It was always a part of my work amongst them to endeavour to give them a little insight into our own social system, but to the end of their lives they failed to understand it.
The moment the low white entered their lives all native social and sexual tabus were broken. When the first white man took the young native woman he fancied, his status in her family and group was adjusted according to native law. He chose his woman and automatically became her husband’s brother with all the rights and obligations of the husband’s brother, son-inlaw, etc. So long as the white man took other women from among his new brothers’ wives he incurred no bodily risk, and the foods he gave were distributed according to the food laws in this respect. But when his lustful eyes fell upon women and girls who were tabu to him in his new “native” relationship, he committed a breach of native law punishable with death. Many a white man has been killed for this offence, of which he may have been ignorant or defiant.
When they saw the white man living in the same hut as his mother. mother-inlaw, grown-up sisters (grown-up sisters and brothers were always tabu to each other); when they perceived that every native law regarding tabus was apparently set at naught by white people, the law-abiding native groups attached the odium of group marriage and promiscuity to the white people!
Among the Bibbulmun, who had kept their laws intact until the coming of the white man, this apparent promiscuity of the whites had a disastrous effect. They broke their age old tabus, and no “magic” punishment resulting, the young men took whom they willed and hugged the white settlements for safety. lost their magic powers through the white man’s drink; the evil example was set and the groups became like dingoes. But as in every human heart there is a sort of relative conscience, so every Bibbulmun who took his sister, mother or daughter to wife knew in his heart that he was committing a dreadful offence, and this feeling was no small factor in their quick extinction.
Joobaitch clung steadily to Maamba, his own ground; even when the doctor urged his removal to hospital. “No,”’ said Joobaitch, “I shall die on my own ground, and not in a white man’s house. When I die, I shall go down through the sea to Kur’an’nup, where all my people will be waiting on the shore with meat food, my mother and my woman, my father, and my brothers. Before it sets out on its journey, my spirit must be free to rest on the kaanya tree. Since nyitting (cold) times all Bibbulmun spirits have rested on this tree on their way to Kur’an’nup, and I have never broken a branch or flower, or sat in the shade of the tree, because it is the tree of the dead, the sacred tree.”
One day the cart came to take Joobaitch to hospital. “Don’t let them take me!” he pleaded. I said, “It is all right, Joobaitch. You will die before you pass the kaartya tree at Karragullen, and your soul will rest there before it goes to the sea.” Joobaitch died as the cart crossed the little creek near Maamba, as he had wished it, still on his own ground, close to the kaanya tree.
So the last of the Perth tribe was buried in the aboriginal section of the old Guildford cemetery, which formed part of his people’s home. He had had fifty years of Christianity, but he died in the faith of the Bibbulmun, looking westward to Kur’an’nup.
