Australian Aboriginal Women’s Control of Mineral Resources

Abstract

The extent of mining by Aboriginal women has been underestimated. Roles within traditional mining were often determined along gender lines but women’s labour and skills were essential. In post-contact Australia, women continued to mine for the world economy, particularly in the early frontier period and for longer in isolated mining fields. In some cases traditional female knowledge and skills were applied in new ways to mining. The work did not suit European ideals of femininity which were being imposed on them through legislation and government policy. Despite this, they were more likely to continue mining than White women. Mining could also give the women some autonomy, allowing them to resist the controls of the ‘protection’ acts that governed Aboriginal lives from the late nineteenth century. These controls were predicated on a relationship of employer and employee, which did not fit independent production such as small-scale mining.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For making paint, or for other minerals in the ochre. John Clarke, ‘Two Aboriginal Rock Art Pigments from Western Australia: Their Properties, Use and Durability’, Studies in Conservation 21 (1976): 134.

2 e.g. Galiina Ellwood, ‘Aboriginal Prospectors and Miners of Tropical Queensland’, Journal of Australasian Mining History 12 (October 2014): 59–60.

3 Correspondence records and printed papers relating to Queensland Aborigines 1896–1902, Queensland State Archives (hereafter QSA) https://www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au/items/ITM17983 (accessed 23 February 2024).

4 Janice Wegner, ‘Women on the North Queensland Mining Frontier, 1864–1919’, in Women in Isolation, ed., Ros Thorpe, Robyn Putt, and Jane Thompson (Townsville: James Cook University, 1988), 48.

5 Isobel McBryde, ‘Kulin Greenstone Quarries’, World Archaeology 16, no. 2: 272; Clarke, 138.

6 Daisy Bates, ‘Dooarreebarloo’, Perth Western Mail, 3 April 1909, 30.

7 A. Sagona and J.A. Webb, ‘The Excavation’, in Bruising the Red Earth, ed. Antonio Sagona (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 57–64, 70.

8 J.A. Webb, M.D.A. McKay, and A.G. Sagona, ‘Analysis of the Finds’, in Sagona, Bruising the Red Earth, 114–22.

9 Kaolin is a fine white clay. Mark Harvey, ‘Stones and Grinding: Wagiman Ethnogeology’, Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2016): 12–23.

10 Peter Hiscock, ‘The Ancient Miners of Mt Isa’, http://arts.anu.edu.au/arcworld/resources/papers/mi/ancientminers.htm, 2 (accessed November 2002).

11 C.F.M. Bird, ‘Woman the Toolmaker: Evidence for Women’s Use and Manufacture of Flaked Stone Tools in Australia and New Guinea’, in Women in Archaeology: A Feminist Critique, ed. Hilary du Cros and Laurajane Smith (Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1993), 22–27; Sheila McKell, ‘An Axe to Grind: More Ripping Yarns from Australian Prehistory’, in du Cros and Smith, Women in Archaeology, 115–16.

12 Harvey, 13.

13 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 2, Section 6 and Chapter 5, Section 27, https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a_1.pdf (accessed 23 February 2024).

14 David L. Hume, ‘The Development of Tourist Art and Souvenirs – The Arc of the Boomerang: From Hunting, Fighting and Ceremony to Tourist Souvenir’, International Journal of Tourism Research 11 (2009): 59–61.

15 Maria Nugent, ‘Shellwork on Show: Colonial History, Australian Aboriginal Women and the Display of Decorative Objects’, Journal of Material Culture 19, no. 1 (2014): 75–91.

16 There are several studies of work that allowed Aboriginal people a large degree of autonomy, such as the agricultural contract work described by Barry Morris, ‘From Underemployment to Unemployment: The Changing Role of Aborigines in a Rural Economy’, Mankind 13, no. 6 (April 1983): 499–516 for the Dhan-gadi of NSW, and Sally Hodson, ‘Nyungars and Work: Aboriginal Experiences in the Rural Economy of the Great Southern Region of Western Australia’, Aboriginal History 17, no. 1 (1993): 73–92.

17 Fred Cahir, Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2012), 98.

18 Ibid.

19 South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus, 22 November 1902, 18.

20 ‘Last of Her Tribe’, Melbourne Herald, 16 February 1921, 3.

21 Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser, 17 August 1867, 3.

22 For example, ‘Life on an Aboriginal Tin Field’, Melbourne Herald, 18 March 1933, 13.

23 Northern Herald, 14 December 1935, 31.

24 Jolly Read and Peter Coppin, Kangkushot: The Life of Nyamal Lawman Peter Coppin (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2014), 83; Perth Daily News, 29 June 1955, 5.

25 Read and Coppin; Anne Scrimgeour, ‘“To Make It Brilliantly Apparent to the People of Australia”: The Pilbara Cooperative Movement and the Campaign for Aboriginal Civil Rights in the1950s’, Journal of Australian Studies 40, no. 1 (2016): 16–31; Western Mail, 25 December 1901, 105; Melbourne Herald, 18 March 1933, 13.

26 Read and Coppin, 83; Kalgoorlie Miner, 14 October 1918, 1.

27 S. Holcombe, ‘Early Indigenous Engagement with Mining in the Pilbara: Lessons from a Historical Perspective’ (Canberra: Working Paper No. 24/2004, ANU), 3, http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/ (accessed February 2011).

28 The Voice, 1 July 1933, 7.

29 The Australasian, 30 July 1932, 43; Beaudesert Times, 2 October 1925, 3.

30 See e.g. Ellwood, ‘Aboriginal Prospectors and Miners’, 59–80.

31 Cairns Post, 18 December 1936, 14.

32 South Australian Chronicle, 3 November 1894, 20.

33 Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, 5 December 1924, 12.

34 Brisbane Week, 8 May 1886, 23.

35 Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 26 April 1906, 2.

36 ‘Aborigine’s Gold: Some Queensland Finds’, Nambour Chronicle and North Coast Advertiser, 1 June 1934.

37 The West Australian, 13 January 1914, 5.

38 Timothy Jones, Pegging the Northern Territory: The History of Mining in the Northern Territory of Australia, 1873–1946 (Darwin: Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development, 1987), 141.

39 Murchison Advocate, 24 February 1906, 2.

40 Northern Mining Register, 27 January 1892, 17.

41 Altengen is a Kandju name. Raphael Cilento, Section 1: Survey of Aboriginals in north Queensland, 1932–1937, Series A/1928, Item 4/5, National Archives of Australia, Canberra.

42 Hugh Borland, ‘Batavia Becomes Wenlock’, Cairns Post, July 31, 1940, 8.

43 Kitty’s death certificate notes that she was ‘tribally married’ to Jacky Flat. Queensland death certificate 1946/C4858, Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

44 Removals for 1921, HOM/B58, QSA; The Protector of Aborigines, Cooktown Aboriginal Occurrence Book 10 May 1915–22 May 1942, POA13/1, Extracts 29, 6.1922, QSA. Some researchers believe that Kitty was taken to Yarrabah – see e.g. Mark Copland, ‘Calculating Lives: The Numbers and Narratives of Forced Removals in Queensland 1859–1972’ (PhD thesis, Griffith University, 2005), 226.

45 Townsville Daily Bulletin, 13 October 1950, 6.

46 Kitty removed to Palm Island, Removals register, A/64785:227, QSA.

47 Queensland death certificate 1946/C4858.

48 James Cook University academic Dr Diane Menghetti wrote an article on her for the Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame in 2008: http://www.republicofmining.com/2008/06/05/australian-prospectors-and-miners-hall-of-fame-historical-profile-kitty-pluto-unknown-%E2%80%93-unknown/ (accessed March 16, 2013), and she features in the Australian Dictionary of Biography: Galiina Ellwood, ‘Pluto, Kitty (1877–1946)’ (2002), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pluto-kitty-31648 (accessed February 23, 2024).

49 Bill Beatty, ‘Australoddities’, Cairns Post, June 6, 1949, 4.

50 D.W. De Havelland, Gold and Ghosts, Vol. 4 (Perth: Hesperian Press, 1989), 537.

51 Cairns Post, 18 December 1936, 14.

52 Glenda Morris, Looking Back the Way We Came (Mareeba: Pinevale Press, 1991), 17.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid., 20–21.

55 Ibid., 37.

56 Ibid.

57 Johnstone River Advocate, 11 February 1936, 5.

58 Northern Herald, 30 September 1939, 39.

59 Annabel Ross, ‘Everyone Digs “Black Gold” at Carbine: Even Toddlers Earn Money from Wolfram to Buy Toys’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 15 October 1952, 15.

60 Trevor Johnstone, quoted in Sandra Pannell and the Ngadjon-Jii Traditional Owners, Yamani Country: A Spatial History of the Atherton Tableland, North Queensland (Cairns: Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Management, Rainforest CRC, 2005), 52.

61 Report of the Mining Warden, Mulgrave Gold Field, Votes and Proceedings of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, vol. IV, 1891, 269.

62 Uncle George Davis, Uncle Lenny Royee, and Uncle Connie Stewart, personal communication with author, 2001. George Davis was a child at the time he and his clan were rounded up. Lenny Royee’s mother was also a member of the group rounded up.

63 Cairns Post, 2 October 1927, 6.

64 Marnie Kennedy, Born a Half-Caste (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1985), 33.

65 ‘Aboriginal Diggers’, Warwick Examiner and Times, 24 December 1881, 4; Illustrated Australian News, 12 March 1881, 54.

66 Jillian Comber, ‘Palmer Goldfield Heritage Study (Stage 2): Unpublished Report to the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage, Brisbane’ (1991), Site 51 (China Camp), 265–68; Site 52 (part of site 51), 269; Site 53 (part of site 51), 270; Site 54 (Aboriginal camp No. 1), 271; Site 55 (Aboriginal camp No. 2), 272–3; Site 56 (Aboriginal cemetery), 274–76; Site 57 (Gregory Beach), 277–280; Site 58 (Aboriginal graves at Gregory Gully), 281–84; Site 59 (Bulla Burton’s grave), 285.

67 Barrier Miner, 15 May 1929, 2.

68 Cahir, 113.

69 Brisbane Truth, 2 June 1907, 3.

70 Adelaide Evening Journal, 4 April 1881, 3; Illustrated Australian News, 12 March 1881, 54.

71 Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 7 July 1852, 2.

72 Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 14 February 1852, 2.

73 Northern Miner, 6 July 1895, 2.

74 Geoffrey Blainey, Mines in the Spinifex (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1970), 61.

75 Interview with Mrs Ethel Marshall, at Croydon, 20 June 1986, by Jan Wegner.

76 Jones, 181.

77 Western Argus, 19 March 1935, 17.

78 Sydney Sun, 10 August 1946, 3.

79 Mike Harding, ‘Plenty of Opal Back Then: Opal Pulkah, a History of Aboriginal Engagement in the Northern South Australian Opal Fields’ (PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 2016), Chapter 3.

80 Ibid., 101, 106.

81 Ibid., 113.

82 R.E.M. Armstrong, The Kalkadoons: A Study of an Aboriginal Tribe on the Queensland Frontier (Brisbane: William Brooks and Co., 1981), 86, 88.

83 Blainey, 15.

84 W.T. (Bill) Johnston, Yungaburra: Place of Haunted Spirits (Malanda: Eacham Historical Society, 1983), 10.

85 Pannell et al., 45.

86 J. May, ‘Mountain Tracks and the Russell Goldfield’ (1959), Cairns Historical Society Document G07261; D. Ray and P. Callaghan, ‘Frederick Grace (Boonjie) Brown: Farmer and Mining Entrepreneur’, Eacham Historical Society Bulletin no. 377 (2012).

87 Queensland Government Mining Journal (December 1911): 618.

88 Hobart Voice, 6 April 1935, 6; Australian Worker, 27 March 1935, 16. The fuss was caused by the accident to the two women described earlier, in the Rumbalara ochre mine.

89 Canberra Times, 25 November 1971, 2; Mining Link, ‘Cape Flattery’, https://www.mininglink.com.au/mine-details/cape-flattery (accessed 23 February 2024).

90 Joni Parmenter and Florence Drummond, ‘“What Did I Get Myself Into?” Indigenous Women and Mining Employment in Australia’, The Extractive Industries and Society 12 (2022): 4.