At Numbulwar: Blackfellas and Whitefellas

Abstract

Numbulwar may be one of the most remote Indigenous communities in Australia. It has, since its establishment as Rose River Mission in 1952, been buffered, to a considerable extent, from settler culture by distance and a terrain of mangrove, eucalypt forest, bog, and sand not easily traversed, even on foot (Eastwell 1976; Thomson 1983). Distance, however, does not mean complete isolation from the encompassing Australian nation-state. Anglican missionaries from the Church Missionary Society were present from the beginning; Northern Territory Department of Education teachers have long staffed the school. The town’s administrators, police, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, accountants, shop managers, pilots, doctors, and nurses, along with its school teachers, have always come from the larger Australian society, as have much of the town’s physical infrastructure, its policies, rules, and other social arrangements. Radios, videos, music cassettes, and television, augmented by CDs and the Internet1 in recent years, have been available there at least since the early 1980s. Though the vast majority of Numbulwar’s population is Aboriginal, it might be said that “Western culture” has long suffused daily life.