Welsh Patagonians in Australias Northern Territory. H.T.R. Williams 2012.

. In 1993 the Flinders Bay sails from Jeddah down through the Suez Canal. The crew take salt-tablets, shake shoes in case of scorpions. Water gets so hot in the pipes I can make a cup of tea from the tap in the galley. Egyptian boatmen, gold-toothed and gypsy-like, come aboard to sell cheap souvenirs and work the hawsers. We are part of a giant convoy, moving like a chain of ants, loaded with goods for India, the Far East, the Pacific. We wait for hours while traffic passes in the other direction. We resume, and finally break out into the wider Red Sea, which is blue after all, sparking so it hurts the eyes. The Indian Ocean is flat calm, an undulating mirror for the sky, reflecting the fires of sunsets, stars brighter than I have ever seen them. It will be another nine days before we site the cloud-like smudge of Australias western coastline. * * *

By 1900 a new set of circumstances were motivating Welsh Patagonians to look elsewhere and found yet more colonies. The original community began to disintegrate as dissatisfied farmers sold up to newcomers mostly Spanish. In May 1902, more than 200 individuals sailed for Canada where they founded a township east of Saskatoon.1 Others stayed in Argentina but moved north. Still others decided on Australia. Though the Welsh migration to Patagonia is well documented, the Welsh Patagonian migration to Australia is barely known about. Michele Langfield of Deakin University in Burwood, Victoria, describes how the majority of these migrants made their homes at Moora, a town to the northwest of Perth, Western Australia, and at Colando, near Yanco, in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area of New South Wales. Smaller groups settled in Bamawm and

Rochester in Victoria, and Emerald in Queensland. And some betrayed by a fellow Welshman attempted farming in the disastrous Northern Territories. The British Commonwealth used propaganda in its attempt to get Welsh Patagonians to colonise and civilise Australias Northern Territories. The author of this propaganda was Robert Williams. Williams was himself a Welsh immigrant; a former civil servant living in New Zealand. The Commonwealth must have thought him a shoe-in for the assignment given his Welsh background and previous experience serving the Empires interests. He was to travel through the Northern Territories and assess the lands possibilities. He was then to write his findings with the purpose of convincing Welsh Patagonians to migrate there. Previous to this, the first attempts to colonise the Northern Territories had all failed. In spite of preliminary reports of a glowing character, difficulties of climate, soil, and isolation, the treachery of the natives, the success of pirates and numerous other difficulties combined to make the place hellish, resulting in initial settlements of soldiers and convicts being abandoned.2 But the fear of some other European power founding a second Singapore in the Northern Territories persisted. Australias front door was seen as having been left wide open, and so in 1838 another military settlement was set up at Port Essington. Malaria struck this struggling outpost in 1843, and combined with poor soil and minimal rain, this settlement also failed. * * *

So, at some point in 1993 Im on the aft deck of the Flinders Bay, sitting on an overturned bucket peeling potatoes in the sun. There are moments merging with the seas enormity. Staring down over the stern rail, watching the screw as it churns up the darkness in depths so paradoxically clear. The wake fizzing brilliant foam, releasing a

fresh, zesty smell like strange champagne. It drugs me: the hypnotic thump of the engines, the welded steel-plate cradle rocking beneath, the pendulum funnel against the blue. That rhythm gets inside your whole person. So deep that when change comes at last excitement trebles and the subtlest signs grow obvious. After you see it, land reaches the nostril. The crew become blind insects waking to new activities, sensing the shift into the imminent prospect of shore-leave. I dream the desert, speeding for long arid miles, an exotic land of pungent red dust, where the mounds of the white ant ripple like advancing armies, their sundial shadows stopping short at well-maintained fences, irrigated fields, a clash of factories, suburbia bleeding out from Perths towering skyscrapers at the heart of a human infestation. * * *

Until the eighteen-sixties the Northern Territory remained uninhabited by Europeans. The delusional hopes of many settlers seeking to create a White Australia evaporated like water in the desert heat. Then the gold rush hit in 1870. The colony succeeded in linking up with the rest of Australia through the Adelaide-Darwin Overland Telegraph Line. But white ants consumed the wooden poles for hundreds of miles. Already the Territory was gaining its bitter lesson in regard to pests. The ants, for instance, were largely responsible for agricultural difficulties, and expenses in Darwin, where Price wrote in 1882 that they had just finished the consumption of the old bank and were then enjoying the managers residence of soft wood.3 Gold mania attracted a rabble from everywhere and gave the Northern Territories a deservedly bad name. As late as 1880 the belief that the colony was a dismal fever-stricken swamp, and that alligators stalked in the streets of Darwin was hardly far from the truth.4

New attempts to encourage agriculture led to an influx of farming, but again the long dry season, pests such as the white ant, and transport difficulties ruined almost every plantation attempted. * * *

In Freemantle I go ashore with a cadet officer. We short cut through a hole in a rusting chain-link fence, cross a brown stream edged with rubbish and scrub. The husk of a stray white ant lies cut off from its kind in unsuccessful reconnaissance. Its body is almost transparent; an alien, resinous head with microdot eyes and tiny jaws for us to marvel at. Were in Australia, says the cadet, as if he only just realised. We laugh at the invigorating novelty, at how obscenely lucky we are that things have turned out so well for us compared to most of our former school-friends back in depressed areas of the U.K. He raises his hands. Were in Australia, he yells at the sky. But seen from up there, we are too insignificant to merit response. We could die of dehydration and the desert and sky would only watch with immaculate indifference. At some point here, communal survival metamorphosed into organized commercial exploitation. There is a dark-wood bar with a swarm of working men crammed against it like teeth impacted in a gum. Their elbows grind against the next mans as they swipe away sweat, raise frosted glasses. No one speaks except to request more beer from the barmaid, a beautiful platinum blonde who wears nothing but a leopard-spotted G-string. Her white skin glows like the moon, close yet entirely out of reach. It is not erotic. Conscience trumps juvenile curiosity, reminds me I am not

entirely driven by the dictates of biology. Yet the whole situation is non-biological, contrived: an objectified woman who does not make eye-contact, selling yet another impossible dream to lonely men who mine deserts, build and maintain structures and infrastructures, load and carry freight, farm food; who migrate to town to drink, who mourn the blunting of genuine passion. * * *

Robert Williams report, written in 1912, was widely circulated in Argentina, printed in both English and Welsh.5 The text is a curio of colonialism a pseudo-scientific tract full of outright lies, exaggeration, contradiction, and deliberate omission written with the integrity of a stereotypical used car salesman. Perhaps he was not entirely to blame though, as a number of similar documents emerged at this time, many of which Williams used as sources:

In 1911 a Preliminary Scientific Expedition visited the Territory and made a report, which was followed by an influx of experts and pseudo-experts, who gave opinions on climate, health, anthropology, geology, exploration, and industries of many kinds. [They] produced a range of cautious to glowing reports on pasturing, agriculture, and mining, which strangely recall the pious aspirations of the early settlers. The optimistic opinions of the Welsh settlers from Patagonia . . . brought echoes of the seventies the grandiose schemes of settlement by Mennonites, Silesians, Santhals, Creoles, and Japanese.6

Despite so many failing before them, there is little wonder the Welsh Patagonians were so optimistic. The Williams report transforms the fly-filled homelands of multiple aboriginal

tribes into a white mans country.7 Searing red deserts and crocodile infested waterholes become fertile plains and paradisiacal lagoons. Rumours of deadly malaria and yellow fever are not to be believed: Indeed, it may be said that medical science is making such rapid strides in the conquest of tropical diseases that popular opinion lags far behind, and the most amazing ignorance prevails concerning recent research.8 Drought has never been a problem there, because the northern half of the Territory lies well within the monsoon belt, and has therefore an abundant and regular rainfall, and is never subject to drought Even the Southern portion is by no means waterless, as may be seen by reports of various scientific and mining expeditions that have traversed the so-called desert heart of Australia.9 In spite of this abundant and regular rainfall, however, From April to October never a drop of rain falls; but this will present settlers with no problems either, because the moisture in the ground, together with the heavy dews, is ample to produce the crop of a temperate zone.10 This white mans country is undoubtedly the best and richest portion of the Continent; and yet it is practically unknown; the white population at present being some 1700.11 * * *

At night, the pavements of Freemantle still radiate heat. I devour a beetroot-filled burger and complimentary chocolate Freddo Frog from a gull-covered kiosk down at the waterfront. Then, in the seamans mission, I drink with a local girl who gets lodgings in exchange for serving at the bar. She wants to fly away. Her head is full of escape fantasies, snatches of stories from other-hemisphere lands, carried down the trade route by other sailors. The

intoxicating nectar of hope gets traded a little more. I tell her I love this place. I could get work easily, rent a house with a colonial-style verandah and drink beer all afternoon. This hypothetical house would be like a mansion compared with the council flats and semis of oppressive housing estates back home. I feel safe walking the streets here. There is none of the crime, drugs and delinquency. There is a sudden wealth of cynicism in her face. She is seeing me for the first time, a fool convinced the grass is always greener. Mate, she says. Youre dreaming. We part to go on gnawing through the day-to-day; distracting ourselves from drone-like realities, working on amidst the seemingly interminable expansion of human progress. * * *

During his travels, Robert Williams finds The presence of the myriads of ants everywhere very objectionable, but they seem harmless on the whole, making no attack on the human body.12 The deadly wildlife is not to be feared either, as there are no natural enemies to combat no creatures more harmful than the mosquito and the white ant, unless it be an occasional snake, though these are not more numerous than in the Southern States and Tasmania, and are not worth consideration.13 He discovers a former Jesuit mission, where, Corn and tobacco were once grown most successfully, but the mission had to be abandoned owing to the failure of the Jesuits to make any impression on the limited intelligence of the aboriginal.14 Aboriginals were widely regarded as an intellectually and morally inferior race at this time.15 One of Williams quoted sources, a Dr. Breinl, blames widespread syphilis amongst the white population on the promiscuity of aboriginal women. Social Darwinism casts aboriginals as ignoble, brutish and

lazy. According to Robert Williams, they only seem to have survived thanks to the thriving wildlife and vegetation. Nonetheless, the natives have enough ability and decency to be of assistance to white colonials:

The natives . . . are simple and docile, and, though lacking in intelligence, can be trained to do much straightforward manual labour. The women are useful in the homes. The men are invaluable with stock, clever with the axe, and render great service to the settler for the very small recompense of rations and an odd article of clothing, to the value of about 3s. per day. Approved persons are granted a permit to employ natives, by the Protector, who discourages payment in coin, owing to the tendency, common to all lowly races, to squander it unwisely on such things as drink and opium.16

Above all, it is the Federal Government and the Crown who offer the Welsh Patagonians every possible assistance. Robert Williams concludes by claiming he feels he would be wanting in duty and patriotism if he did not urge his readers to abandon your inhospitable home, under an alien flag, and lose no time in availing yourselves of the wonderful offer now before you.17 His duty is clearly as an administrator of the British Empire however, and his patriotism in the interests of Mother England rather than Wales. In 1913, Robert Williams went further. The commonwealth paid for him to visit Buenos Aires and Chubut in an attempt to convince the Welsh Patagonians to settle in the Northern Territories. Robert Williams was authorised to offer them perpetual leases on land

blocks near the Daly River. In addition, the settlers travel expenses to Darwin would be paid for them. 220 immigrants arrived in Darwin in 1915. But due to the increase of other groups of immigrants into the Chubut Valley that had occurred in the meantime, now there were only 28 Welsh amongst them. The rest, according to Langfield, consisted of 113 Spaniards, 45 Russians, 30 Italians, one Argentinean, a Frenchman, a Serb, and a Greek. Local workers were concerned that immigrants were taking the jobs of Australian soldiers fighting overseas.18 The same criticism was applied to other groups of immigrants in spite of their having been officially invited. Speaking only Welsh and Spanish, these Welsh were apparently not British at all. After having been eagerly courted, they discovered there was in fact a great deal of opposition awaiting them in Australia. * * *

I planned to spend my life at sea. But capitalism determined that the British merchant sailor was no longer economically viable. Thatcher had crippled Trade Unions, and companies were free to register ships under flags of convenience. The number of Merchant vessels still registered in Britain began a steady decline. There were massive lay-offs. British workers were replaced with foreign crews who would do the same job for a pittance. The world was a hive and the changes already signaled. It was time to metamorphose into something else or risk becoming cut off. I was made redundant but luckily found work with a second company months later. I saved, left my South Wales hometown and migrated to a new land already old with the husks of promises. I touched-down in Cairns in 1996.

Down under, I attempted to build a new life. Working a string of low-paid jobs, I found the reality of an alien land vastly different from the dream offered in a promotional video Id watched back in the UK. The video had been made by a company promising to handle all red tape and make immigration easy. They conveniently went bankrupt, and disappeared without reimbursing any of their clients money. * * *

The Northern Territory Welsh Patagonians met with additional disappointment when the Government did not honour its word. Instead of settling on promised land blocks, the men were transported like criminals to work on the railway being built in an attempt to bridge the desert heart.19 The cost of their passage from Argentina was deducted from the wages of their mandatory labour out in those arid distances. Land was reserved for them further north, but they were not allowed to claim it until the state had finished with them. Those Welsh Patagonian immigrants unfortunately fooled by Robert Williams propaganda quickly evaporated into the wider culture or returned to Patagonia. A few, however, returned to the land of their ancestors re-crossing seas and hemispheres, making the journey of their forebears full circle. I like to think those returning Welsh colonials must have been wiser for the experience; that their insight was deepened into a myopic, greedy species which needs to cooperate and trust and yet at the same time is apt to exploit trust; a species which consumes more than it needs and in so doing endangers its own future. We can reconnoitre the world, grow, journey outward; we can also stop and reflect. We are not termites. We are more than a blind force of nature. We have the capacity to learn from mistakes.

Today, Im a resident alien still living down under. Like Robert Williams, I decided on New Zealand. Life really is good here; but despite the tendency to squander money unwisely on such things as drink, I keep the money for a flight back to Wales in a savings account. Maybe someday Ill return. Theyve done a great deal of work on the place, Im told. I hear its a lot better there now.

Notes:
1 2

Williams, G. The Desert and the Dream. University of Wales Press; Cardiff. 1975, pp. 150-1. Ibid. p. 3. 3 Ibid. p. 17. 4 Ibid. p. 18. 5 Langfield, p. 81. 6 Price, p. 32. 7 Williams, R. Report on the Northern Territory of Australia. McCarron, Bird & Co.; Melbourne, 1912, p.1. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. p. 2. 12 Ibid. p. 6. 13 Ibid. p. 15. 14 Ibid p.8. 15 Hollinsworth McConnochie, K. & Pettman, J. Race & Racism in Australia. Social Science Press; New South Wales, 1988, pp. 65-7. 16 Ibid. p.15. Cf. Rowse, T. White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge 1998, pp. 56-9. 17 Ibid. P.16. 18 Langfield, p. 81. 19 Ibid. About the Author: HTR Williams is a novelist and award-winning essayist. Read more articles and check out his fiction for free at htrwilliams.com