Menu
Deadwood Dick series of western movies, released in 1940, directed by James W. Horne starring Donald Douglas as Deadwood Dick.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jwlMtg4ts8
Donald Thomson (1901-1970); anthropologist en zoologist, supporter of Aboriginal rights. In 1946 en 1947 Thomson published a series of articles in the Herald on justice for the Aborigines. The articles brought into the open his underlying disagreement with Professor Adolphus Elkin, who had greater sympathy with the policy of assimilation. Thomson campaigned vigorously in 1947 against the establishment of a rocket range at Woomera, because of the threat it posed to desert-dwelling Aborigines. Again, he was opposed by Elkin. Serving on the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board from 1957, Thomson found that little notice was taken of his advice. He resigned in frustration in 1967.
He wrote:
‘Today the charge of ‘communism’ is being laid at the door of those who oppose the violation of the Central Australian Reserve, and whose sole motive is to save the remaining Aborigines from sharing the fate of the Tasmanians and the Victorians. I believe that the use of the reserve as a rocket range will be fatal to the Aborigines. I have predicted that violation of the reserve will spell disaster, not from the missiles themselves, but from those contacts which 150 years of past experience have proved beyond any doubt to be absolutely fatal to the Aborigines.’
Sources:
http://indigenousrights.net.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/380993/f5.pdf
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thomson-donald-finlay-fergusson-11851
Read: The Aborigines and the Rocket Range by Donald F. Thomson, May 1947
Doris Blackburn (1889-1970); political activist and member of the federal parliament. She was the only parliamentarian who spoke out against the missile project. In the fifties of the last century, Blackburn one of the founders of the Aborigines Advancement League and the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement
Source: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blackburn-doris-amelia-9517
ELDO an acronym for European Launcher Development Organisation, established to develop a satellite launch vehicle for Europe. Woomera, Australia, was chosen as the launch site to test the vehicles. The project originates back around 1960 with the cancellation of the British Blue Streak. This rocket became the first stage of the Europa vehicle with France providing the second stage and Germany the third. Italy worked on the satellite project, while the Netherlands and Belgium concentrated on tracking and telemetry systems. Australia was the only non-European member, a status granted in return for providing the launch facilities. Ten launches occurred in the program. The first involved the first stage only on 5 June 1964. No successful satellite launch was achieved and the final all-up launch of ELDO's Europa 1 launch vehicle took place on 12 June 1970 with the satellite failing to reach orbit. European satellite launch activities then shifted to the French site at Kourou, in French Guiana, which is now home to Ariane launches.
ELDO Hotel old officers’ mess of ELDO European Launcher Development Organisation, active during the cold war, is now a hotel with a good 60s vibe. From the outside the main building looks like a high school. Inside is a modern, cool restaurant and bar with a large balcony where you can have a 'sundowner' overlooking the desert.
ELDO rocket a series of unsuccessful European rockets operated by the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO), fired in Woomera Australia. ELDO rockets were built to develop Europe’s access to space and put European scientific satellites into orbit. This task was expanded later to include telecommunications and meteorological satellites. It was composed of three stages: the UK’s Blue Streak, the French Coralie and German Astris stages. The first Europa firing using all three stages took place on 30 November 1968. The first flight, F1, terminated slightly early due to fuel sloshing in the tanks. F2 and F3 were completely successful. F4 was Blue Streak plus dummy upper stages. The flight was terminated prematurely and somewhat controversially by the Australian Range Safety Officer. F5 was a successful repeat of F4. F6/1 had a live second stage which failed to ignite. F6/2 was a repeat attempt, but this time the stages failed to separate. All the stages were live in F7: the first two worked, the third stage blew up after seven seconds. The same problem occurred with F8.
Read:
http://users.on.net/~jahill/page-18.html
Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uKws5wro10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvcHO4WieV0
Erna Bella Mission The Aboriginal name for Erna Bella is Pukatja. It is a stopping place for the Anangu community in the Musgrave Ranges in the north-west of South Australia. In 1930 the inhabitants of this area had to deal with the consequences of colonialism conflicts over land water and the treatment of Aboriginal women. In 1935 Charles Duguid received £ 1000 from the South Australian government for the creation of Erna Bella Missionas a buffer between the Aborigines and the advancing whitefella. Children went to school and men were encouraged to find work in construction and sheep farming. Women were active in the weaving of woolen fabrics. Even now they are known for their abilities in this area.
Source: http://www.anangu.com.au/sa-communities/pukatjaernabella.html
Evelyn Crawford born Mallyer (1928-2001); Aboriginal woman who worked as a rodeo rider for Tex Morton Rodeo Show in the 1940s. There is no evidence that Tex Morton was in Kingoonya in 1947 with his show (as suggested in the novel DESERT OF GUILT) but it could have happened. This is also the case with te presence of that Evelyn Crawford. Since she was a rodeo rider in the 40s and Kingoonya was a vibrant rodeo centre back then, the events in the novel could have happened. Together with Chris Walsh Crawford wrote her memoirs in Over my tracks: a remarkable life (Ringwood, Vic. New York Penguin Books, 1993). During her life she was devoted to the Aborginal case, especially to the importance of education. She once said :
‘The past is not for livin' in, you know, but it sure makes for real good thinkin’.
Source: http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/crawford-evelyn-15391
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7DutSgQGSI
Francis Godwin (1562-1633); an English historian, science fiction author, divine, Bishop of Llandaff and of Hereford. Godwin is the author of a somewhat remarkable story, published posthumously in 1638, and entitled The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales, written apparently some time in the 1620s. In this production Godwin not only declares himself a believer in the Copernican system, but adopts so far the principles of the law of gravitation as to suppose that weight decreases with distance from the Earth.
Frank Borman (1928-now); astronaut, best known as the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission that flew a manned spacecraft into orbit around the moon to collect information for the lunar landing of Apollo 11 on July the 20th 1969. He was the first man who escaped the gravity of the earth. On December the 24th 1968 he made together with the crew, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders from space a live TV report with pictures of the crew, their spaceship, the earth and the moon. A quote from Borman’s Christmas message from space to planet earth:
"And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas, and God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth."
Sources:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/borman-f.html
Francis MacNamar nickname Frankie The Poet (c.1810-1861): Irish convict, condemned to exile in Australia for seven years for the destruction of a shop window and the theft of a piece of fabric. During his voyage to Australia, he wrote a Mock Heroic Poem about his lawsuit. His poems and songs were wildly popular with the convicts because of the rebellion against the system and were lustily sung around campfires where convicts came together at night. The appearance of Frankie the Poet in the novel DESERT OF GUILT is largely based on historical facts. His presence at Hughie’s Hotel (formerly Samuel Garrett ) at Philips Ponds is fictional.
Sources:
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macnamara-francis-13073
http://www.jenwilletts.com/Frank%20the%20Poet.htm
Frank Moy On the internet you can not find a complete bibliography of F.M. Moy. What you can find is this: Moy studied anthropology professor A. P. Elkin (1891 - 1970) at de University of Sydney. His preceptor believed in the politics of compromise, courtesy and restraint and regarded protection as the basis for growth. Elkin believed that Aborigines would inevitably be assimilated by white Australia. In Elkin’s footsteps Moy wrote:
‘The full blood must be attracted from his nomadic life, he must be educated, made healthy and assimilated.’
Moy was a proponent of the separation of Aboriginal children from their mother's and was partly responsible for the xx of ‘the stolen generations’. This sad page in the book of history took place between the 1910s and the 1970’s. In 1950 he wrote:
‘Wherever possible it is the policy of this Branch to remove the children from their native mothers as soon after birth as is reasonably possible."
In 1946 Moy was the director of Native Welfare in the Northern Territory and a member of the Australian Comittee on Guided Projectiles.
In 1951 he wrote in a letter to his chief:
‘Patrol Officers, under my direction, are requested from time to time to endeavour to remove certain part-aboriginal children from their native environment on cattle stations and other places. It is impressed upon them the advantages to be gained by the children and the disadvantages of allowing them to remain in the camp.’
Source: http://www.stolengenerations.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=161&Itemid=143
Donwload: Planning a program for Aborigines in the 1950s by Harry Giesse, Northern Territory Library Service 1990 on https://www.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/241871/occpaper16.pdf
Read online (free): The Australian Aborigines by A. P. Elkin, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London (Vol. 10, No. 2 (1940), pp. 489-491) on
https://www.jstor.org/stable/608413?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
