were the only things in their way. The tide changed then and the Aborigines never recovered. The authorities came and took the kids away, crying and screaming from their mothers, all for ‘God’s work’ and ‘their own good.’ Here, try and read between the lines of this one,” Michelle said, turning the laptop to Alex.
The extent of the removal of children, and the reasoning behind their removal, are contested. Documentary evidence, such as newspaper articles and reports to parliamentary committees, suggest a range of rationales. Motivations evident include child protection, beliefs that given their catastrophic population decline after white contact that black people would “die out” and a fear of miscegenation by full-blooded Aboriginal people.
In 1924, in the Adelaide Sun an article stated “The word ‘stole’ may sound a bit far-fetched but by the time we have told the story of the heart-broken Aboriginal mother we are sure the word will not be considered out of place.”
The exact number of children removed is unknown, and disputed within a large range. The Bringing Them Home Report is often quoted as saying that “at least 100,000” children were removed from their parents, but this figure is arrived at by multiplying the Aboriginal population in 1994 (303,000), by the report's maximum estimate of “one in three”.
“Didn’t anyone know what was going on?”
“Probably. Would you have said anything, though? Who the hell would back Aborigines in loin cloths over killers that drank blood?” Michelle offered. “If anyone spoke up they would’ve been killed. Remember how many years went by that no prime minister would ever apologise for it? They just brushed it off. The politicians in the know chose the winning side. It was the smart choice, not the right one.”
“But hang on, Kevin Rudd said sorry.”
“And look what happened to him,” Michelle answered.
Alex thought about that. Of course. Now she remembered. Only a few short months after the formal apology to the members of the Stolen Generation, Kevin Rudd was unseated as Australia’s Labour Prime Minister by Julia Gillard, one of his own ministers. An uncontested victory in less than twenty-four hours. His supporter numbers were so few, the defeat so swift, he stepped aside to avoid humiliation. That act, bringing the first female prime minister to power, never sat right with the Australian people, seen as backstabbing of the worst kind.
Alex slowly put the pieces together. “They really have their claws into everything don’t
